The aging Honor System

By: Richard Prego

Posted: 5/1/09

I am beginning to lose faith in the Honor System. I take the Honor System very seriously, as all Stevens students should, but I have recently noticed more and more of my peers who do not. Over the past several weeks, I have witnessed so many Honor violations in my classes. Taking pictures of the lab TA's answer sheet and using those answers as their own, whispering answers to one another and looking at notes on cell phones during exams and using PDF files with homework problem solutions are all obvious Honor violations I have seen in the past few weeks. Why don't I report these individuals to the Honor Board, you ask? The answer is, because I don't know who these people are. I see it happening, but how am I supposed to go to the Honor Board and say, "The kid sitting in front of me during the exam was texting answers to his friend?" If there were a seating chart for the exam room, this would not be a problem at all; but for an exam without a seating chart, there's no way to report this sort of violation.
Aside from the issue of not knowing someone's name, there are new problems that have only popped up in recent years. One hundred years ago when the Honor System was first established, nobody had cell phones, laptops, instant messaging, e-mail, or the Internet. The Honor System of one hundred years ago or even twenty-five years ago never saw this problem. But now that we have the capability to share information with one another almost instantly, cheating and plagiarism are easier than ever before. The simplest solution to the problem of cell phones during exams is a greater degree of proctoring while taking the exam. This solution would work perfectly in any university without an honor code, but at Stevens, it just isn't possible. The point of the Honor System is to trust students, on their honor, to do the right thing, and to do their own work. Under our system, intense proctoring just isn't an option.
My major problem here isn't necessarily with the Honor System itself. The problem is in the students that the Honor System relies on. All of the violations that I listed above involve one common theme - the blatant abuse of the Honor System. The Honor System cannot, and will not, function without the cooperation of the students who supposedly abide by it. The Honor System gives us, as students, privileges that students at other universities do not have. For example, we are allowed to leave the room during an exam to use the rest room, get a snack or even just take a break for some fresh air. In return, we are expected to act with honesty and integrity by not discussing the exam or finding answers to questions. The faculty, and most of all our fellow classmates, trust us all to be honest in our work. We write on every assignment and exam "I pledge my honor that I have abided by the Stevens Honor System." By sharing or stealing answers, we are abusing the privileges that the Honor System gives us. We are also going back on our word by not abiding by the Honor System.
Last, I would like to remark about how those who abuse the honor system are being unfair to their classmates. For example, the lab that I mentioned was not a simple lab. It involved interpreting observations and explaining our findings. About three-quarters of the students had left the lab after only half an hour. They did the experiment, and then left after filling in their answer sheets with the answers from the TA's answer key. There were about five of us left in the lab for at least another half an hour, trying to figure out what these findings meant. Is it fair that we were left there, doing the work we were supposed to be doing, when the rest of the class had left because they already had the answers? The answer is an obvious no. However, the way I can deal with it is I learned something from doing the lab that they didn't. I stayed to figure out the answers, and learned the material for myself.
The bottom line here is that the Honor System has its flaws, some flaws that may not be easy to solve. If the Honor System is to survive and we are to continue enjoying the privileges we have today, every single Stevens student must start to take the Honor System seriously.