Honorama

Rare indeed is the day when I lower my head for a quick nap during class and don't see the boyish good looks of Jim Tybur staring back at me. Or perhaps it's the face of stolid Nathan Vitan, standing firm in his convictions despite the fact that virtually nobody else at the university agrees with him. Or, more recently, it's been the faces of young rebels Berry and Warden, vainly trying to secede with the cry of self-determination while wrapped in the law school flag.

You may think the stories those littered papers tell give an absurd amount of attention to the goings-on of an outdated committee, and on the whole I would agree. But lately these goings-on have been especially important, especially public debates. And at the heart of it is a seemingly untouchable system in need of a major overhaul.

The controversy began not so many weeks ago with medical school representative Jon White's proposal to eliminate random student juries. Most students were justifiably angry over the fact that that the proposal would take control of the honor system out of the hands of students. Unfortunately, the following uproar missed a serious issue that the proposal tried to address -- the standardization of the oft-misused seriousness clause, with the ultimate goal of making trials more fair and consistent for everyone involved.

However, Representative White approached the issue backward. The main problem with the seriousness clause is not that student juries don't know how to properly implement it (although right now that certainly is a concern); it's that the seriousness clause is essentially a half-hearted attempt to make the flawed single sanction more sensitive to individual cases. The seriousness clause is designed to distinguish the types of lying, cheating, and stealing that are and aren't serious enough to merit expulsion. So in a sense, the commitee has already essentially admitted that there are very real differences in the offenses they deal with. The question remains, then: why won't they consider a multi-sanction system of dealing with them?

Theoretically, the reason the committee offers is that they wish to maintain a community of trust, which would be impossible if there were members of that community who had lied, cheated or stolen, but not been expelled. However, since that already happens (either because offenses are not deemed serious enough, or because students refuse to report offenses for fear others will be expelled), it is clear that the community of trust doesn't truly exist even under the current system. Supporters of the single sanction also claim that the policy deters students from committing honor offenses. I find it hard to believe that the only reason students choose not to cheat is because they know they'll be expelled, given the widely publicized fact that persons brought to trial are usually not convicted.

No, I think the main reason students have voted to uphold the single sanction in the past is a combination of ignorance and a general unwillingness to undertake the restructuring of the current system. True, there are a number of unresolved questions surrounding the execution of a multiple sanction system. But considering the recent secession attempt based primarily on those grounds, it seems silly to insist on a system that offers the same penalty for getting help on an assignment you didn't know was pledged as for, say, embezzling money from Student Council funds. Unless, as a university, we want to rid ourselves of everyone who is less than perfect, maybe we should give the multi-sanction system some thought.

Kate Zimmerman

Viewpoint consists of the majority opinion of the managing board of The Declaration and is written by the executive editor on a weekly basis.