Honesty is brilliance, a virtue with many facets. Academic dishonesty in any form whatever, is an infraction of the standards of acceptable behavior, which dulls the brilliance and should not be tolerated. There should be no need for a "Policy on Academic Honesty." Dishonesty should not be tolerated. This statement sounds sufficient but unfortunately it is necessary to have a policy in order to be sure everyone understands what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. It is desirable to have rules to guide behavior; however it is difficult if not impossible to have a rule to cover every eventuality. How such a policy is implemented is a matter of the community culture and is an issue which requires careful thought and defined procedures. It is the responsibility of the faculty to insure that everyone adheres to the standard of acceptable behavior, which is understood by all. In our litigious society, even when proceedings go no further than the campus, it is difficult, to say the least, to initiate and carry through a charge of academic dishonesty, against any member of the community, regardless of how strongly the evidence supports the charge. It is far easier to walk away from the issue and proclaim "this person who chooses to be academically dishonest is only cheating himself and will eventually pay the price." While this statement is true, this attitude is an obvious abrogation of faculty responsibility. Faculty have the responsibility to not only prosecute cheaters but also to be sure they do not create situations which encourage infractions of acceptable behavior by making academic dishonesty profitable, and impossible to uncover. Faculty must be vigilant in this matter. An occasional experiment might be enlightening. Those of us who proclaim the status of honesty at WPI should do some experimenting and look carefully at their own operation. Has cooperative learning been mistaken for "it's permissible to turn in someone else's work as your own." Do baseball caps make it acceptable to have roaming eyes during examinations? Those who choose to be dishonest, because this behavior leads to some measure of success with grades, should be cautious because it may be difficult to give up this behavior (advantage?) after WPI.
Students come to WPI for many reasons dealing with learning, some with the world of commerce, and some dealing with parental aspirations for their offspring. No one should fault students or their parents for being concerned with their economic progress after they leave WPI. But that should not be the primary concern at least while at WPI. The primary objective should be to learn. To learn everything. Students should come to WPI to study under the guidance of the faculty. And the primary consideration should be how well a student learns and not what grade is placed on the transcript. It was not too long ago that there was no GPA at WPI. The Plan was instituted in part to de-emphasize grades and competition, and emphasize learning. What has this to do with honesty? The shift of student goals, from learning to getting a good grade, has created a situation in which makes it possible to achieve the goal of a good grade, by means other than learning. If the student goal was to learn as much as possible, and if students were willing to work as hard as they possibly could to achieve that goal, there would be no academic dishonesty because there would be nothing to be gained by being dishonest. It is perhaps idealistic, though hopefully not ridiculous, to think that students come to WPI to study under the guidance of the faculty, to be all that they can be. There is nothing in this goal that says anything about grades. Although there is little doubt that grades track learning, there is a great deal of doubt about whether learning tracks grades, especially when dishonesty enters the picture.
Every time a student leaves WPI with a diploma, that student should be all that he can be. And every student who leaves WPI not having achieved that goal, not only diminishes himself but diminishes every other student and alumnus of WPI. Even missing class for any but the most serious reason, a common occurrence on this campus, is itself dishonest to the goal of maximum achievement and simultaneously disloyal to the tuition payer. Any student who acquiesces to another student's dishonesty, no matter how, also contributes to the diminution of WPI. We often hear concerns about maintaining academic standards and thereby the good reputation of WPI. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that academic dishonesty, in any form, diminishes WPI's standards and reputation. In that sense it diminishes us all. It must not be tolerated in others, but most of all we should not tolerate it in ourselves.