As we approach midterms week it's natural for our thoughts to turn to exams. Every exam we take over midterm week will be marked with a small pledge that we have "not violated the honor code" during this examination. In itself, this is obviously a good thing. It is to Princeton's credit that academic integrity is a student concern, handled through an honor system rather than faculty monitoring of examinations as at other schools.
The Code aspires to be a justice system in miniature, with its own constitution, procedures, hearings, and officers of court. Taken as a justice system, the details of Princeton's Honor Code can be quite alarming and ought to be examined more closely. The implications of the Honor Code are important both in that it can on occasion actually determine the fate of someone's academic career with long-lasting repercussions, and in that its rules contrast poorly with widely and deeply held beliefs about procedural fairness and civil liberties, which have become all the more precious in a time when, in the big world outside Princeton, civil liberties exist under an ominous wartime cloud.
To start with, students hauled before the Honor Committee do not benefit from an explicitly stated presumption of innocence. Indeed, rather than needing proof beyond a reasonable doubt, or a similar formulation, to find a student guilty of cheating, the Committee's burden of proof is, according to Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution of the Honor System, nothing more than "overwhelmingly convincing evidence." Indeed, "documented evidence and plausibility of method, in the absence of demonstrated intent, may be enough to convict." This is a far cry from the presumption that no one is innocent until proven guilty and may have terrible consequences on issues as grave as those handled by the Committee. Moreover, any "attempt" to gain an unfair advantage on an exam is considered a breach of the Honor Code. That is to say that a student need not cheat to be guilty of a violation. He or she only has to think about cheating.
Perhaps one might have more confidence were proceedings public, or at least open to the view of the defendant (euphemistically known as the "student in question"). But this is not the case. According to Article IV, Section 6 of the Honor System Constitution, a student charged by the Committee, will likely learn of the matter through a "letter which need not be signed" from his accuser.
Efforts to protect the anonymity of the accusing party jeopardize the legitimacy of much of the rest of the procedures delineated in the Honor System Constitution. A student in question never learns the identity of his or her accuser nor does he or she have the right to be present during the Committee's questioning of witnesses, including witnesses the student may call on his or her own behalf. Instead, accused students must rely on another undergraduate who serves as their "defense advocate," and who alone can represent their interests at a hearing. And unlike in a real courtroom where there is a prosecutor and a defense attorney each presenting a case in front of judges or a jury, here the prosecutors (euphemized as "investigators") sit on the side of the judges and are present during the committee's deliberations that follow the hearing. Unsurprisingly, this is a matter of enormous concern to the defense advocate I spoke to in writing this column.
We may reasonably expect the identity of an accuser to be of primary importance in preparing a defense, anywhere and on any charge. In an attempt to overcome this obvious problem with its confidentiality policy, Article IV, Section 8 of the Honor System, calls upon the Honor Com-mittee to investigate all possible connections be-tween the student in question and all witnesses, and any potential ulterior motives involv-ed in the case, while protecting the confidentiality of all parties involv-ed." This sounds very difficult and perhaps impossible.
It is certainly a method more prone to error than allowing the accused to say "Oh yes, he's accusing me of cheating because he resents my higher grades," or any number of defenses that would instantly weaken the credibility of the accusation. The key question is whether the accuser's confidentiality need be the object of greater constitutional solicitude than the potential and, one would prefer, presumed, innocence of the accused. The code is weakest in this respect, for surely an accusation as grave as cheating on an exam ought to be taken as seriously as possible, and ought to be difficult for someone to make rather than insulated at the defense's cost.
The difficulties of appeal, the inadmissibility of ignorance or error as a defense, the limited but severe range of penalties, the absence of precedents as to past decisions since the only records preserved are those of convictions, with those of acquittals being destroyed (not one prior decision is available on the Honor Committee's website), the twin blankets of confidentiality and anonymous accusation, and of course the injunction that students inform against any suspected violations or themselves be guilty, all combine to make something that however benign in intention is the closest Princeton will ever come to the Star Chamber.
In fairness, there is no reason to question the integrity of the members of the Honor Committee. Without a doubt, a genuine commitment to fairness motivates them and they do the best they can. Moreover there are very few cases each year, and the fact that most result in acquittals demonstrates that the Committee's power is not willfully abused. Nevertheless, in a time when we are growing especially sensitive to questions of civil liberties, it's worth looking at what Princeton's own institutions imply. I would suggest that some of the objections I have raised to the procedures used in the Honor System resemble in outline those made against some of the more extreme law enforcement measures of recent months.
The principle that students take responsibility for their own integrity is a great feature of the academic system at Princeton. We might hope that the Honor Code could in time come to be as admirable with respect to its details and procedures as to its broader purpose. Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky is from New York, NY. He can be reached at cr@princeton.edu.
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