April 12, 1983
From the 1982 report on the Honor Code:
Appendix II An Historical Perspective On The Honor Code
(This essay is based on discussion with William E. Cadbury, Jr ’31, John Margolis, ’63, Michael McLemore, ’71, Paul Haagen, ’72, on readings in past issues of “The News” and in Rufus Jones’ “History of Haverford College”.)
Roots of the Honor System
The Haverford student body is heir to and guardian of a long tradition of self government in both academic and social areas. That tradition began in 1887 when the freshman class petitioned President Isaac Sharpless “to have examinations held on an honor basis and to have entire control in managing any possible cases of cheating.” Sharpless granted the request on an experimental basis. It proved to be a success and was later taken up by all classes at the College. In 1901 the Students Association elected its first president and assumed significant responsibility for self government. Five years later Sharpless noted that the “absence of restrictions on student conduct has led to a development of the feeling of responsibility for the morals and discipline of the college and has resulted in the lessening of friction, the increase of faculty influence and more efficient government.”
1930 saw the beginning of a re-examination of the Code by the College community. A committee was formed as a result of faculty concern that weak students might be taking advantage of the Honor System by leaving examinations, consulting notes, and returning. It was charged with promoting better morale and “better observance of the system”. The need was noted to “build up a tradition to support the system”. The committee’s report was received positively by the student body which renewed its pledge of support to the principles of the Code and accepted some procedural reforms designed to strengthen it. It is interesting to note that at this time the Code contained a provision that anyone found guilty of an academic violation would be suspended from the College for a minimum of six months.
As part of the pre-centenary observation at the College in 1931 a committee was created to review the Honor code with William E. Cadbury Jr. ’31 as chair. A major problem of the time was the reluctance of students to report their peers who had violated the code. In response to this the committee modified the code to place a responsibility for self reporting on the violator. A student observing a possible violation now asked the violator to turn himself in to Students Council, which then had the responsibility of dealing with the case. Only if the violator failed to do so did the observer have the responsibility of turning him in.
World War II And After-Birth Of The Social Honor Code
While Students Council did possess and exert the authority to discipline students for violations of social regulations, the Honor System itself was limited to academic matters and, in fact, dealt only with examinations until 1944, despite sporadic student proposals to extend it to social behavior. That summer saw a proposal to bring all aspects of campus life under the Code, and to extend the Academic Honor Code to papers, laboratory work, etc.. Standards of behavior were formulated for use of liquor, visits of women to the student dormitories, for acceptance of an obligation to report oneself to the Dean for failure to attend the then compulsory Meeting and Collection, and for observance of the library regulations. A new body was proposed, a Guidance Committee, which was to consist of the President of Students Council, the Chair of the Customs Committee, 3 faculty members, and one other student appointed by Students Council. Under the plan the Guidance Committee was to consider student problems, and if it was unable to make an uncooperative student realize his responsibilities to the Honor System and to the Students Association was to refer the matter to Students Council with a recommendation for action. Thomas J. Ryan, Harley Gross, and Robert C. God were appointed from the student body, Francis. C. Evans, Martin Foss, and Cletus Oakley from the faculty, and Archibald McIntosh was added as a representative of the administration.
In October of 1944 the new system was approved in principle by the Board of Managers, and the next month the Board authorized a trial period of three months for the revised Code, with the provision that it be redrafted by the Guidance Committee so as to be satisfactory to Administration, Faculty, and Student Body. A joint Faculty-Board committee was formed to survey operation of the new Honor System during its trial period which was extended several times, with the last extension for the summer 1945 term being contingent on revision of the Code’s alcohol section to prohibit alcohol use. Students were unwilling to do this and matters came to a head when Acting President Archibald McIntosh in the name of the Administration and the Board rejected the alcohol section. Students then voted to remove it from the Honor Code and repealed the by-law under which the Students Association had forbidden possession and consumption of all alcoholic beverages. They did, however, approve a proposal that Students Council enforce the alcohol ban if requested to do so by the administration. Robert C. Payro, President of the Students Association, resigned in protest of the Administration’s action and was promptly re-elected unanimously. Shortly after, the Guidance Committee was dissolved at its own request and the provision calling for its formation was removed from the final version of the new Code. This was given permanent approval by the Board in February of 1946. The requirement that students report themselves for failure to attend Collection and Meeting proved unrealistic and President Gilbert White, acting at the request of Students Council, removed Meeting and Collection from the Honor System in December of 1946.
