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<p>According to the following, quite a few students at UVA are investigated (or even put on “trial”!) for Honor Code violations, of whom a substantial fraction “leave [the university], admitting guilt”.</p>
<p>[The</a> Honor Committee](<a href=“http://www.virginia.edu/honor/wnew/stats.html]The”>http://www.virginia.edu/honor/wnew/stats.html)</p>
<p>Apparently most of the departures are cheating cases (famously including a plagiarism scandal in 2001 that led to about 200 students investigated and more than 30 “leaving admitting guilt”). </p>
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<p>It does not follow that there is no constraint (created by Honor Codes and Honor Courts and Honor Kangaroo Trials and whatever effects these have on the campus culture) on people’s natural judgement of whether to report. The language of the Code quoted above is clear and refers to an unequivocally required “immediate reporting” of all violations directly known to the student. At the Davidson Code webpage there is an additional, somewhat medieval sounding, Honor Pledge certifying that a student knows of no Honor Violations associated with a given paper, exam, etc (such as other students cheating). It seems to me that if a wider UVA-like cheating scandal were to develop, then students who failed to report it could face reprisals. In such situations, students, in addition to following their internal ethical instincts, would have consider the strategic implications of possible Honor Code penalties when deciding whether to report the misconduct. It’s the latter consideration step whose presence, or imposition through a code, is opposite to any notion of ethics.</p>
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<p>The UVA numbers show that “leaves”, whatever those are in particular cases, are occuring every year for Honor Code violations. If there is an Honor Code with teeth it will, inevitably, have serious (and not necessarily fairly judged or competently investigated) ramifications for some of the accused violators who are informed upon by fellow students. Any source of pressure on some community members to volunteer accusations against others is very, very unsavory.</p>