Honor Council Minutes 9/22/2013
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Public Portion
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Mo si
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Erin: The Code lists community standars that we agree to. How does that come to play with cultural values? Where can there be conflict between open communication and unfamiliar backgrounds?
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Melissa: That reminds me of a plenary resolution from last spring that changed wording in community standards that was talking about coming to terms with differences and replaced it with embracing them. The word change was meant to make people think more about how we interact with those with other values/backgrounds/experiences.
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Ryan: Something I’ve been thinking about since Dean Tensuan mentioned that her cultural backgrounds on confrontation is via at least three intermediaries. If that’s how you were brought up to confront someone, addressing the HC culture could be a shock. It’s not addressed so much in the Constitution and Code other than the simple statement that you should talk to one another.
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BG: One thing I think about and has come out in my experience with abstracts/trials is that people cone to HC with different levels of knowledge and differing perspectives, which approaches academic work as well as social life. I’m lucky that I came from a place where academic integrity is valued as it is here. There are others who come from places where cheating is part of the norm..
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Damon: Or that what is cheating is viewed differently
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BG: And they have quite an adjustment to make.
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Zach: The opposite can be true; people are raised in an academic environment that discourages collaboration and people can feel isolated from the academic community.
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Michael: With that may come an acclimation process by which people may have to get used to something that is different – there’s that time when you get used to all your courses and how profs look at your work.
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Zach: It would be interesting to see how incoming freshmen prioritize things in terms of academic integrity – people may not value working alone when directions say as much if they’re not used to doing so.
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Ryan: It could be also interesting to do surveys at beginning and end of freshman year to see how people change over freshmen year – there are a lot of problems.
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Zach: What do you think of the academic integrity tutorial? I skipped over the videos. They were super awkward.
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Damon: I thought they were great.
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Chris: I liked them.
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BG: Last year there was the tutorial w/o videos; the year before that no tutorial at all. It will keep improving. THe purpose was to make it more personal.
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Zach: Because I knew the people, it sounded really forced. They felt uncomfortable saying it to the camera.
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Ryan: Freshmen, thoughts?
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Michaela: Not the best video ever, but more personal than just reading stuff.
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Chris: I liked that there were specific scenarios, not just general guidelines and principles.
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Michael: I think those really helped and gave prompts for if you’re in this situation, how do you get out honestly? I thought the videos were good; I don’t know if there would be maybe some more videos that were like interviews – what the Code means in certain context. I think sometimes the modules of questions helped hone the point. Videos saying what does the Code mean to you brought it together.
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Damon: SOme of the questions were copied and pasted from last year.
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Josh: Does that mean that the Code quiz was plagiarizing itself?
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Zach: I like that it wasn’t cut-and-dry.
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Erin: I think it’s good because it makes you think about things, not tell you exactly what to do.
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BB: There’s something I’ve been wondering about to open up a new dimension which we haven’t touched on – is there anybody who came from an academic background pretty different from Haverford and thought the videos helped?
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Zach: My high school had a superficial honor code but the culture was quite cheating-friendly; in an incident my senior year 60 people out of a class of 80 stole an AP bio exam. It’s not necessarily a case where someone didn’t know the guidelines, but the code in my high school was an artifact that people pretended to care about but where conditioned to ignore.
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Melissa: I don’t know if this happens in practice but part of that could be helped by UCA/HCOs or PAFs and AMA in issues of multiculturalism. HTere could be something people come in not knowing academically or socially and the intent of customs is to introduce people to new things. I understand that this doesn’t actually always happen perfectly smoothly, but ideally that would be part of the job of those positions to acclimate people.
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Zach: I’ve been a UCA for 3 weeks so I don’t know perfectly how to comment, but in a few instances my freshmen have come to me with how to collaborate etc. and sometimes it’s an issue of they just don’t know what question to ask or don’t feel comfortable asking.
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BB: The experience of diving into a place like this, if it was completely different from what I was used to… There’s a broader trend of being afraid to speak up about things that might separate you from normative HC culture. If you’re in this academic environment that prizes integrity in our specific way, would someone from a different background feel comfortable trying to figure out what was going on?
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Ryan: The N Sync abstract released last year featured a fairly minor instance of accidental plagiarism but part of the problem is that the student was international from a culture where citations weren’t a big deal. There’s the issue that we don’t think it’s right but it’s OK there. THe second issue is asking for help with the new system. How does one ask for help acclimatizing? Are we doing enough to make that easy?
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Damon: This is where the paradox of culture and Code comes into play. A huge part of the code is being respectful, accepting, tolerant, nurturing, etc. of people’s backgrounds. Can you do that if something is in direct contravention of the code?
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BB: THere’s more that could be done in order to foster the environment of dialogue or an environment where people feel safe initiating dialogue; that hasn’t been done yet. THat’s on us as a community.
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Jon: Haverford is really diverse but very much based on being a community. A diverse community is almost a contradiction; there has to be some level of mutual agreement. If it’s absent, the community breaks down. I see that agreement in the Code. Haverford is not a place for a diversity of opinions on the Honor Code.
