Lying and cheating: A question of honor

LEXINGTON — The two students met in a campus cafe, and the conversation quickly turned to the stress of studies.

“I’m just really worried about my grades,” the girl said.

He was stressed about getting homework done with lacrosse practice and student newspaper obligations.

The girl saw a solution.

“Maybe we could kind of borrow from each other,” she said. “We’re in the same courses … it’s not like we’re cheating on an exam or anything.”

But was it still cheating? The situation, while perhaps common, wasn’t real. It was a vignette acted out Monday by two Virginia Military Institute cadets at VMI’s two-day 2013 Honor Conference. The audience for the sketch was about 275 high school and college students and some teachers and administrators, including some from Patrick Henry, North Cross, Lord Botetourt and Rockbridge high schools.

It’s the second year VMI has hosted the conference. VMI is known for its simple honor code — “A cadet does not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do” — and its single, draconian sanction for violators: expulsion.

The conference stemmed from a concern of students on VMI’s Honor Court that students were coming to VMI from high schools where cheating was both common and tolerated, said Susan Rabern, director of VMI’s Center for Leadership and Ethics. She said academic studies find 95 percent of students cheat. The VMI cadets wanted to start a conversation about how to reverse the trend.

After last year’s inaugural conference, many attendees contacted VMI seeking advice on how to implement a new honor system, so that became the theme of this year’s conference.

Logan Comer, 17, son of a VMI alumnus and a junior at Patrick Henry, was one of four PH students attending . He said there’s “a ton of cheating” at his school.

“It’s easy to know about it, but it’s hard to know how to fix it,” he said.

“I think these are students who know it’s wrong,” said Audrey Spangler, a Lord Botetourt sophomore. “It’s having toleration for it” that’s the problem.

The vignettes were offered as discussion prompts, which the students and teachers immediately took up in small groups around VMI’s Marshall Hall.

In one group, the conversation immediately revealed how “messy” discussions of honor can be, as Rabern put it.

Was what the students in the vignette were apparently about to do cheating?

“What is collaboration, what is discussion and what is cheating?” one man asked.

At Hampden-Sydney College, student Alex Cartright offered, the rule is, “If it’s not your work, you shouldn’t be turning it in.”

Connor Sullivan, a VMI sophomore who le d the discussion group, said she has a simple rule of thumb. “Am I going to have to lie about this? Then I shouldn’t do it.”

Mark Thompson, a teacher from Roanoke’s North Cross School, noted how the vignette played on how many demands students have on their time.

“Now they feel like they’re in a crunch and they opt for some kind of a short cut,” he said. It becomes a bad habit, and sets up an erosion of standards. Where does it lead when that same kid grows up and works in a bank, for example?

“I think it goes back to that idea of not putting so much emphasis on grades,” said Mason Grist, a student at Rockbridge High School.

Tim Layne, an honor board adviser at Stuart Hall School in Staunton, agreed.

“I think we live in a culture where it’s all about the reward,” he said.

But cultural change is hard, as several attendees noted.

“If so many people do it,” Comer, the PH junior said, “then how do we get started and reverse the process?”

That is the rub. If Monday at the conference was about the messiness of honor systems, Rabern said today will be about the tools schools need to get the system implemented cleanly.

It opens with a panel discussion with four lawyers about the legal boundaries within which an honor system must live, and continues with workshops on everything from plagiarism and the elements of an honor system to the nuts and bolts of gathering evidence of violations and due process for the accused.

Roanoke’s Patrick Henry High sent four students to the conference, funded through a grant from VMI. But the school is not talking about implementing an honor code or honor court at this time, city schools spokesman Justin McLeod wrote in an email. “The students will take what they learn at the conference to educate teachers [and] students on what cheating is and things that are considered unethical,” McLeod wrote.

Janet Womack, principal at Lord Botetourt, attended the conference with some students to figure out where to start to develop an honor system for her school.

Such systems are more common at private schools and colleges, where there’s a selective admissions process , than to public schools, but they address issues all of society needs to work on, Womack said.

“And I don’t think public schools can be exempt,” she said. “Why shouldn’t we be respected for being honorable?”

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