Professors Must Push Honor Code

And as the time gets closer for the committee to release its findings and recommendations, the University needs to realize that these changes will not be enough.

The committee certainly has discussed productive revisions, such as clarifying what constitutes violations and adding the option of giving an "XF" grade, which would signify that a student received a failing grade as a result of cheating or plagiarizing.

It seems like more energy, however, needs to be put into informing students so they don't find themselves confronted with Honor Court charges to begin with.

The judicial branch has taken great strides this year in making itself more visible to the general student body, engaging in campus outreach and hosting Honor and Integrity Week, which included an appearance by Dean Smith and a mock Honor Court hearing that charged Student Body President Jen Daum with academic cheating.

But the judicial branch is not necessarily the most important contact between the student body and the Honor Court system.

It is up to the professors, instructors and teaching assistants to own up to that responsibility, especially when academic cheating cases often are the most common type of case that comes before the Honor Court.

Students, especially those who have reached a college level, should know better than to plagiarize or to cheat during an exam, but many UNC students have fallen prey to the appeal of the easy option.

Just from Aug. 15 to the end of September this year, the Honor Court heard nine cases regarding academic cheating violations.

These statistics show that professors and instructors do take the Honor Code seriously through their willingness to turn in students they believe have cheated, but all professors and instructors need to display that seriousness on the first day of the semester.

But for the most part, students cheat with the thought that they won't get caught.

They are lulled into that belief by the numerous professors and instructors who don't require a signed Honor Code pledge or who don't back up that pledge with any verbal weight.

Somewhere in between the first-day ice breakers and the distribution of the syllabuses, professors and instructors need to lay out how the Honor Code applies to the course work and how they will scrutinize the work and student activity to make sure it complies with the code.

They also need to fully explain what they consider academic cheating, dissolving students' fear of getting sucked into the Honor Court when they didn't even know that they cheated.

Two years ago, the University got a rare gift in the form of an open hearing when two students wanted to go public with what they believed were unmerited academic cheating charges against them.

The two students were part of a computer science class whose professor turned in 24 students for unauthorized collaboration on a code-writing assignment.

The students contended that their professor never clarified that they could not consult classmates on the assignment, while the professor insisted that he did.

Both students were found guilty, but at least one student had the conviction later overturned.

The whole Honor Court hearing process could have been avoided, however, if the professor had given students written notification of his stance on how the Honor Code applied to the coursework.

Professors and instructors need to let students know that honor is to be taken seriously at UNC.

And although it's great to know that people are working to ensure that students will get a fair shake in Honor Court, it's even better to keep them out of the court to begin with.

Karey Wutkowski can be reached at karey@email.unc.edu.