Can honor survive the 21st century?

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The news that, for the first time since 1893, exams at Princeton will be proctored sent me back 60 years to the day I took my departmental comprehensive exams. We weren’t required to remain in the exam room then but could simply work on our tests wherever we chose. I took my comps in my room, with my feet propped up on a stack of notebooks containing everything I would have needed to ace them. 

Sad to say, I completely blew the first of three questions, depriving myself of a shot at departmental honors. Glad to say, consulting those notebooks really never occurred to me. Why? Not because I’m so much more honest than the next guy, but because that was something you just didn’t do at Princeton.

The apparent paradox that, while cheating was easy, few people did it, may be more logical than it sounds. The students who formulated the Honor Code in 1893 weren’t exceptionally honest, either. Beset by rampant cheating, students and faculty were playing a game of cat-and-mouse that, at last, some students realized was conducive neither to learning nor to the kind of community they wanted to live in. 

They asked the faculty, “What if we pledge our honor to you and to one another that we won’t cheat? Would you trust us to monitor that pledge?” The faculty — perhaps as much out of exasperation as faith — said yes. And the result may have surprised them all: When you dare to trust people and let them know it, they often rise to that expectation. 

The question is, is that still true today?

While over the last 133 years, there has certainly been some cheating at Princeton, I’d guess that if you asked Princetonians who graduated before, say, 2000, they would struggle to recall even hearing about instances of cheating. But to be honest  — and honesty is, after all, the point here — you’d likewise have difficulty finding anyone who would have reported an incident if they’d seen one. Though no one noticed or said as much, with little effective enforcement, the Honor Code was already on life support. 

Over the last 50 years or so, the shell of the Honor Code has been whittled away. By 1995, not only could students no longer take exams wherever they chose, they were now required in many cases to sit in alternate seats to discourage the possibility of cheating. Yet in spite of these departures from the Code’s original intent, its ethos largely held, and in the minds of most people here, Princeton was still a place where you didn’t cheat.

So that brings us to 2026. The threat to the Code now purports to be artificial intelligence, though AI is simply the latest temptation beckoning undergraduates with shortcuts to good grades. No matter the vehicle, however, as long as there are students willing to forgo the rewards of deep reading, attentive study, and painstaking research in favor of the easy but fraudulent A, there will be cheating.

But what marks this moment in the history of Princeton’s Honor Code is neither the presence of AI nor even the faculty’s decision to monitor exams — it’s that most students appear to approve of that decision. As concerning as it is that the faculty don’t trust the students, if the students don’t trust one another, then the Honor Code is effectively dead.

Whether it remains dead, however, rests squarely with the current student body, just as it did in 1893.

The issue here isn’t principally where or how students take exams. It’s what kind of community you are willing to live in. These aren't simply the quaint reminiscences of an ancient alum but – the Honor Code’s shortcomings notwithstanding – the very heart of this institution. Are current students ready to jettison that in favor of a community where no one trusts anyone? It would be no surprise if you were — after all, we live in a world in which dishonesty frequently reigns, in which the president of the United States tells 10 lies before breakfast. Is a community of trust even possible?

Emphatically, yes! But it can happen only with the resolution of that community’s members. Most of you are beginning to imagine your own future families. As you’ll likely want them to be circles of trust, this issue of honor is not just institutional but personal — and yet, Princeton is a family writ large, and the obstacles to trust here are the same human frailties with which we’re faced in every sphere. 

Each of you may ask, “How can I do anything about this?” But alongside others, you can do plenty. 1893 is the proof. All you have to do is muster all that leadership you claimed when you applied here and dare to declare, “This is the kind of community we want.” Because if you leave it to chance, you’re likely to wind up with the kind of community you don’t want. Scrap the old Honor Code — but then remake one in your own image. It has to be you, the students, who make and approve it, because any honor code is above all a pact among students.

As was true in 1893, so now in 2026, students must either stand up for the integrity upon which not just Princeton but each of your best selves rests, or accept the consequences of failing to do so. As I confessed in a Princeton Alumni Weekly article on the Honor Code more than 30 years ago, that decision requires a leap of faith — the willingness to risk being fools, not something Princetonians do easily. But better to be a fool in support of the highest human aspirations than a cynic in the service of their destruction. That’s what Princeton got right in 1893, and that’s what it’s time to reclaim in 2026.

Frank Strasburger ’67 was Princeton’s Episcopal Chaplain from 1986–97 and is a co-founder and emeritus president of Princeton in Africa. You can reach him at fstras[at]gmail.com.

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