Academic integrity and honor codes: student perspectives and effectiveness

Honor Codes

In academic institutions throughout the world, there are systems of codes which dictate how administration expects the student bodies to behave. These codes can be different based upon the specific rules of the institution in question. Some have clothing rules, others alcohol or narcotic rules, but there are certain dictums which are more universal. Many schools have rules which dictate that students must behave in ways which the institution considers to be honorable. These honor codes can include different components, but it is primarily a pledge against cheating in any sense of the word. Students in many institutions must sign honor pledges wherein they promise that they will not cheat on their assignments or their examinations. Also, if they are witness to any dishonesty on the part of their classmates, then they are responsible for revealing that duplicity to members of the staff or administration. The students pledge to the school that any assignments that they turn in will be their own work and that their performances on examinations will be based upon their own academic determination, rather than cheating. In return, the university or college pledges to believe that the student's work is his or her own (McCabe (585). There is an agreement then in place between one student and their school, until students are ordered to watch over their colleagues. This becomes a question not only of ensuring the keeping of one's own pledge, but then also being responsible for the honesty or lack thereof of others. Although honor codes are essentially fair because they establish a policy between student and institution that the former will be an honest and honorable student, requiring students to also be the police of their classmates are not an acceptable component of the honor codes.

The idea of the honor code is an old one but modern challenges to the honor code are partially because of the influx of new technology. With the advent of the Internet, students are able to literally type in a few key words into a search engine and find all the material which would be necessary in order to complete an assignment. Indeed, it is no trouble to highlight a large quantity of text, copy and paste those words into a document, and then claim those ideas as their own. In Elements of Argument, authors Annette Rottenberg and Donna Winchell have collected a large amount of articles from those in the academic field in which they express their views of the potential for cheating in the modern world. There are companies even who a student can pay in order for a writer to do the work for them, instead of having to invest the time or energy themselves in the academic process.

With so many students using the Internet to shortcut their assignments, the institutions have had to crack down on plagiarism, whether intentional or not, so that their students actually do the work that they are assigned. Websites such as turnitin.com provide a service wherein a teacher or professor can input a paper from their students and the computer program will scan it and examine it closely for any similarities between this assignment and all others that are in the computer's database (Rawe 577). Students who protest such investigation into the honesty of their paper say that by checking up on students, the professors and, by extension, the school itself is violating the institutional responsibility of the honor codes. If students are not trusted enough that the faculty needs to go to such extreme measures, and given the propensity of Internet cheating it is not surprising that they feel the need to do this, than any presentment of following the honor codes should be abandoned. It is hypocritical to impose and honor code and then to test the honesty of the students through these computer programs, which according to some sources are not themselves honorable (Walsh 566). Specifically, there is pending legislation over turnitin.com because they are not paying or in any other way accommodating those whose papers they are using as basis for comparison of text. The company has been accused of taking students' intellectual property in order to further their business, but is not making restitution for doing so.

The debate over honor codes becomes more complicated when students are not only held responsible for their own work and their own honesty, but also become responsible for the academic integrity of their classmates. There are certain institutions which declare that if a student becomes aware that a classmate is conducting acts of academic dishonesty, then they are responsible for making those in authority at the institution aware of this duplicity. Students are then put in the position of having to be a type of academic police force. Not only are they required to admit if they themselves are being dishonest but are required to inform on anyone who is being dishonest. There are ramifications for people who suspect that others are being dishonest but do not report that to higher ups. Failing to do this can make a person as culpable in the academic dishonesty as the person who is actually doing the cheating. This can lead to guilt by association as someone may be implicated in plagiarism or other form of cheating because they happen to have a close relationship with someone who is not honest.