The committee was charged with the following:
1. To examine the existing Academic Honesty Policy of WPI and to recommend any changes that will promote a higher level of involvement among faculty and students in enforcing the policy, or alternatively, to recommend an entirely new policy or approach.
2. To recommend specific strategies for educating faculty and students about academic honesty and dishonesty.
The creation of the committee occurred in the context of an undergraduate survey conducted by the Dean of Student Life in 1993 (followed up in the spring of 1996) that suggested, at the least, some ambiguity in the minds of undergraduates as to what actually constituted a violation of academic honesty. For example, if the professor allowed collaborative work on homework assignments was it wrong to copy the answers of a classmate? At the same time, the Dean of Student Life had asked the appropriate faculty committees to investigate pos sible changes in the procedure by which academic violations were reported to the Campus Hearing Board and in the case of disciplinary action, kept on record in the Student Life Office for five years. It is believed that the current policy discourages faculty in many cases from taking official action, either because of the difficulties of bringing a case before the Hearing Board or the perception that the five-year penalty is too severe. Yet another contextual factor leading to the creation of the committee were the infamous reports of cheating scandals that rocked prestigious universities from the Naval Academy to MIT throughout the 1990s, and which suggested a prevailing "culture of dishonesty," to use the words of national authority Donald L. McCabe.
However, not all of the factors leading to the creation of the Ad Hoc Committee have been negative. The initiative of the Student Government Association to investigate the possibility of establishing an honor code at WPI reflects, I believe, a mounting tide of college students who desire to reassert their responsibility over the learning process. At a recent conference of the Center for Academic Integrity, held at Duke University during term break, I heard dozens of undergraduates argue that the creation of an academic honor system was a defining moment in new conceptions of pedagogy. For these students, embracing an honor code was simply the other side of creating a classroom atmosphere in which the teacher would be personally concerned about the education of an individual student. An honor code for them was a counterpunch to the cynicism and alienation of too many classrooms across the nation. These students see academic honor codes as part of a fabric of integrity stretching from classroom to dormitory, and thus they sometimes intertwine such codes with "campus creeds" that instill decent behavior among all members of the university community. In the traditional terms of political philosophy, this is the distinction between a gemeinschaft, a community characterized by strong reciprocal bonds of trust and respect, and a gesellschaft, a society characterized by mechanistic, impersonal social relationships. It is, of course, the former that has traditionally defined student-faculty relationships under the WPI Plan.
It is a time, it seems to me, when WPI should give serious thought as to the nature of the ethical relationship between faculty and student. On the one hand, economic pressures on the teaching role of universities, from which we have not been exempt, has led some to question if the student receives a fair deal for his or her tuition dollar. On the other hand, changes in technology and a new appreciation of the value of collaborative work, have made traditional definitions of cheating either more ambiguous or more difficult to enforce. Teachers in all fields, including engineering, have been reconceptualizing pedagogical methods and redefining pedagogical goals, along with, it bears stating, an explicit concern with ethical values. At the beginning of a new process of strategic planning, WPI would do well to consider what sort of moral community we desire to create.
At the initial stages of our investigations, the only thing that seems very clear to the Ad Hoc Committee is that academic honesty codes or systems depend heavily upon the commitment of the entire university community-student, faculty, administration and staff-to that code or system. Such a commitment entails a meeting of minds and ultimately a consensus as to what will constitute the rules of behavior for the community. We have found that arriving at these rules involves extraordinary complexities, and we will certainly need your opinion-student, faculty, administration and staff-to reach recommendations we can take back to student and faculty governance. For example:
If WPI had an honor code, should there be a "nontoleration clause," a "rat rule," that obligates students to report incidents of cheating they witness? Under such a code, should there be a "single sanction"-expulsion-or is a "modfied code" preferable, with different levels of penalties? Under such a code, are professors honor bound to trust students; are they prohibited from proctoring exams? Are professors partly responsible for academic dishonesty if they do not remove temptations from students, such as repeatedly using the same exam while asking students not to consult it? Or by failing to explain explicitly their rules for academic honesty? Is the cause of academic honesty better served by hiring more proctors to monitor exams or by professors being open and trusting with their students and letting them participate in the grading process?
Such questions are not easily answered, but in coming months the Ad Hoc Committee will be holding a series of lectures, discussions, films, and meetings that will give WPI an occasion to think and talk about them. And as is announced elsewhere in this edition of Newspeak, the committee and the Office of the Provost are sponsoring an essay contest in which we hope students, faculty, and staff will attempt to answer questions such as those posed above. We hope you will participate in all these activities. We hope that faculty will solicit the opinions of their students in class concerning matters of academic honesty, and we hope students will raise such questions with their teachers and advisors and, of course, among their peers. Please do not hesitate to send the Ad Hoc Committee (addison@wpi or jstander@wpi) your ideas concerning these important matters.