During the early post-war period the newly formed Social Honor Code thus dealt mainly with students’ sexual behavior. It included time limits on the presence of women guests in the dormitories, which were modified several times. However, students soon recognized that time limits were not the essence of the matter and in the Spring of 1948 drafted the first version of the “any act” clause which is so deeply engraved on the memories of alumni of this and later eras.
“Any act of commission or omission, which, if it became public, would damage the reputation of the student, the woman guest, or the College shall be deemed a violation of the Honor System. Whether the act did or did not become public shall be considered immaterial and irrelevant in determining whether it constitutes a violation.” That same Spring library rules were removed from the Honor System with the rationale that petty violations of these rules were so frequent that they put the spirit of the Honor System in jeopardy.
The 60′s and 70′s
The Academic Code: 1961 saw the birth of an idea that most current Haverford students see as at the heart of the Academic Honor Code, self scheduled final examinations. It was proposed by a student, Kent Smith, at a dinner in Dean Cadbury’s home. Smith felt that the pressure of having final examinations too tightly grouped in a scheduled system had contributed to the tragic suicide of a student. After a series of meetings with faculty members, a proposal for self-scheduled finals was sent to the Faculty for action and was approved in the Spring of 1962 for the next two final examination periods. The process worked well in the Spring, but laxity in the following Winter examination period led to much inadvertent sharing of information about examinations. Students Council then proposed that the following statement be made part of the Honor Code. “You may not reveal form, content, or degree of difficulty of an examination.” Students became more vigilant and the Faculty, finding the situation satisfactory, granted permanent approval of the system. For the students of the 60′s “form, content, and degree of difficulty” became as memorable a phrase as “any act–” was to earlier generations.
In the 60′s and early 70′s there was little dissatisfaction in Faculty or Administration with the administration of the Academic Honor Code. Though final decisions regarding application of academic sanctions are reserved to the Faculty, such was the confidence in student procedures that Honor Council’s recommendations were usually accepted. With the waning of that confidence more recently, decisions are frequently openly questioned by faculty members.
The Social Honor Code: The early ’60′s were a period of strength and stability for the Social Honor Code. It dealt for the most part with just one area, students’ sexual conduct, and as a result of its focus on interpretation of the “any act” clause and Students Council’s self imposed limitation to important cases attained a strength and influence equal to that of the Academic Code. Many of the types of behavior which would be considered under its jurisdiction today were either handled by the Administration or “fell between the cracks”. Examples of those types of behavior include food fights, thefts, destruction of college property, eating meals with out paying, and parties which were “almost out of hand”. There was no special concern with drug or alcohol problems since these were not serious.
However, the later 60′s and the 70′s were an era of growth at the College from a student body of somewhat over 450 to our current size of somewhat over 1000. They were also an era of expansion of the Social Honor Code into new areas prompted by the rising of new concerns, such as drug policy, and of agitation to modify the Code to accord with changing social attitudes. In the spirit of those times Students Council first proposed liberalization of the time limits governing the presence of women in the dormitories in the Fall of 1966, and then proposed elimination of all limits. Even after the addition of a set of guidelines, President Hugh Borton and the Board had difficulty accepting this change. Finally in March of 1967 the Board gave provisional approval noting that for its part it continued to regard “presence of women guests in the dormitories overnight, or for excessively late hours, and sexual intercourse as unacceptable behavior.” A year later it approved the changed Code “indefinitely”, but repeated its earlier reservations.
How to respond to increased use of drugs and to more drug dealing on campus were important issues for the Honor System in the late 60′s and early 70′s. During the 1969 school year there were rumors in the student body that if the Students Council did not develop a drug policy statement then the administration would issue a statement of its own. In February of 1969 the students in plenary approved a statement on drugs. This statement was criticized by some administrators as “not facing up to the matter at all” and as “doing a poor job of defining the responsibilities of the individual to the community”. Bill Ambler, who had chaired a 1967 committee on drug policy, was quoted to the effect that talk about caring was lip service in the area of drugs.
