Oberlin's Honor Code Weathers Changing Times in Country and on Campus Honor Committees Plan Educational Outreach to Reinvigorate Awareness of Code by Anne C. Paine | photos by Rebecca Lammons '06 March 24, 2003 Maintaining a tradition that stretches back nearly a century, Oberlin College adopted a revised honor code last year. In this age of Enron, it's appropriate to ask the question: Are honor codes simply quaint relics of more innocent times past? Our society seems to value getting ahead at any cost, and cheating is pervasive. With stories about corporate deceptions and political misdeeds regularly in the news, it's possible for Americans to become inured to scandals. One might expect more from the hallowed halls of academia, but our ivory towers aren't squeaky clean either. Just last January, six students at the University of Maryland admitted using text-messaging features on their cell phones to cheat on an accounting exam.     Kimberly Jackson-Davidson, assistant dean of students Sadly, it's not just students who try to deceive. The case of the Notre Dame football coach who resigned in December 2001 after just five days on the job received extensive news coverage; it was discovered that he'd falsified his academic and athletic credentials for decades. In another less publicized case concerning falsified academic credentials, the president of Quincy University resigned last October. Studies conducted at the Center for Academic Integrity (CAI)—a consortium of 220 academic institutions based at Duke University that helps schools create and assess honor codes—show that cheating is a serious problem at American colleges and universities. In a CAI survey conducted during the 2001-02 academic year, 27 percent of students questioned said that falsifying laboratory data occurred "often or very often" on their campus. Forty-one percent said the same for plagiarism on written work, 30 percent for cheating during exams, and 60 percent for collaborating on assignments when the professor had instructed students to work alone. In addition, 55 percent of the students did not think that getting test questions and answers from a student who had already taken an exam was serious cheating, and 45 percent said falsifying lab or research data was not serious cheating. Forty-one percent of students said they'd cut and pasted from the Internet without attribution, and only 27 percent said such cutting and pasting was serious cheating. And only 12 percent thought unpermitted collaborations on assignments qualified as serious cheating. Clearly, academic integrity is a concept under siege. In response, many colleges and universities are turning to honor codes in an attempt to make their campus environments less tolerant of cheating. The New York Times reported last November that some schools, like Trinity College in Hartford, are adopting honor codes for the first time, while others, such as Duke University, Cornell University, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, are beefing up existing codes or enforcing them more aggressively. Why? The answer is surprisingly simple: honor codes work. CAI surveys conducted in 1990, 1995, and 1999, involving more than 12,000 students on 48 different campuses, show that serious test cheating on campuses with honor codes is typically one-third to one-half lower than the level on campuses without honor codes. The level of serious cheating on written assignments is one-fourth to one-third lower. "The feeling of being treated as an adult and responding in kind is clearly there for many students," Donald L. McCabe, founding president of the CAI, told The New York Times. "They clearly don't want to violate that trust." A Century of Honor at Oberlin Oberlin adopted its honor code in 1909 in response to the general sentiment on campus that faculty control of exams was not preventing cheating, but was creating harmful tensions between faculty members and students. Violations covered under Oberlin's code include cheating, plagiarizing, fabricating information, falsifying or forging College documents, hiding library materials, and submitting the same work to more than one course. The code requires faculty members to make clear to students on course syllabi (and by other means) how the code applies to every assignment, and to leave the room during examinations. Students are expected to refuse to cheat or assist in cheating, and to ask professors for clarification if they do not understand how the code applies in a particular instance. Both students and faculty members are required to eliminate conditions that enable code violations and to report instances of suspected violations to the Student Honor Committee (SHC). The code was revised last year for the first time in over a decade. Changes include sharpening definitions of activities that constitute code infractions—including plagiarism from the Internet—and clarifying the procedures and timelines followed when a case is brought before the SHC. The size of the committee was expanded, making it easier for individual members to excuse themselves from hearings in which they have a conflict of interest, and, reflecting the rapid pace of change in our society, reviews of the code are now mandated every five years. The new code also requires the establishment of a precedent log, a database of prior infractions (with names eliminated) along with the sanction applied in the case; this will help ensure fairness and consistency in future cases. One of the most basic changes was in the wording of the pledge that students write and sign. The new wording—"I affirm that I have adhered to the Honor Code in this assignment"—is more general than the old wording, which referred only to tests. This reflects the desire to raise awareness that the code applies to all academic work. So, has cheating at Oberlin increased in recent years? "I can't really answer that," says Kimberly Jackson-Davidson, assistant dean of students. Jackson-Davidson is administrative liaison for the honor system. "My sense is that there's not been an increase in the number of cases being reported, but I think there was probably under-reporting going on before. My understanding from working with the Student Honor Committee is that there's an average of a case a week, so it's not unusual to have 12 or 13 cases each semester." Jackson says she won't be surprised if, as the newer procedures take hold, the number of reported cases rise. "When students and faculty members begin to see the system working, justice being meted out, and sanctions becoming more consistent, they gain confidence in the system. My instinct is that as more cases are reported, less cheating actually takes place because the stakes for the students are higher." Continue to page 1 | 2 | 3