Year in Review: Honor reform in wake of NCAA investigation, plagiarism targetted

In the days following the dismissal of head football Coach Butch Davis, University administrators decided to prioritize the reform of the honor system as a way to repair UNC in the wake of the NCAA investigation.

“Regardless of the situation with football, it just makes good sense to seek ways to improve our commitment to honor and integrity,” Chancellor Holden Thorp wrote in an email to UNC students and faculty in early August.

The task of honor reform fell to Chairwoman of the Faculty Jan Boxill, who embarked on a handful of initiatives, the most serious of which have focused on improving faculty participation in the system.

These included the creation of a faculty advisory committee and the discussed implementation of an online plagiarism detection software.

Faculty disengagement in the honor system has been at the center of the reform.

At an October meeting of the Faculty Council, several faculty members offered sharp criticism of the system.

“The fully student-run Honor Court is doing a poor job of enhancing intellectual honesty on campus,” said sociology professor Andrew Perrin at the meeting.

Perrin added that he knew of department chairmen who specifically discourage professors in their departments to report cases to the Honor Court.

The focus on the honor system began after it was revealed that former defensive end Michael McAdoo had plagiarized a paper, and that offense was not detected by the honor system.

But a group of faculty led by history professor Jay Smith had already been examining the issue of faculty disengagement.

“It isn’t like the McAdoo case now all of a sudden said, ‘What’s wrong with our Honor Court?’ It just raised awareness for everybody,” Boxill said in an August interview.

The most substantial reform measure already implemented has been the creation of a faculty advisory committee, which aims to serve as a liaison between student representatives and faculty.

The committee, led by political science senior lecturer Donna LeFebvre, met for the first time Oct. 3.

Boxill, who is leading a larger task force on the issue, has also introduced the possibility of utilizing Turnitin, a plagiarism detection software.

Boxill has said that the system would be a positive addition but it is not without its critics.

“It seems like almost every instance it was used in my high school it was disastrous,” said vice chairwoman of the Honor Court Morgan Abbott in a November meeting of Boxill’s task force.

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