Intent and negligence

The only adequate defense for a student accused of an Honor Code violation is that his or her actions did not, in fact, constitute a violation. The constitution is much less explicit about what it actually means for the Honor Code to be violated. The Honor Committee makes several large assumptions about the meaning of certain phrases in its constitution. It assumes that the Honor Code is violated when, and only when, students have gained an unfair advantage on their work or have given an unfair advantage to someone else — or attempted to do either. If a student writes her exam in pencil when the instructions were to write in pen, the Honor Committee will probably conclude that no unfair advantage was gained and acquit the student. If a student uses a crib sheet when there were instructions not to, the constitution says that he or she is guilty of a violation.

So the Honor Committee first decides whether the accused physically attempted to give or gain an unfair advantage. If the answer is yes, then the student is guilty of a violation. The next question the committee asks is whether there is compelling evidence that the attempt to gain an unfair advantage was intentional. It is generally quite hard to prove intent to cheat; in the majority of cases, the accused insists that the violation was unintentional and the committee believes him or her. If students insist that they didn’t know that they weren’t supposed to use a crib sheet, if they made no attempt to hide their sheets and if there were no explicit instructions not to use them, then the Honor Committee is likely to believe them. If they say that they didn’t know that it was a violation to copy from another student’s exam, the committee will likely not believe them.

If the committee fails to conclude that the violation was intentional, the final question to ask is whether the student’s violation was due to some reasonable misunderstanding or legitimate miscommunication, as opposed to carelessness and negligence by the accused in learning or interpreting exam policy. The constitution says that such reasonable misunderstandings, i.e., such a lack of negligence on the part of the student, can be grounds for a lighter sentence such as academic probation. It does not say that these misunderstandings can be grounds for outright acquittal. Because violations are, by definition, punished, the constitution would demand that a student be punished even if he or she lacked malicious intent and wasn’t negligent.

Such an outcome would be plainly unfair, so in practice, the Honor Committee ignores this quirk of its constitution and acquits students who gain an unfair advantage without intent or negligence. But future committees could choose to deviate from this tradition and follow their constitution to the letter, accepting any unjust decisions that result.

The best way to prevent this is to redefine violations of the Honor Code. A violation would cease to mean just “an attempt to gain or give an unfair advantage.” It would mean that and something extra.

The “something extra” that my referendum proposes is not just “intent to cheat,” as the Editorial Board implied. That change would obligate the Honor Committee to acquit students for even the most irresponsible failures to learn the policy for an exam — failures that usually create an unfair advantage. My referendum would require that the accused either intends to cheat or that he or she is negligent in learning and interpreting his or her exam policy.

After redefining violations in this way, the deliberative process of the Honor Committee would look like this: Did the accused create or attempt to create an unfair advantage? If no, then he or she is innocent. If yes, then he or she might be guilty. Did the accused create or attempt to create an unfair advantage intentionally? If yes, then he or she is guilty of a violation. If no, then he or she might be guilty. Was there a reasonable misunderstanding behind the accused’s action, or was she acting irresponsibly? If the accused was irresponsible, then she is guilty of a violation. If not, then she is innocent.

A student who didn’t intend to cheat and didn’t act irresponsibly wouldn’t be punished by any fair honor code. The passage of my referendum would ensure that no such student can be. As a result, the Honor Committee would be constitutionally bound to continue its just tradition of acquitting such students, rather than constitutionally discouraged from doing so. Such a change would prevent unjust decisions from being made in the future. It would also spare those accused students who lack intent and negligence the ordeal of not knowing how the committee will decide the outcome of their cases.