Faculty Weigh In on Potential Honor Code

The week after the Committee on Academic Integrity unveiled its proposal for a student honor code, several members of the faculty remained divided on whether the new code would foster a culture of greater academic integrity among the undergraduate body.

As proposed, the five-part honor code would create a judicial board populated by students and faculty to hear academic dishonesty cases. It would also require students to write a “declaration of integrity” statement on assignments and exams.

The proposal does not require students to report other students for violating the honor code, a point that drew criticism from some faculty.

“An honor code presupposes that everyone’s honor is affronted with one person’s violation,” government professor Harvey C. Mansfield ’53 wrote in an email to The Crimson. “It won’t work unless everyone is expected to turn in a violator.”

Robert H. Bates, a professor of government and of African and African American Studies, questioned the fact that despite the institution of such an honor code, faculty would still proctor exams under the proposal.

“I think it doesn’t add up,” Bates said. “Either we are behaving honorably or cheating, and if we’re behaving honorably, why do we need faculty there? If we’re cheating and we need faculty there, then we don’t really have an honor code that’s working.”

Bates, however, said including students in the board that hears academic dishonesty cases is “definitely worth a try” because the disciplinary process might benefit from student voice.

Government professor Stephen D. Ansolabehere agreed that having students on the board would “probably be better for everybody involved.”

“My experience is that a lot of committees at the University level have student involvement, and that student involvement is really instructive and very constructive because it gives us a perspective of how the students see things,” Ansolabehere said.

But according to Mansfield, having students on the judicial board would actually allow administrators to share “responsibility for the dirty work of punishment.”

“Administrators like the idea because it shifts the burden onto others,” Mansfield wrote.

Mansfield also questioned whether an honor code is fully compatible with a campus culture that he says emphasizes “free choice.”

“Do Harvard students really know what their honor is?” Mansfield wrote. “With free choice a student is not responsible for other [people’s] choices. With honor, he or she is responsible.”

The proposal, Mansfield pointed out, mentions building a “culture of trust,” but not a culture of honor. With an “atmosphere of free choice,” Mansfield questioned how anyone could trust others’ choices.

Bates, too, differentiated between a culture of trust and a culture of honor that should be built.

“[It should be] a culture of honor,” Bates said, defining such a culture as “[placing] integrity above fear or above anxiety about getting into med school or law school, or about all those other things that lead people to make choices that lack integrity.”

Students have cautioned that the success of an honor code at Harvard would require a shift in campus culture regarding academic integrity, a sentiment Bates echoed.

Bates noted that though the initial drafting was a step in the right direction, there would need to be a shift in students’ attitudes for the honor code to succeed.

“There’s the next step, which is getting a lot of very dynamic and ambitious people with very high expectations for themselves, where grades mean so much about their future and where academics is something that doesn’t really lie at the core, I think, of undergraduate life...all that has to be reshaped,” Bates said.

—Staff writer Madeline R. Conway can be reached at mconway@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @MadelineRConway.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: April 12, 2013

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Robert H. Bates is a professor of African American Studies. In fact, he is a professor of African and African American Studies.