AI-related Honor Code cases climb in latest five-year report

The Honor Committee recently released its latest statistics, which detail Honor Code violations, Honor Committee hearings, and findings of responsibility between Fall 2021 to Spring 2026. Between Fall 2021 and Spring 2026, 117 Honor Code violations were reported, 65 went to a hearing, and 33 of those hearings resulted in disciplinary action. The committee’s report last year, covering Fall 2020 through Spring 2025, recorded 112 reports and 56 findings of responsibility.

The report comes as the University reintroduces proctors at in-person exams after 133 years. The policy, which the faculty approved in May, cited AI’s “ease of access” on small personal devices and students’ reluctance to report peers per the requirements of the Honor Code for fear of “doxxing or shaming among their peer groups.”

The Honor Committee deals with violations of the Honor Code during in-person examinations, while the Committee on Discipline is responsible for all other academic integrity violations, including those related to online examinations.

The report was compiled and published by Honor Committee chair Minh Truong ’27, though it is unsigned. Committee member Ian Rosenzweig ’29 said that other members were not aware of its release. “I did not know that the report was coming out, and I don’t know that [releasing the report] has been something that the entire committee has been involved in in the past.” 

Rosenzweig is an assistant Opinion editor for The Daily Princetonian.

To preserve anonymity, the committee does not publish yearly statistics and instead compiles reports for a five-year period.

Rosenzweig called into question the usefulness of the report, given its lengthy timeframe. “I think in a perfect world, perhaps we would release annual data and then also do a five year summary,” he added.

Unauthorized use of outside materials was the most common disciplinary violation, with 53 reports, 34 hearings, and 23 resulting in disciplinary action. The Honor Committee defines unauthorized materials as including, but not limited to, calculators, cheat sheets, cellphones, lecture notes or textbooks, prohibited websites (including generative AI), and other impermissible written materials. Discipline for these violations included reprimands, suspensions not served, suspensions of a semester to a year, and disciplinary probation lasting from one semester to graduation. 

Generative AI was the most commonly reported prohibited aid, with 23 reports, 17 hearings, and 10 findings of responsibility — up from two reports and two findings in the 2019–24 report.

Truong stated that “most, or the vast majority of the unauthorized use cases have been AI or some kind of device use.”

Truong said such cases have increased since the COVID-19 pandemic, partly due to the proliferation of AI usage. “After COVID happened and things went online, that’s when we [had] the first spike in the number of cases, and since then it kind of evened out or lowered a little bit, but [now] it’s kind of coming back up,” she said. She added that this was not the case before 2020. 

Rosenzweig declined to comment on the exact number of cases the Honor Committee heard involving AI, but said he believed it was likely more commonly seen by the Committee on Discipline. “I speculate that there is more AI usage there just because it’s much easier [to access] and you have much more time. Whereas essentially in an exam environment, using AI requires a multi-step violation.” 

“First, you’re choosing to access a phone, or a computer, or [another] form of technology, which is already a violation of exam rules in most cases, and then you’re also seeking outside resources,” he explained. “Which it’s not to say it doesn’t happen. It does. [But] just because there’s an AI problem, which is a significant cheating problem, doesn’t mean that we don’t also still have, quote unquote, ‘good old cheating.’” 

Collaboration with a peer was the second most common violation, with 46 reports. Twenty went to a hearing, while only two hearings resulted in a recommendation of a one-semester suspension. This is down from last year’s report, in which collaboration accounted for 51 reports, 22 of which ended in a finding of responsibility.

Truong said whether a reported violation leads to disciplinary action depends on the evidence. This is especially true for collaboration-related violations, she told the ‘Prince.’ “Collaboration is especially hard to prove responsibility … Unless there are basically identical exams, if there are some similarities in the answers or something like that, that’s not enough to meet our standard of evidence.”

None of the other categories of “attempts to gain an unfair advantage” saw more than five reports between 2021 and 2026. Only one case of plagiarism was reported and did not go to a hearing. The same was true for the single case of failing to submit an exam. The one case of accessing an exam early went to a hearing, but the student was not found in violation of the Honor Code. 

All four cases of doctored regrades, situations where “students attempt[ed] to alter graded examinations before submitting regrade requests” went to hearings and the students were all found to be in violation. Two of them were given suspensions (not served), one was suspended for a semester, and another was suspended with censure. 

The report’s release marks the second consecutive year that the Honor Committee has released statistics, following a two-year hiatus. The statistics for 2019–2024 were released in March 2025, and the statistics for 2020–2025 were released in June the same year. 

Truong noted that in her view, the committee has an image problem on campus. “I think there’s a bad reputation of the Honor Committee on campus in general. And when people find out that I’m the Honor Committee chair, they’re usually kind of surprised, but not in a good way,” Truong told the ‘Prince.’ 

Students’ reluctance to report Honor Code violations is reflected in the ‘Prince’ 2025 Senior Survey of over 500 seniors. Out of the respondents, 44.6 percent reported knowledge of Honor Code violations that they chose not to report. Only 0.4 percent said they had reported a peer.

Truong emphasized the Honor Committee’s importance in helping students through the disciplinary process.

“I think being able to help [other] students through the process and letting them deal with students instead of administrators or professors really helps reduce stress,” she told the ‘Prince.’

“We don’t really know what things are going to look like.” Rosenzweig said regarding the Honor Committee’s procedural changes post-proctoring. “We also don’t know what it means to have the word of a proctor against the word of students, or vice versa, and I think that it’s something that we’re sort of going to try to play by ear.”

Leela Hensler is a staff News writer and a staff Sports writer for the ‘Prince.’ She is from Berkeley, Calif. and can be reached at leela[at]princeton.edu.

Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.