On My Honor as a Student…
This may seem odd, but a day after putting the dog to sleep, today was my brother’s graduation from NYU. I didn’t go, because he was only given two tickets – which went to my parents, of course – but I met up with them for lunch afterwards at the Gramercy Tavern. I’m not a restaurant critic, so I’ll just say that the food was delicious and the company was great. The Gramercy Tavern is elegant and classy, yet trendy, modern, and relaxed. Just like a restaurant should be.
In other news, my double alma mater, the University of Virginia, is dealing with a cheating scandal. Yay. Some 122 students in an introductory physics class called “How Things Work” have been accused of plagiarizing substantial parts of their term papers, despite the school’s honor code, in place ever since, according to legend, a student shot a professor on the Lawn back in 1841. I could be wrong, but I think that UVA has the oldest honor code of any American university and that most other schools with honor codes have modeled them on ours, sometimes with modifications. We have a “single sanction” system: if you’re charged with lying, cheating, or stealing, and then, following a hearing held by the student-run Honor Committee, the charges are determined to be true, you are expelled. Done deal. Just like that. There have been many student referenda over the years that have attempted to create a dual-sanction system, with some lesser penalties for certain offenses, based on the belief that people refrain from turning in cheaters because they don’t want to see their fellow students expelled. These referenda have always failed.
On the night of our convocation as UVA students, in the fall of my first year, we all had to sign our names in one of several big books, pledging to follow the honor code. And on the last page of every exam you take and of every paper you turn in at UVA, you must write the following sentence: “On my honor as a student of the University of Virginia I have neither given nor received aid on this exam (paper) (assignment).” Then you sign your name and turn it in. It’s assumed you’re telling the truth.
I never cheated at UVA, and I personally don’t know of anyone who did, but it does happen, and certainly not just in some gut of a physics class. Still — 122 students in a single class?
Throughout most of my years at UVA, and especially in the couple of years since, I’ve been proud to be a ‘Hoo. A Double ‘Hoo, at that. So, although this doesn’t at all surprise me, it does sadden me.
Wahoowa.