Faculty Ratifies Modified Version of New Honor Code Language

Author: Claire Bourne

The Middlebury College Faculty approved new Honor Code language Monday after much debate over whether the word "morally" should be used to define students' obligation to report instances of academic dishonesty. While the ratified language retains the "moral obligation" clause originally removed by Community Council, it confirms the Council's decisions to consolidate definitions of academic misconduct and student and faculty responsibilities into one section and to merge the College's two disciplinary boards into one Academic Judicial Board that would hear all cases of alleged academic dishonesty. The changes will be incorporated into the 2002-2003 Handbook.

Acting President Ronald Liebowitz defined the new language as a "positive step." Merging the College's two disciplinary boards into one board on which students hold the majority, he said, "gives the ownership of the issue" to the student body. The new system, he added, is much "neater" than the one it will replace.

John Emerson, Charles A. Dana professor of mathematics, called the modifications "a dramatic improvement" over the original language.

Sixty-one percent of the 1,825 students who voted in the highly publicized Nov. 19, 2001, referendum endorsed a version of the final language.

The changes were presented to the faculty at its December meeting, during which discussion over Community Council's deletion of the word "morally" reached a deadlock.

After hearing both sides of the issue from concerned faculty members at a January Community Council meeting, the Council voted to reinsert the word into the working document.

"I feel that this is an example of how Community Council and the faculty have worked together to form a consensus that satisfies both students and faculty," said Erica Rosenthal '02, student co-chair of Community Council. "Community Council is appreciative of the feedback we received from the faculty in December and throughout Winter Term, and I think as a result of [this] dialogue we have developed strong Handbook language," she continued.

As Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science Murray Dry pointed out, "morally" was originally inserted into Honor Code language 25 years ago "to make it clear that while students have an obligation to report on the cheating of others that they observe, they will not be subject to punishment should they fail to fulfill this obligation."

Assistant Professor of Psychology Augustus Jordan said that Community Council members wanted "to clarify" that the revisions to the Honor Code upheld this principle.

"In this respect," Dry pointed out, "our Honor Code is not as severe as the honor codes at our nation's [military] service academies."

In a memorandum to Community Council written after the December faculty meeting, Ted Sasson, associate professor of sociology and anthropology, asked whether the College wanted "to implement an 'honor code' or a regime of 'horizontal surveillance.'" If students were "obligated" to inform College authorities of incidents of academic dishonesty, Sasson continued, "the emphasis [would] shift from self-regulation to surveillance, detection and punishment."

In addition, the exclusion of the term "morally" would depict those who failed to report academic offenses as "co-conspirators," thereby obscuring "the clear dividing line between conduct that is 'honorable' and conduct that is 'dishonorable,'" he added.

At Monday's meeting, John Hamilton Fulton Professor of American Literature and Civilization Stephen Donadio argued in favor of deleting "morally" from the language, saying that "it would be a violation of the idea of community" if someone who witnessed an instance of academic dishonesty did not report it. He said in an interview with The Middlebury Campus that students "owed it to one another" to inform professors of such incidents.

The term "obligation," appearing without a qualifier, "does not leave the implication" that reporting or not reporting an instance of academic dishonesty "is a matter of personal taste," Donadio continued. "It suggests that [the Code] is not taken seriously."

Such disagreements, said Jordan, are "to be expected in a diverse community." One of the College's tasks following the addition of the new Honor Code language to the Handbook will be "to enter into community wide discussions of what it means to be 'morally obligated' to do something," he continued.