One might say that a proctor is there to watch you and prevent you from cheating while a student is there to take his or her own exam. Though one might hope this is true, in reality student-proctors have an even greater incentive to catch their classmates than standard proctors do since grading is on a curve, and if a particular student fails, his classmates get a better grade. In reality, almost every test we take at Princeton is overly proctored, since there is almost always more than one student-proctor in the room. The current Honor Code allows for "unproctored" exams only because it requires all students to be proctors, not because it trusts us as students.
One might ask: Who cares if Princeton trusts its students? They don't cheat, and that's what matters. The Honor Code's sole purpose is to prevent cheating, and it does just that. The Code was created a hundred years ago in response to rampant cheating: Today cheating is almost nonexistent, thanks to the Code.
To this I say: The Honor Code reduces cheating, but the reporting requirement of Article V, Section 6 doesn't. Even after signing a contract to report violations, students aren't likely to turn in their classmates. Professor emeritus John Fleming GS '63, an advisor to the Honor Committee, said: "If we can believe anonymous surveys, a very large number of Princeton students, all of whom have signed a solemn document promising to support the honor system, would not in fact turn in a friend they found cheating."
There is a lot of evidence to support Fleming's claim. A study conducted in 2001, sampling 14 universities that had honor codes and 17 that did not, concluded that though the reporting requirement troubled students, it had no significant impact on their final decision to turn someone in. The study found that, of the students who had observed cheating, "almost half ... said they were likely to report an incident of cheating, yet less than one in twelve actually has."
The reporting requirement, as it is defined today, likely increases Honor Code violations because so many students don't follow it, despite having promised on their honor to do so. This cheapens their integrity and the integrity of the Honor Code as a whole.
Some might say, "Maybe knowing that people around you have all pledged their honor to report you if you cheat prevents you from cheating. The Code works, whether or not students actually report on each other."
But is it fair to require students to sign their honor to a document they are unlikely to abide by? This is debatable. But by enforcing a requirement that few students in fact will meet - even though they pledged their honor to do so - the Honor Code undermines rather than promotes "honor" and integrity. This is not a small price to pay for our so-called Academic Integrity.
If Princeton really trusted its students, it would trust them to report violations, not force them to. We might think of adopting Trinity College's version of the reporting requirement, which states that "each student is strongly urged to report suspected cases of academic dishonesty." By trusting students to do what is right when it is right to do so, a redefined reporting code will build a stronger trust than is in place today.
Dov Kaufmann is a comparative literature major from Ra'anana, Israel. He can be reached at dbkaufma@princeton.edu.
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