David McRaney  |  Journalist

USM works on first honor code

Universities like Stanford, Princeton and Vanderbilt each have a set of personal guidelines and ideals by which students are expected to adhere to promote honorable behavior. USM has always had codes of conduct, said Dean of Students Eddie Holloway, but never an official honor code.

The new honor code was first imagined during the Horace Fleming presidential administration, said Holloway.

"Years ago, when Dr. Fleming introduced his strategic plan, I suggested that the university needed an honor code," Holloway said. "It has taken until this past summer to get it by all the entities required to make it real."

Holloway said there is a movement across the country in educational settings to develop a sense of civility, and the honor code basically asks and requires students to adopt a policy of courteousness and integrity.

"We will model our behavior on campus to prepare the students for life and work," he added.

Holloway said the final touches are being made to the official honor code, and once everyone involved can agree on the language, it will be revealed next semester.

Currently, the university uses a set of regulations concerning grade point average, cheating and plagiarism in place of an official honor code, according the official student handbook.

In a section titled "Academic Honesty," the handbook states a student who is discovered cheating by a faculty member may immediately be given an F on the coursework involved should the professor choose to take action. The section goes on to say the student may be expelled on the grounds that they violated the university's code of conduct.

Lin Pope, a USM geology instructor, said she was on one of the committees in the College of Science and Technology that helped establish how the honor code would work.

Students who cheat often are reprimanded within individual colleges, and the information never reaches other professors, she said.

"In the past, not much had been done to students who cheat," said Pope. "They might receive a zero on the test, but nothing would go into their permanent record. It is my understanding that this new honor code will include such measures."

Pope said she does what most instructors do to discourage cheating: She prints multiple versions of her exams and watches her class carefully. She believes that an honor code might not prevent cheating, but if it is written well, it may give instructors more weapons to combat the practice.

Pope said another problem is students cheat in other ways that are harder to detect, such as writing papers for other students and completing assignments for one another. She said she has only had to deal with six cheaters during an exam since she began teaching at USM in 1989.

"A colleague told me the other day that he caught a student during the test with all their notes printed in tiny letters and taped to the back of a water," laughed Pope. "If you're going to go to all that trouble, why don't you not just study?"

Originally published in The Student Printz on November 22, 2005