Among UNC’s many sacred cows, perhaps the most sacrosanct is the student “honor code.” The alleged failings of the Honor Court have generated discussion of late, but the shibboleth of honor has unfortunately attracted little attention. Contrary to conventional wisdom, honor actually serves to mask immorality, deceit, abuses of power, injustice and unnatural hierarchies.
In old regime France, aristocratic rakes spent their free time cheating at cards, insulting inferiors, intimidating peasants and seducing married women. When such shenanigans threatened the family name, a parent or other relative could seek a royal writ that allowed for indefinite imprisonment of the young scion, who could rot in a dungeon without recourse. Thus was the immoral behavior of an individual covered up by arbitrary force. But the family retained “honor”!
In the era of the Old South, a plantation owner who had his nose tweaked or his hat knocked off in a public square would invariably challenge the offender to a duel. His “honor” demanded vengeance. The same man would have considered it perfectly honorable to order the merciless flogging of a self-respecting slave.
In organized crime rings, “made” members of the group violently avenge every perceived show of disrespect. The honor code of omertà requires it, since the power of the organization rests on fear and trembling. With “honor” intact, the avenged can go about their parasitical business of pillaging the communities that host them.
Young women have long been vulnerable to “honor” killings when male relatives decide that the family’s standing is under threat. In 2004 a Turkish father explained why he strangled his fourteen-year-old daughter: “I decided to kill her because our honor was dirtied.” Similarly misogynistic notions inform the epidemic of domestic violence against women the world over.
Honor is a prop for the powerful, a smokescreen for dubious hierarchies, a badge of self-satisfied superiority. Why should it be “the foundation of student self-governance”? The misdeeds covered by the Honor Code fall into two categories: illegalities best handled in courts of law, and various forms of academic dishonesty.
But application of the standard of honesty does not require a special “code” for members of an allegedly superior group (i. e., UNC undergrads). Honesty — the requirement to tell the truth, to be transparent, to respect integrity — is a common sense value untainted by vestigial associations with thuggery, face-saving and violent assertions of power. Honesty craves daylight and does not need the protection of secret hearings.
Miscreants from Casanova to Capone possessed honor in spades, which should be reason enough to put honor in mothballs. The Honor Code binds the University to a deformed moral sense long associated with social stratification and injustice.
This 19th-century relic should be placed in the institutional attic where it belongs, along with William Saunders’ notorious white hood. It’s time to pledge honesty, and to abandon the vaguely immoral pledge of “honor.”