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Ryan: I agree to some extent in that the Code is central and you can’t argue about some parts, but everyone has their own interpretation of what the Code means. What is a confrontation? What does it look like? How does it happen? How often does it happen? Small differences, but they build up.
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Jon: That’s still with a basis of agreement.
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BG: One or 2 more comments, unless people really want to stick on this, to give us time to move to plenary resolutions.
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Zach: Is it too late to submit?
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BG: Can you get 200 signatures by tonight?
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BG: Any final thoughts on multiculturalism?
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Michaela: THe vast majority of students here agree with the Code; if you disagree tremendously you probably shouldn’t enroll here. All students should be reading the Code before they enroll.
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Zach: At the same time, a lot of people come because of the Code and a lot just find it here when they get here.
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BB: We must make a distinction between the Code on paper and the Code in practice. As far as my personal problems with the Code go, they stem from that – how the community treats the Code and not necessarily anything in the Code itself. I’m all for dialogue, understanding, etc., but I’m not sure if what the Code wants to happen is actually taking place.
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BG: As long as everyone’s comfortable, let’s move on to plenary resolutions. The 2 resolutions that have signature have their authors in the room. Melissa, Jon, can you give a brief summary and can we talk about questions?
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Melissa: Does anyone know if these are the only 2 resolutions?
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Damon: There’s more.
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BG: More met with the SC presidents. We don’t know if they have signatures.
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Jon: My resolution is about making the HC sections of the Constitution more clear. The way the constitution is written now is fairly broad and often requires student interpretation. HC has a way it traditionally follows those, so my plenary resolution seeks to line up the interpretation of the Consitution and the written document itself.
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BG: I just read it, and it mostly moves stuff around to make it clear and changes titles to make them align with the text. It won’t change how HC functions, just make it clear.
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Melissa: Are you doing away entirely with the passage about SFPs?
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Jon: No; there’s some controversy, and I don’t want to be controversial.
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Zach: WHat’s the objection?
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BG: There’s not been enough discussion. There was a reason it came in, and we should know what it is before we take it out.
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Zach: To clarify, SFPs are a cross between trial and mediation.
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Melissa: Since you have 200 signatures already, do you have a plan to distribute it?
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Jon: All resolutions go out before plenary. This will include all 25 pages of my amendments.
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Ryan: It’s not changing everything on 25 pages. There’s just 2 or 3 lines per page crossed out and replaced. Are you doing discussion about it this week?
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Jon: No, because very few people care. This is it.
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BG: Former and current council members would be interested. That’s probably it.
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BG: Would you mind marking things moved vs. taken out?
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Jon: There’s a key on the first page.
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Melissa: My resolution deals with what happens to the Code if it fails ratification like last semester. Last semester, it failed ratification, and immediately afterward, there was a great deal of confusion about what it meant to not have a Code, so a resolution was proposed and passed at Special Plenary to make sure that the transition was easy and the student body could understand what was going on. The resolution made it so that we would keep the Code that had failed ratification until the end of the semester; if no new Code had been ratified at that point, the next semester would begin without a Code. I feel that an entire semester is a long time for us to live under and be held accountable to a Code that the student body disapproves of. This is particularly problematic for seniors, who lose their ability to change the Code while they are finishing their most important academic work – their thesis. There’s also a technicality of the wording which makes it that if a new Code were ratified at special plenary, it sounds as if the new Code would not take effect immediately but instead the next semester. My proposition would be to cut down that transition period to 6 weeks, so that for the next 6 weeks we would keep the old Code in a transitionary period, which would allow people to come up with a contingency plan for no Code and also give SC time to organize a special plenary. If such a plenary were organized and a new code was ratified, that code would take effect immediately, so that changes that people make would take effect that same semester.
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Ryan: Very quickly – I think this could be a good thing – my recollection of the Code that passed at special plenary said “this becomes the Honor Code”, so at special plenary, wording of a newly proposed Honor Code would make it take effect immediately.
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BG: THe idea was that at a special plenary, someone could put in a new Code which if ratified would take effect immediately.
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Zach: What’s the purpose of constraining the transition period? Doesn’t that limit the window to write a new Code and schedule plenary?
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Melissa: Last time around it took 4 academic weeks.
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Zach: Are these 6 weeks after the code’s failure or beginning of the semester?
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Melissa: Failure of ratification. This actually gives us more time. It’s enough time to rewrite and have debates if necessary, and write simple revisions if that’s what we want.
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Zach: In the current state of resolutions, if the new Code would go into effect immediately after approval, what’s the point of a constraint?
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Melissa: This gives us a long period of time in which we could be living under a Code we don’t want. It also discourages a sense of apathy, as I think apathy towards the Code and discussions of it are sometimes a problem here. If you’re voting on ratification, even in the worst-case scenario, there would under the current rules be no effect no matter what until the end of the semester. It encourages people to sit on their hands. Particularly if it’s a senior’s last semester, there’s not a lot of motivation.
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Zach: You might want to make the point that this also prevents people from pushing things off until finals week.
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BG: We are out of time. If anybody is burning to say one last thing, please do.
- Mo si
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