When Chancellor Holden Thorp issued a call for reform of the honor system last summer, the system’s student leaders vowed to retain the institution’s most tradition-bound characteristic — its entirely student-led structure. But with last week’s approval of a new sexual assault policy — one that removes cases from the jurisdiction of the honor system effective Aug. 1 — the institution’s autonomy was called into question.

As someone who’s spent the past four years working on (and eventually leading) the student attorney general’s staff, Jon McCay is in a unique position to talk about the University’s recent changes to its sexual assault policy.

For the past year, students and administrators have been lobbying to change the way cases of sexual assault are handled on campus, calling it unfair, taxing and ineffective.

Officials have proposed requiring all incoming freshmen and transfer students to complete a teaching module about plagiarism in an effort to introduce students to the Honor Code.

When dealing with reports of sexual assault from students, the University faces a complex problem. “We want to have a system that is ultimately sufficiently simple enough that it is accessible,” said Dean of Students Jonathan Sauls.

In the future, UNC students who witness violations of the Honor Code might be bound to report them, or face prosecution.

A module educating students about integrity and the honor system might be mandatory for incoming students as early as the fall of 2013.

UNC’s Faculty Council is poised to vote on a graduate-level honor system reform — one that is long overdue, proponents say.

As the University debates changes to its student-run honor system, outgoing Student Attorney General Jon McCay said he is worried.

Reform of the University’s honor system is still in its early stages, but administrators and student leaders say the scope of the changes will be broad. The honor system task force, which was created in the fall to reform the system, will divide discussion into three categories: the system’s history, attitudes about it and peer systems.

As student leaders of the University’s Honor Court educate students this week about role of the honor system, opinion editor Maggie Zellner sat down with Michelle Healy, chair of the Undergraduate Honor Court, to discuss how they make decisions and determine sanctions.

The legitimacy of the University’s student-run honor system has been in the campus spotlight for months, highlighting the perception that it is isolated from faculty and the student body.

While reform to the honor system is already underway, faculty members are realizing there is still a long way to go.

The honor system will be promised $16,500 in funding each year if a new bill moving through Student Congress is approved next week.

Women make up almost 60 percent of the UNC student body, but men are charged in almost 70 percent of Honor Court hearings, according to data released by the student attorney general’s staff.

A new report has found sizable disparities between the number of cases reported to the honor system by UNC’s academic departments.

The possibility of implementing plagiarism detection software across campus is figuring heavily into UNC’s efforts to reform the honor system.

The University has yet to implement new sexual assault guidelines prompted by the U.S. Department of Education last spring. While administrators planned to have new policies enacted this fall, the handling of sexual assault cases has instead fallen on the back-burner, leaving the University’s Honor Court in limbo.

For some students, the attention on the African and Afro-American Studies department has come at a heavy cost.

Educating faculty members about the nuances of the student-run honor system is the first major goal to emerge from the faculty honor system advisory committee. The newly formed committee met for the first time Friday to discuss how the members could best aid the honor system and increase faculty involvement.