COLUMN: Honor Code requires mutual support, trust

by Nate Blair

THE HONOR Code is one of the unique and special institutions of Rice University. It is a tool that allows students academic freedom and implies a remarkable trust between students and faculty. As a means of upholding trust, students are required to pledge assignments, papers and tests by writing the Honor Code and signing their name. Another means of giving the Honor Code clout is the Honor Council, a body of elected students that investigates accusations of Honor Code infractions.

An essential requirement for the validity and continuation of the Honor Code is that trust between the Honor Council, faculty and students be mutual and authentic.

Unfortunately, events have occurred this semester that lead me to doubt such a trust exists. In a class that the professor initially planned to give a take-home final, the registrar and Honor Council stepped in and required the test to be scheduled. This has been a great inconvenience to many students in the class who had already made plans to go home before the Dec. 19 date of the final.

Why did the Honor Council and Registrar's Office intervene? Why does the Registrar's Office require classes with an enrollment over 40 to have self-scheduled or scheduled finals and enrollment over 50 to have scheduled finals? It is not as if the Registrar's Office is inconvenienced by take- home exams; its role in the matter exists only when rooms must be reserved. Why does the Honor Council support such requirements? The only reason I can see is a fear of cheating. Such a fear implies mistrust.

It is my belief that if the Honor Code were applied in its purest sense, all exams would be take-home. There would be no hassle of the registrar reserving rooms or the Student Association finding proctors for self-scheduled exams. The responsibility would fall on the students and the professors, just as it does for all the tests that are taken during the semester. Why are finals different? To tell a professor how to test his/her class is ridiculous and inappropriate and results only in more red tape and problems.

I strongly support the Honor Code. I cannot imagine Rice without it. However, I fear that the spirit of the Honor Code is being violated by an imbalance of trust. I am not trying to say that we should have only take-home exams. What I would like to see is professors having control over how they run their own classes.

Nate Blair is a Wiess College junior and one of two Backpage editors.

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the December 6, 1996 issue.

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