STAFF EDIT: Honor code not for BU

In an ideal world, law enforcement would be unnecessary. But in the real world, people need others to enforce standards and keep them within acceptable behavioral limits. Boston University administrators are smart in avoiding an academic honor system, keeping the burden of cheating policy enforcement on those who are paid to run classes, rather than relying on a loose system of trusting student honesty and depending on other students to ferret out their peers. Though students should understand the moral problems with cheating and take it upon themselves to be academically honest, it is the university’s responsibility to guarantee, through administrators, faculty members and teaching fellows, that students’ peers are adhering to the same standards.

Honor codes at some of the country’s top universities have been called into question in recent months, as administrators come to grips with survey results indicating that an increasing number of students consider some types of cheating acceptable, according to The New York Times. Such codes rely on students to self-regulate cheating, often removing professors and teaching assistants from classrooms during tests, and call upon them to report any instances of cheating they come across among their fellow students. Though some BU schools do require students to sign on to a plagiarism code, Boston University does not employ a general self-enforced honor code and, according to Provost Dennis Berkey, does not plan to implement one in the near future. And the university is smart for staying away from such a policy.

Though no student would plagiarize or cheat in an ideal world, reality dictates otherwise. Students do cheat and plagiarize and, according to statistics, are doing so more and more. Though it should be ethically wrong to cheat, it is clear that society-wide ethics and morals are not enough.

Many honor codes also make it a student responsibility to report any cheating they come across, applying undue pressure on students to inform the authorities of their fellow students’ wrong-doing. But students should not be relied to enforce laws and keep their peers honest. To keep grades true, it is important that those paid to teach and evaluate student work ensure that those grades are earned individually and honestly. It is faculty members’ and teaching fellows’ responsibilities to be a deterrent presence during exams, reminding those students who are willing to cheat that such behavior will not be tolerated.

All students should still take it upon themselves to hold high ethical standards with regard to academic honesty. With or without faculty enforcement, cheating is wrong, and students should hold themselves personally responsible to that standard.