Two systems at the University deal with related disciplinary issues, the Honor System and the Committee on Discipline. The systems have worked unchanged for five years, but a petition by USG senator Jonathan Chavkin '05 has brought to the forefront whether the systems need tuning.
While 210-year-old student-run Honor Committee has jurisdiction over written exams taken in class, the University's Committee on Discipline has jurisdiction over all other University violations.
"I think most people here seem to take [the Honor System] very seriously," Tim Laporte '05 said.
"I think it's a very good thing that we have the Honor Code. Whether or not it stops cheating I don't know, but I'd like to think that it does," said Laporte, who served on his high school's honor council.
Of about 20 honor system investigations each year, about six to nine lead to hearings and four to five lead to convictions, Honor Committee chair Catherine Farmer '03 told the Prince last week.
On the other hand, 291 disciplinary actions were taken by the Committee on Discipline in 2001-02, 32 of which were academic in nature.
Two students were expelled and 13 were suspended or required to withdraw from the University for disciplinary violations.
Roughly seven students have been expelled in the past 25 years.
I didn't mean to
Like the University is to need, both the Honor System and the discipline committee are blind to ignorance and intent.
A conviction in either system does not depend on whether the accused meant to commit the violation or not.
But it wasn't always this way for the Honor Code. Before a 1998 revision to the code, intention was a factor for conviction.
The 1998 revision was made to allow for convictions in cases when intent could not be determined, the then-Honor Committee chair told the Prince the night the revision was passed.
The USG unanimously approved the amendment to the Honor Code constitution, but only after twice rejecting it. A USG senator told the Prince at the time that the presence of faculty members during the voting pressured the senate into agreeing to the amendment.
Since then establishment of intent has not been necessary for a conviction.
Chavkin has said he wants intent to be a factor considered in sentencing.
Sarah Rivlin '03 said she thinks intention should be one factor in a conviction. "You can't always determine [intent], so that's why you have a committee to do their best to figure it out," she said.
Laporte agreed that intention should be a factor, but said it is often obvious to tell when someone intended to cheat. "There was not as much gray area as you would think," he said.
Serving in his high school's honor committee, Laporte said students were very careless about hiding plagiarism — forgetting to remove website addresses from where material was plagiarized from submitted work.
Friendship versus honor
A less-seriously taken aspect of the Honor Code is the requirement that all students report suspected code violations.
Rivlin disagrees with this aspect of the code. Having to turn in fellow students, she said, "takes the whole concept of honor out of it."
Rivlin said she would not turn anyone in.
A 1996 poll conducted by the Prince found that roughly 7 percent of the 2,002 students surveyed had seen someone cheat on an in-class exam and did not report it.
Sixty-two percent said they would report someone who they didn't know well but who clearly appeared to be cheating. Thirty-four percent said they would report close friends.
I pledge
The Honor Committee is comprised of 12 students: class presidents Farmer, who chairs the committee, Eli Goldsmith '04, Beau Harbor '05 and Frances Schendle '06; and Michael Ritter '03, Jason Schwartz '03, Tim Fuzesi '04, Hayden Odell '04, Paul Stamas '04, Michael Sullivan '04, Scott Nancarrow '04 and Nitesh Paryani '05.
Aside from the freshman, sophomore and junior class presidents and three former class presidents, the other members are appointed by the committee for one-year terms.
The committee is governed by a constitution, which can be amended by a vote of seven-of-nine members of the committee and a three-fourths vote of the USG, or by petition of 200 members of the undergraduate student body followed by a three-fourths vote in a student referendum.
The usual notions of cheating are violations of the honor system, including receiving assistance from written aids, other people or other papers, and giving assistance.
But, cheating outside of the examination room are also violations.
Penalties imposed by the committee can range from a one-year suspension to expulsion, but under extenuating circumstances the committee may issue a probation for a first offense, according to the code's constitution.
The president of the University can review the penalty, and appeals — on the grounds of procedural unfairness or harmful bias — are made to the office of the president.
A conviction by the honor committee requires that the committee find overwhelmingly convincing evidence.
Students in question under the Honor system have a delineated set of rights, including to review all evidence, to call witnesses, to have a procedural adviser and to have a defense advocate.
Convicted students may also receive a summary of the committee's reasons for conviction as well as poll the votes of the individual committee members.
All Honor Committee proceedings are kept confidential. Records of acquitted cases are destroyed.
The pledge, "I pledge my honor that I have not violated the honor code during this examination," must always be written in full and signed.
Though everyone signs the pledge, not everyone has abided by it.
A 1978 poll by the Honor Committee found that 17 percent of students admitted to having violated the code.
A later poll around that time conducted by the Prince found twice that, 34 percent, according to a Prince article in 2001.
But in the 1996 Prince survey, only 2 percent of students reported having cheated on an in-class exam.
Discipline
Though academic violations are outnumbered three-to-one by alcohol policy violations, their consequences in the student/faculty Committee on Discipline are much more serious.
The committee is chaired by Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan, though Associate Dean Marianne Waterbury oversees disciplinary issues in the dean's office.
The accused student as well as the faculty member who brought the charge are present at the committee's hearing.
Like in the honor system, the student may bring an adviser. But for the discipline committee the adviser may be anyone in the University community.
But unlike the Honor System, the accused student may question anyone who has provided information at the hearing.
A majority of the committee members decides the verdict and sentence, which ranges from a warning to expulsion, with many intermediate levels of punishment.
Academic fraud usually results in a minimum of a one-year suspension, similar to the consequences of the honor code.
Plagiarism, the most common academic violation last year, led to disciplinary probation — in the cases of careless scholarship — and suspensions, according to the 2002 Discipline Report.
Disciplinary Committee findings may also be appealed — on the grounds of procedural error or unfairness, new information or unfair penalty. Appeals are brought to a committee of the CPUC or the dean of the college.
The 15-member committee comprises six administrators, four professors and five students – Deignan, Waterbury, Vice President for Campus Life Janet Dickerson, Associate Dean of the College Nancy Kanach, Assistant Dean Maria Flores-Mills, Dean of Rockefeller College Hilary Herbold; professors John Borneman, Margueritte Browning, Sanjeev Kulkarni and Olga Hasty; and students Bryan Hiscox '04, Jennifer Kwong '03, Michael Mullaly '04, Catherine Prentke '03 and Jacob Thomas '05.
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