In pursuit of perfection

Though many see the Honor Code as a sacred fixture of Princeton tradition, the 107-year-old document has not been immune to change.

Recent proposals to change the Honor System follow a decade of increased discussion about the Honor Code and at least four modifications to the Honor System's constitution during the last seven years.

Proposed changes — which include adding faculty advisers, creating a defense advocate pool and expanding the jurisdiction of the code to out-of-class exams — seem sweeping but may be just another step in a recent line of Honor Code reforms.

In 1994, the committee extended the period for an accused student to prepare for his hearing from one day to seven days.

Two years later, the guidelines for choosing a defense advocate were modified to include only current undergraduate students and exclude administrators, faculty and graduate students from serving in the position.

In 1998, the committee added a clause stating that in the presence of "overwhelmingly convincing evidence," plausibility of method, rather than intent, is enough to convict a student of violating the code. That is, the committee would have to establish only the method by which a student could have cheated for a conviction to be possible. And in 2000, the committee changed the name of the defense adviser — an Honor Committee member who does not vote but can speak on behalf of the student during the committee's proceedings — to procedural adviser. All changes were approved by the USG.

Before 1994, the last major adjustment to the constitution occurred in 1980, when the committee published an extensive report, detailing six major recommendations to improve the system.

For decades before, the Honor Code had prohibited only giving or receiving unauthorized aid on an in-class exam.

But the 1980 reforms gave the Honor Code sharper teeth, also prohibiting any attempts to gain unfair advantages during an exam, lying to the committee and not reporting an observed Honor Code violation.

In addition, the Honor Committee voted to create the Faculty Advisory Committee and expand the Honor Committee itself from seven to nine members. The report also included a graduated penalty structure that included probation and an expanded orientation program to familiarize new students with the code.

The reforms were passed in February 1980. And in essence, the changes created the modern Honor System.

Former Honor Committee Chair Chris Shields '79, who authored the first draft of that report, said it was prepared as a response to national media coverage about the level of cheating at universities.

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The committee polled students in the spring of 1978 using a highly accurate method called Randomized Response Technique and found that 17.1 percent of Princeton students admitted to having violated the Honor Code at some point during their careers and that 65 percent would not turn in a friend if that friend committed a violation.

A similar Daily Princetonian survey conducted near the same time reported that twice that amount — 34 percent of students — had violated the code.

But for the next 15 years, the Honor Constitution, for the most part, would remain unchanged.

Former Honor Committee chair Neysun Mahboubi '97 said the Robert Clayton '82 case — in which Clayton sued the trustees for lack of oversight over the Honor Committee — did not directly bring about the reforms.

But Mahboubi said the University administration during that period had been growing increasingly concerned about other lawsuits relating to the Honor Committee.

"The administration put pressure on the committee to be more careful," Mahboubi said. "We definitely got the message that the code is vulnerable to legal challenges and that the University wouldn't necessarily win future cases."

University Vice President and Secretary Thomas Wright '62, who was the University's general counsel at the time, said administration pressure on the Honor Committee is nothing new.

"I've been telling them since day one," he said. "You are the agents of the University. You've got to act prudently and cautiously, following your procedures. You're acting on behalf of the University."

And as the 1990s progressed, members of the Honor Committee became increasingly concerned about the impact technology would have on the Honor System.

A number of modifications were proposed, and certain ideas like a periodic referendum on the Honor Code and a flexible final examination schedule kept resurfacing.

"There was a lot of interest in the student body about updating the Honor System especially for the interest of the accused," said Glen McGroarty '95, a former Honor Committee chair who helped conceive the 1994 changes.

McGroarty's committee crafted the extension of preparation time from one day to seven days because members believed a student should have more time to prepare — an argument Clayton raised in his lawsuit.

One Honor Committee case in the fall of 1995 generated more discussion and resulted in another amendment. Maria Burnett-Gaudiani '98 felt she was treated unfairly and was losing faith in the system. She wrote a column in The Daily Princetonian in March 1996 bringing the details of the case to the campus' attention.

Burnett-Gaudiani said she witnessed another student copying material from an outside source during a midterm. After she reported the violation to the committee and testified at the hearing, the student was found guilty and Burnett-Gaudiani considered the matter finished, according to her column.

But an appeal to President Shapiro resulted in a rehearing because the committee had misinterpreted an article in its constitution, she wrote at the time.

Until then, defense advocates were used only rarely.

"The defense advocate didn't become part of institutional practice until now," said Mahboubi, who was Honor Committee clerk at the time of the case. The accused student asked a University dean to serve as his defense advocate for the second trial. During the hearing, the dean aggressively challenged Burnett-Gaudiani's character, according to both Burnett-Gaudiani's article and Mahboudi.

"He really ripped into the reporting witness," Mahboubi said. "The witness felt like she had been dragged over the coals."

The student was found not guilty after the second hearing.

Burnett-Gaudiani said she felt cheated, and members of the Honor Committee believed something had to be done.

The following year, the Honor Committee under Mahboubi's leadership decided to prevent a person of "greater stature than any other member of the committee" from coming before the committee.

It limited the defense advocate to current undergraduates and adopted the use of defense advocates as standard procedure. The Honor Committee position of defense adviser remained, but its role has become primarily to provide procedural advice. The name was changed in the constitution last year to "procedural adviser."

And in 1998, just two years after Burnett-Gaudiani's opinion piece, professors demanded further review of the Honor System constitution.

"Basically," then Honor Committee Chair Will Nance '98 said, "there was some feeling that some faculty members were beginning to lose confidence in the system."

This dissatisfaction spurred a conference with members of the committee, professors and Dean of the Faculty Joseph Taylor.

With pressure from the faculty and the intimation that some professors would abandon the Honor System, the committee began to review its procedures and decided to strengthen its power to convict when overwhelming evidence prevailed despite unclear intent.

While Clayton's case may have indirectly steered discussion during the past decade, there have been other students, who came before the committee, who raised grievances about their procedures and at least one student who took the University to court.

In a 1999 court case documented in a general counsel report to Shapiro that was acquired by The Daily Princetonian, a student sued the University, Shapiro, a professor and unnamed student members of the Honor Committee for defamation in addition to "intentional infliction of emotional distress" and "tortuous interference with contractual relations."

The Honor Committee previously had found the student — who is currently enrolled but asked not to be identified — guilty and suspended him for submitting an altered midterm for regrading in a molecular biology class.

Shapiro upheld the suspension twice, during an appeal and following a request by the student's family for reconsideration. The family then attempted to get an injunction to stop the suspension until after the court trial.

The judge ruled in favor of the University, stressing the "independence that should be afforded to a university to permit it to exercise properly educational responsibilities absent fundamental unfairness."

Similar to the ruling in Clayton v. Princeton, the judge gave deference to the University and refused to rule whether the student had violated the Honor Code.

University Counsel Peter McDonough — who has worked for the University for 10 years and dealt with most matters involving the Honor Committee — declined to comment on the case, but did, however, note trends in legal decisions involving the Honor Committee.

"It's extraordinarily difficult for a student to successfully use courts to challenge decisions made regarding academic discipline," he said. "If we've had any [cases], they've been short-lived."