Creation of an honor code at WPI

by Ed Hallissey - SGA Representative

In B term of last year, there was an overnight Student Government Association retreat where Senators learned all about budgeting processes, parliamentary procedure, the use of proper channels, and so forth. I found all of that, like most of you probably would, to be extremely boring (even though it's necessary to know all that stuff). What was exciting and uplifting was when I found myself at a table with several other spirited members trying to figure out all the things we could do in the next couple of years to really improve the undergraduate experience here. Moving from the late hours of the night into the early hours of the morning, one of the topics we discussed (with much fervor, I might add) was the adoption of an Honor Code for our campus community. You might wonder exactly what all this talk about Academic Honesty is going to amount to. There are a multitude of different reasons for the present interest in Academic Honesty, of which I will discuss none - you will hear all about it in the weeks to come. What I want everyone to understand is the original ideology of the students at that retreat, who are now lucky enough to be involved with the newly formed Academic Honesty Committee.

Perhaps the most important concept was that an Honor Code would ideally come from the students themselves, not handed down from the administration like a new set of rules. We were envisioning a Code that would be less about penalties and enforcing laws and more about individual students holding themselves and others to a higher standard. I was telling a friend about this and about the work that the Committee was getting into, and he replied, "What do they think this place is? West Point?"

Of course not, this is WPI, a much different type of institution, and so we will have a much different type of Honor Code. Just because we're talking about Academic Honesty does not mean that we're talking about expulsion from school. What we are talking about is the uniqueness of this institution, and how that affects our academic lives. The intense amount of group and project work that we all do may sometimes blur the lines between what is academic consultation and what is cheating. Rather than trying to clarify or redefine the distinction, we would like to see each student hold himself or herself responsible for acting honestly in each distinct academic instance. This school requires a different type of student, and we would like to see each student take pride in that fact. The pride in ourselves and our institution is the foundation of what any Code here should really be about.

The meet this end, we need everybody working together - students with faculty with administration. A Code that is about rules and penalties would be drafted by some appointed board. A Code that is about holding yourself and your fellow classmates to a high standard, having pride in the fact that we all are part of something very special, and connecting the whole community in this bond of mutual trust and responsibility must necessarily come from the entire community and capture the heart of what we are all about here. So don't concentrate too much on people getting kicked out of school, but please do be ready to examine your own philosophies and integrate everything that you hold to be true and just about Academic Integrity into a philosophy under which we are all proud to be brothers and sisters.