Response: The fault is not in our Code

Whereas Beni Snow argues that the obligation to report cheating should be struck from the Honor Code, I firmly believe that it should stay. Reporting cheaters is the right thing to do, and there is precedent for its obligation.

Snow attempts to establish a moral conflict between violating the Honor Code and violating a friend’s trust. There is no such conflict to speak of. Cheating is clearly an immoral act — a way of outscoring honest, harder-working peers. If cheating is not punished, honest workers will be harmed while cheaters will be rewarded.

Allowing cheaters to go unpunished, then, is the wrong course of action. A person who observes cheating but does not report it allows the cheater to profit and many honest workers to be robbed of their efforts. I challenge Snow or anyone else to defend the ludicrous notion that it is permissible for others to be harmed, so long as one’s own friend does the harming. There is instead a moral obligation to report wrongdoing. To except one’s friends from this rule is a cronyism that leaves society worse off.

The University has every right to protect its students, and the obligation in the Honor Code to report cheaters is an important part of this protection. Furthermore, the University has an interest in preventing academic dishonesty because it sabotages the integrity and value of a Princeton University degree. Institutions commonly require their affiliates to report acts of sabotage, so the obligation to report cheating has substantial precedent.

Nevertheless, Snow questions the precedent of the obligation to report, saying that “almost no justice systems require everyone to report offenses.” On the contrary, all fifty states have mandatory reporting laws, which require certain persons to report some suspected crimes. Most of these laws are narrow in scope, but others cast a wide net. In Texas, for example, it is a misdemeanor offense for anyone to fail to report a felony resulting in serious bodily injury. In Ohio, failure to report any felony is a misdemeanor.

Precedent and moral obligation aside, the second part of the Honor Code is useful for preserving friendships. Snow asserts that reporting a cheating friend is a violation of his or her trust. If so, the cheater will be angry at the whistleblower. In that case the whistleblower is better off pointing out that his hands were tied. It is preferable to report a friend out of obligation, than to report a friend out of choice and receive social punishment for that choice. Simply put, no one should suffer the loss of a friendship for doing the right thing. The reporting requirement makes such losses less likely by clearly spelling out that the whistleblower did not choose his own path, but was bound by a duty to which he had already committed himself. It therefore protects not only those directly harmed by cheating, but also those righteous individuals who would fulfill their moral obligations rather than stoop to cronyism.

On the other hand, the reporting requirement punishes two groups of people: cheaters and those who would allow cheating. But I have already demonstrated that both groups are acting immorally, so punishment is the just course. In the name of integrity, morality and justice, the University should keep both parts of the Honor Code. Those students who fall into either of the groups mentioned above will find that the fault, dear Beni, is not in our Code, but in themselves that they are punished.

Newby Parton is a sophomore from McMinnville, Tenn. He can be reached at newby@princeton.edu.