The drug discussion continued in the Fall of 1969. Under the policy then in operation, the Dean and the Honor Council shared first jurisdiction in drug cases since the issue of whether first jurisdiction should go to the Honor Council alone could not be resolved. In the February 1970 plenary the drug section of the Code was modified by the substitution of seven queries for the previous material dealing with drugs. In December of that year Honor Council was to adopt a policy of considering separation from the College of any student who used or sold heroin. Six years later the reference to heroin in the Honor Code was removed with the supporting rationale being that all social interactions not just those dealing with drugs came under the Code. It is worth noting that during this period as in the early 60′s alcohol abuse on campus was not thought to be a serious problem.
Administration of the Code during this period was particularly difficult. There was no consensus on what constituted drug abuse. Indeed many in the College community saw drugs as a positive influence. The only basis for judgment that an action was a violation which was acceptable to most of the community was that it would expose the community to action by outside legal authorities. Even the acceptance of a condemnation of heroin dealing was brought about with difficulty.
These turbulent times brought other problems as well. A general distrust of institutions legitimized in the eyes of some acts which seemed to involve the institution rather than individuals. For example, there was an increase in failure to pay for meals in the dining center and of abuses in the library. Although we can find no record of a conscious decision in the matter, in the spirit of the times these areas were once again assumed to be under the jurisdiction of the Honor Code and that assumption continues until this time.
In principle the existence of the Social Honor Code should have been an important element in Haverford’s attempt during this period to diversify the community and in particular to make it more hospitable to minority group members. Its demand that individuals confront themselves and examine their own values and behavior when faced with new situations carries within it the seeds of powerful personal and institutional change. While there is no doubt that it has had effect, there is likewise no doubt that it has not been [as?] effective as the community might have wished. For example in 1972 the Black Student’s League felt so little confidence in the trial system that it publicly withdrew from the Social Honor Code, and this led to some of the changes discussed in the next section.
Administration of the Code: In the early 60′s for the most part the Code was limited to dealing with essentially two areas, academic cheating, and behavior which came under the “any act” clause. There was no Honor Council. Rather Students Council was charged with interpretation and enforcement of the Code. In a real sense it re-created the Honor System each year by determining how it was going to function under the general prohibitions on academic cheating and “any act”. This re-creation was not as radical a process as it might seem on first sight, since there was considerable overlap in composition of the Council from year to year, and since the student body was quite homogeneous, coming from similar backgrounds and schools. As part of this process each Council defined for itself and published to the Community its interpretation of the “any act” clause. In the academic area faculty members seldom needed to bring charges since 90% of violators reported themselves, and so faculty were not usually involved in trials. All trials were conducted by the entire Students Council. These were time consuming with more of the time being devoted to consideration of sanctions than to determination of guilt or innocence. Although Council did not feel itself bound by precedent, nevertheless there was a “Big Black Book of Precedent” to which it referred when considering the disposition of a case. Abstracts of cases were published regularly and were topics of active discussion in the student body.
When the system of self scheduled final examinations was begun, it was administered by Students Council. When, as noted earlier, problems arose due to inadvertent transfer of information about examinations from student to student, Council conducted an extensive campaign of education. So high was the resultant level of sensitivity to the necessity of avoiding even hints of “form, content, or degree of difficulty” that in one examination period about 20 students turned themselves in to Students Council as possible violators. By contrast more recently the Recorder’s Office has had to assume responsibility for administration of the system due to failures of some Honor Councils to do an adequate job of supervision.
Two factors combined in the late 60′s and early 70′s to bring substantial changed to the administration of the Code. The first was the growth of the student body; the second the drive to further democratize all College procedures. In 1968 it was proposed that an Honor Council separate from Students Council be formed and given responsibility for administering the Honor Code. Thus for the first time the highest authority in student government was not to be involved in the direct administration of the Code. This proposal was approved shortly by the Students Administration and then by President John Coleman. The February 1970 Plenary saw a further change, approval of the jury system as a replacement for the procedure under which Honor Council heard all cases.
