Honor Code important for everyone, even professors

Honor Code important for everyone, even professors

ATLANTA
November 13, 1998

If you haven't noticed, the campus has been in a big discussion about honor lately. It is excellent that we are talking about the Honor Code. When I entered Tech last year, I was made to sign the Honor Code. I did not know squat about it. I have learned 2,346,853 times more about the Honor Code because of the coverage lately then I knew about it when they made me sign the Honor Code. I didn't think much about the piece of paper that I was signing. I saw that it was the Honor Code, I really didn't read it, I must admit that I was much more interested in registering. So I dismissed it. I just assumed it was reinforcing the notion that cheating is bad. Duh.

Now that I have learned much more about the Honor Code, I have a much more vested interest in the part that says: "Faculty members are expected to create an environment where honesty flourishes. In creating this environment, faculty members are expected to do the following: ...Provide copies of old exams to the Georgia Tech library for students to review" (http://www.gatech.edu/honor/honorcode.html) then any other part. Now, I am not involved in any Greek organization and neither is my best friend/sister/brother/dog/legal guardian/Dawson's Creek partner. So I don't have the access to the vast word files that 33 percent of this campus has. That leaves 67 percent of students that have a very limited access to word and for the majority of that group their only access is to the word on file in the library and whatever their professors dole out. A quick sweep of the library word files reveal that one of my classes this quarter provides old exams: Statics. Granted one class doesn't have exams, just papers. So that leaves me with the two classes that everyone experiences, and most people spend more time in those schools then any other school besides their own: Physics and Math.

Over my life at Tech, I have had two of my five calculus professors provide old tests. Remaining are three professors that did not hold up their end of the Honor Code. The physics department has NO sample test on file in the library for any of the three main physics classes. I know for a fact that there are extensive reserves of old physics tests for all of the classes existing the various places that word lives. But not in the library. The physics test question database is only so large. At some point, questions will repeat themselves. It is not fair to the students who don't have the kind of access. Not to mention that the physics department is not holding up their end of the Honor Code. A quick survey of my past classes only brings to mind four classes out of the 16 that I have taken at Tech so far that have provided sample exams to the class at large. How can our professors and their departments expect that their students hold up their end of the Honor Code if they aren't going to hold up theirs? It is easy to do something wrong, like cheat, and justify it out to yourself when you feel like everyone has an unfair advantage over you. And there are a lot of people at this school that are at a disadvantage.

The fact does remain that cheating is bad and in no way am I advocating cheating to get back at the professor that hasn't followed the Honor Code. We should not not cheat just because we signed a piece of paper that said we would not. We should not cheat because our honesty is one of the most important things that we possess as we enter the job market. We are all well educated and will be taking on jobs that we provide the answers, not just carry out someone else's orders. In this freedom that we are all working so hard for, comes trust: The trust of your boss; the trust of the client. I heard a story from an architect that graduated from a school that is not this one, about how during his first architecture lecture class test, the professor made everyone turn over their calculators to make sure that there weren't any cheat sheets on them. If you had a cheat sheet you were kicked out of the school. Sounds a little harsh for the first offense, but, he explained to me, honesty is very important in architecture, you are usually dealing with people who have little idea about what you are doing. It would be really easy to cheat them, so honesty is imperative. Many of us will be in the same position of knowing much more about what we are doing then they person that we are doing it for.

The Honor Code dialogue might go on for a while, or it might die down tomorrow, but the Honor Code is a much-needed thing. We should strive to make it more than a piece of paper that freshman sign during FASET and make it a part of our community. Trust and honesty are the things that should be valued more then grades. This school is hard. It should be equally hard for everyone, not harder for some. We should all try to follow our end of the Honor Code; students should not cheat and professors should provide old/sample tests in the library, Maybe the Honor Code will become more than a piece of paper for people to write about in the Technique. "We should all try to follow our end of the Honor Code; students should not cheat, and professors should provide old/sample tests in the library." Christina Freyman Productions Editor

Copyright © 1998 by Gregory S. Scherrer, Editor and by the Student Publications Board

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