Honor Committee, students react to passage of referendum

A USG referendum requiring the Honor Committee to change its standard penalty for students who write beyond the time limit during exams and to publish statistics about the number of students who appear before the Committee passed with 96 percent of those who participated in last week’s election voting in favor of the referendum.

The referendum will change the penalty for writing over time during an exam to probation and may invoke a one-year suspension depending on the severity of the infraction. The committee will also release statistics of the number of cases heard and punishments instated every year. These statistics will be published in an aggregate giving total statistics for the past five years to protect the confidentiality of students’ cases.

“I’m not really surprised with the outcome of the referendum based on the meetings, lunches, phone calls I’ve taken,” Honor Committee chair Antonia Hyman ’13 said. “I’m glad that the student body voted for it. The Committee tries to represent and reflect the student body.”

Hyman said the change would provide more flexibility for the committee and a better sense of what the student body wants. She added that the Committee has been engaged with students for over a year regarding this change and “wanted to get it moving along.”

She explained that this issue didn’t just “pop up out of nowhere” and that it has been on the Committee’s radar for a while.

“The committee listens to what the student body thinks and wants,” Hyman said. “We even invited students to talk to us.”

Kiana Amirahmadi ’16 said she views the Honor Code change as “comforting and more reasonable.”

Honor Committee clerk Luchi Mmegwa ’14 said he was happy to hear about the outcome of the vote. He said he was pleased to see something that both the Honor Committee and the student body agree upon.

“At the end of the day, we’re students too,” Mmegwa said. “We are trying to show how open the committee is to the student body.”