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E-Prince"I really do think that the vast majority of people here are honorable.”
Maria Huerta ’11 has great faith in the Honor Code she is charged to uphold as a member of the University Honor Committee.
But a recent Daily ...
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“If you can say, ‘I am going to Princeton to learn’ … then the least you can do is actually engage in scholarly research that’s your own, that’s unique.”
who comes to pton to "learn"? pton is a means for the end that is employment with a high salary/status/etc. with this ridiculous deflation policy, cheating will only increase as people realize that in the real world, no one cares about your "honor" but rather your gpa.
maria, please wake up. idealistic, overzealous, power-tripping sophomores kill me, im telling you...
@07: what about idealistic, overzealous graduate students who believe that learning is a means toward bettering society and becoming a well-informed citizen?
I also went to an ivy undergrad (not penn, heh). Not all of us are as jaded as you are. Enjoy having your wall street salary paid by my taxes, though.
"who comes to pton to 'learn'?"
...I certainly did, and still do. I'm about to graduate, and part of me wishes I could learn a few more things here before I leave. When's the next chance you're ever going to get an opportunity like this (if ever)? Not all of us feel the way you to 07; in fact I bet a lot of us don't. How many people who are going to graduate schools for PhD's do you think are doing it for the money?
According to this article, one in five students has admitted (privately, in a survey) to an academic violation. That's nearly 1000 students presently on campus. Only 35 or so have received any kind of punishment. We were never told the number of students who were charged, but only 3.5% of self-reported cheaters have received a punishment. This perhaps explains the excessively harsh penalties, as penalties for actions with a low probability of getting caught need to be harsh (though one can make an argument that such low probabilities are a result of excessive punishment). Still, it's hard to believe the Prince's picture of an unfair, "guilty until proven innocent" system when cheating appears rampant and punishment is relatively rare.
@07 If Dean Malkiel's grade deflation policy serves no other purpose than to encourage students like you to go elsewhere, it will have improved the quality of the student body more than most other recent endeavors.
Since 95% of observed honor code violations are not reported, the system is simply not working. If Prof. Flemming's assertion that the honor code is “one of the very few substantive things about undergraduate life that students actually run.” it doesn't speak well for the Princeton student body.
I've never liked "mandatory reporting" clauses in honor codes. I think they're ineffective, and I think that's the effect you're seeing ScienceProf, not a failure of the actual student body.
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The distinction between academic integrity during in-class exams and academic integrity ANY OTHER TIME doesn't make any sense to me, and it never did. Nor has the appendage of the word "honor" on something that is only a small subset of that word ever made sense to me. I guess, unsurprisingly, I agree with Professor Katz (yet again) -- "I am inclined to stick to the proposition that one body ought to adjudicate all academic offenses, and I suppose that ought to be the Honor Committee." This kind of system only works if the participants can take ownership in it and invest in it. Students cannot do that with the COD since all of its members are appointed (in proceedings that are not open to the public?) instead of elected. Were I still a student, I wouldn't be invested in the COD's actions because the process is intrinsically unjust. I've written about the serious systemic faults ad nauseum in the other articles' comment sections, so I'll save the laundry list here. The system is broken from several viewpoints, and I hope it will be changed soon.
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Regrettably, I don't have much faith it will be changed for the positive (from a student's perspective, or from a fundamental fairness perspective). Were I to predict the most likely changes, it would be that the COD will swallow the "honor" committee, it will add more student members and require them to be elected, and it will raise its quorum requirement by two people. They won't change the court procedures favored by the courts of third world dictators (no right to confront, low bar of proof, etc.). And they'll still cling tightly to wrongly decided precedent with the ardent hope that it cloaks their decisions in justice. I am glad that I'm long since graduated. And I am equally sure the professors and administrators are similarly happy they cannot be subjected to the "safeguards" of the system they tolerate to exist for students.
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To the authors, thank you for making the topic a subject of conversation. I enjoyed the articles.
the honor code is a time-honored tradition at Princeton, which I've always felt is absolutely ridiculous and ought to be ceased. It is constantly held over the heads of undergrads like an axe poised to fall, and its primary effect, I think, is fear--fear of making a mistake, fear of collaborating with other students. Countless times i heard other undergrads express a concern that they might inadvertently violate the honor code. If that fear is unfounded, it simply demonstrates how the Honor Code is inappropriately wielded. If that's a reasonable concern, however, then the Honor Code is just a shame. In either case, the Honor Code is a problem. If people are honorable, they'll continue to be so, regardless of whether or not they transcribe a trite "pledge" on EVERY thing they do, and neither will dishonorable people be made honorable by it.
whats annoying is when the administration tries to say the honor code is what keeps things like theft between students low on campus. having an honor code doesn't make us honorable. WE make us honorable.
@07
agreed, there are so many parts of Princeton that are not conducive to learning
I really think many students have ever actually read the Honor Code in full. It states that any student may present an amendment to it after obtaining 200 signatures. After which if there is a 3/4ths majority for the amendment among the student body it is accepted. Over the course of this article series it seems like a lot of things have come up that could be changed. Why doesn't someone just propose an amendment?? The Code is not set in stone