For proctors to work, students need a say

The following piece represents the views of the undersigned Editorial Board members alone.

One hundred and fifty years ago, in The Daily Princetonian’s seventh-ever issue, the Editorial Board weighed in on academic integrity at the University. 

“To come at once to the point,” the editorial began, “we wish to see the present system of suspicion and surveillance give place to the more natural one of confidence and personal honor.” 

In a piece that took up nearly a full page, our predecessors argued against proctored exams, instead favoring an unusual system of self- and peer-enforced integrity. In other words, they were advocating for the foundations of the Honor Code as we know it today. In the years since, the expectations and enforcement of academic integrity have undergone significant changes, but its core principle, that students should hold themselves and others accountable during in-person exams, has remained largely unchanged. 

Today, however, we believe the system must be revised. 

Last month, this paper reported that the Faculty is considering a proposal to institute proctors for in-person exams. We urge the Faculty to adopt this proposal. However, despite the commendable recent efforts from the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) to involve students in the conversation, this outreach should have been initiated by administrators instead. We are disappointed in the University’s overall failure to seek meaningful student involvement throughout the process of altering the honor system, and we are concerned that this policy could strip away an important part of students’ meaningful self-governance.

Students have always found a way to cheat. Academic dishonesty, however, has become pervasive because cheating is easier than ever. Generative artificial intelligence models can now produce correct answers in an instant, allowing students to successfully cheat with just a few taps on their phone. As the most recent Honor Committee chair emerita, Nadia Makuc ’26, recently pointed out in an article in the ‘Prince,’ the Committee has seen an uptick in cases in the last year. We can only expect that if the system remains unchanged, cheating will only become more rampant.

Incentives are high for students to cheat. Exceptional grades, often heavily dependent on exam performance, are now necessary prerequisites to stand out in cutthroat career-defining internships and increasingly competitive graduate school admissions. We also acknowledge that the incentives are low for students to report others: beyond the adage “snitches get stitches,” few students wish to be accountable for the potential demise of another student’s academic career. 

In theory, proctoring in-person exams could help prevent cheating, as well as potentially ease the onus on students to hold their peers accountable. A designated proctor can enforce exam integrity without concern for social pressure or internal conflict. This is not to say that students are unable to identify cheating, but there’s a clear reticence towards reporting in some number of students: 44.6 percent of respondents in the ‘Prince’ 2025 Senior Survey reported that they had knowledge of a peer violating the Honor Code but opted not to report it to the University. As parties with a further degree of separation, proctors may help increase the consistency of reporting and attention in the exam room. 

The greatest potential benefit of proctoring lies in its capacity as deterrence: students will likely be less inclined to cheat if they feel it is more likely they will be caught, and a designated proctor presents — at least in theory — as a more vigilant and attentive figure than the student busy taking their own exam at an adjacent desk. Proctoring is by no means a perfect solution, but the sentiment around enforcement of the Honor Code is already saturated with mistrust and anxiety among students. We believe that simply letting somebody watch us take our exams, and having the pressure of that presence discourage dishonesty, would be an improvement.

Still, while the introduction of proctors may deter some cheating, academic dishonesty in exams will almost certainly not be eliminated. And we worry that, for all the good they may do, proctors may also introduce unintended challenges.

Primarily, no two proctors nor two exam rooms are created equal. One proctor may be more observant and committed to their responsibilities than another. A larger lecture hall will likely be harder to proctor than a small classroom. And it will be difficult to set, let alone enforce, standards for proctor conduct and policies.

Furthermore, the introduction of proctors adds another layer to and creates challenges in the Honor Committee’s evaluation of allegations, a process that can already be difficult.

Take the following two inverse scenarios. In the first, a proctor reports a student for allegedly using a phone during an exam. The Honor Committee finds no other witness to the event, and the students sitting around the student in question are adamant that they saw no phone usage. To which account does the Committee default? Would the proctor be perceived by students on the Committee to have extra authority by virtue of the job?

In a second scenario, a student reports a peer’s phone usage, but the proctor in the room saw nothing. Is the case still open? Does the student in question have the right to assert that, if the proctor — whose sole responsibility is to monitor the room — saw nothing, then is it reasonably likely that nothing happened?

In these cases, proctors could introduce extra doubt into the Honor Committee process, further challenging the Committee’s search for truth and complicating students’ abilities to defend themselves. And it goes without saying that it is more likely than not that a proctor’s confident testimony will likely carry more weight than a student’s account — especially a student distracted by an exam. Such a situation deprives students of our power and historic self-governance.

The process behind the potential proctor policy notably did not involve student input. According to previous ‘Prince’ coverage, the University only had general conversations with certain members from the Honor Committee and the USG Academics Committee about a month before the proposal was publicly reported, and did not inform USG of the imminence of the vote until the end of March. 

Although this proposal does not require student input to pass, we believe that the University should still have engaged undergraduates more deeply on one of the few features of academic life that remains student-led. On a practical level, when the student body gets a meaningful say in the creation of a policy, we believe the rules that are passed will be more respected and followed. We also believe if students are deprived of a meaningful democracy and self-governance, we are also deprived of the chance to improve as ethical thinkers and leaders. 

The Honor Committee and USG should have been given a real chance to respond constructively to the proposal, instead of simply being informed of possible developments just a month before its announcement. We commend the recent efforts from USG Academics Chair Isaac Bernstein ’28, a former staff News writer for the ‘Prince,’ to incorporate student opinions, but student involvement has come too little, too late. 

The USG’s brief survey of students conducted in less than a week almost certainly reflects a biased sample of the students who are most informed and opinionated, leading to recommendations that fail to reflect the student body’s wishes. Had there been, for example, multi-month focus groups with students across academic departments and class years, a wider range of undergraduate perspectives would be represented. 

But we do not fault Bernstein and the USG; his efforts are a good-faith attempt to bring student voices into the decision-making, and the survey is perhaps the best solution in the light of the University’s lack of outreach and communication. 

Moving forward, the University has the opportunity to right its wrongs — it is not too late to seriously solicit the perspectives of students prior to enacting a proctor system. While introducing proctors may lead to substantial benefits for Princeton’s students and academic culture, the special history of this covenant between the faculty and students deserves the latter’s input, if not their consent.

If the University decides to implement proctoring, then we wish for a successful implementation that would deter cheating and improve the accuracy in finding violations of the Code. Beyond a mere philosophical or moral obligation to its student body, all Princetonians would benefit from successful dialogue between administrators and students on changes to the Honor Code.

150th Editorial Board

Christopher Bao ’28, Chair

Raf Basas ’28

Preston Ferraiuolo ’26

Lily Halbert-Alexander ’28

Ian Rosenzweig ’29

Maya Mukherjee ’27

Rosenzweig is a member of the Honor Committee. This piece does not reflect the view of the Honor Committee as a whole.