Under the new regulations the jury trying cases was to consist of the first vice president of the student government, three other Honor Council members, and eight other members chosen from a panel of 50 names drawn by lot from the student body, with the panel changing each month. In December of 1974 the trial system was further modified. Henceforth, whenever possible, confronted students were to be included in the consensus determining the resolution of a case. Further they were given the right to call on individuals for aid in the trial, and the jury was assigned the responsibility of discussing matters thoroughly with involved individuals, thus continuing the process of confrontation which led to the trial. In response to an opinion of a College lawyer the February 1978 Plenary was presented with and approved provisions allowing for flexibility in jury selection by going outside the monthly list of 50, for allowing confronted students to strike potentially unfair jurors from the jury list, and for providing the confronted students with written notice of complaints against them.
Comments of Michael McLemore and Paul Haagen have provided a critique of the workings of Honor Council and of the jury system as they knew it in the early 70′s shortly after its inception. There was no procedure for assessing the quality or experience of potential jurors. In each trial the jurors lacked background and so every issue was decided anew. There was little consistency in decisions from case to case. Judgments often appeared to be arbitrary and the juries had difficulty in differentiating serious violations, such as plagiarism, from less serious ones. Jurors in trying to “understand” the student rather than trying to judge his action or non action frequently pressured him to admit his guilt and tended to be hard on those who resisted the pressure. There was no accumulation of experience, except for the chair. Since the chair possessed the most experience among the jurors and was the only one with knowledge of all previous trials there was considerable risk that the chair would exert a coercive influence on decisions.
In contrast to the state of affairs described earlier when Students Council was responsible for enforcement of the Code, the 70′s saw a decrease in record keeping on matters involving the Code, loss of the custom of having a “Big Black Book of Precedent”, and a tendency to only sporadic publication of abstracts of trials. Paradoxically, at a time when the administration of the Honor Code became more complex, the structures supporting it weakened. Though [this] weakening was not apparent for some time, in the late 70′s concern began to grow in the Administration and somewhat later in the Faculty.
College Administration and the Code: The only absolutely clear situation with respect to the College administration and the Honor Code is that since the Code functions under an authority originally granted by the Board through the President, any President may withdraw that authority. Thus, when students failed to ratify the Code in 1973, Acting President Gerhard Spiegler suspended it and the Administration assumed responsibility for enforcing its Specific Concerns section. Beyond this there seems never to have been a clear definition of the role of the College administration in matters involving the Code, but there have been various practices. We have established some of these. Current custom is that in social cases appeal may be made to the President on either procedural or substantive grounds, and in academic cases on procedural grounds only. According to Paul Haagen, in 1972 appeal in social cases could be either to the Dean of Students or to the President but not to both.
It is the Deans who have had direct responsibility for dealing with Students Council and Honor Council on matters relating to the Code. It is to the Dean of the College that Honor Council decisions are normally communicated, and it is the Dean’s responsibility to inform those who should know of them. The historical record is unclear on who these should be. It also reveals failures in communication between Honor Council and Deans. While respecting the authority delegated to the Student Body by the Administration and the Faculty, Deans have tried in various ways to help students in meeting their responsibilities under the Code. Sporadically James Lyons, when Dean of Students presented hypothetical cases to Honor Council and prodded it to produce “advisory opinions”. McLemore reports that in the early 70′s in social cases the Dean of Students participated in discussions following the fact finding process and made weighty recommendations to Council, but did not participate in the consensus. David Potter was particularly active in promoting examination of the Code’s functioning, and partly as a result of his prodding a committee chaired by Tim Cronister to review the Code was formed. Its 1980 report is Appendix X of this report.
As is true in other areas, there is no record of any formal decisions regarding the different areas of responsibility of Deans and Honor Council. As noted earlier, there was a period in which alcohol related problems and certain disciplinary matters were handled by Deans. Custom changed, but there seems to be no record of how or why these changes occurred. There does seem to be a consistent tradition of Deans handling cases in which quick decisions were required, with Honor Council free to then act in the matter or not as it chose.
Bryn Mawr: There is no record that the question of the relationship of Bryn Mawr students taking courses at Haverford to the Haverford Honor System has ever been completely resolved. It is clear that there is agreement that violations by students at either College are handled at the campus on which they occurred. However, Bryn Mawr students are not required to sign the Haverford Honor Pledge prior to enrollment in a Haverford course.