This is post specific to the students and alumni of UVa. If you have no interest in UVa and could care less how it handles matters of honor, by all means skip on over.

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Still with me? Good. As many of you may or may not know, the students of UVa are currently considering the question of whether to remove expulsion as the Single-Sanction for honor offenses (lying, cheating, or stealing). As it stands, the current system works like this:

• student lies, cheats, or steals
• student comes forward – honor charges cannot be brought from this point
• someone else comes forward and charges are brought against the student. from this point on, the offending student may come forward and leave school with honor
• a honor trial is held in which the student is either found guilty, and removed from the community, or innocent, and nothing happens

A little bit of history. The Honor System was founded in the 1840s when the University was still a small, closely-knit community in which students and faculty lived together on the lawn. The notion of a gentleman was alive and well and when a professor was shot during a disturbance on the Lawn, he refused to identify his assailant, saying that a man of honor would step forward willingly.

As time has passed on, our society’s notions of honor and integrity seem to have passed away in favor of relativistic morals. At the same time, the University community has changed, as well; no longer is it a close-knit community housed together along the lawn – it is now a sprawling campus comprised of >18,000 students. There was a time when honor reigned supreme – and your honor or dishonor affected mine. Unfortunately, most students now view themselves in relative isolation; what you do affects you and what I do affects me.

The Honor System as it was originally defined depended upon the community to defend its own trust – now, all trust is placed in the golden calf of Single Sanction. When it was founded, the single sanction was a side effect: honor was first found lacking by the community and removal was the only possible remedy. However, removal is now the focus – and the notion of honor is left with nothing but lip-service. This can be seen in the defense of single-sanction. As one of my friends put it: it (single-sanction) is “its most potent, enduring symbol”.

The main problem with this focus is that student juries become focused on the consequences that are to be faced by the student – not whether his or her actions will damage the community of trust. Case in point: because of the single-sanction, honor offenses are statutorily limited to those that are of “sufficient gravity such that open toleration of the act would impair the community of trust sufficiently enough to warrant expulsion of the offender”. How can honor be defined by consequence? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Further, there are many students who, when faced with the knowledge that guilt = expulsion, prefer to give benefit of the doubt. In this case, a charged student is found innocent not because of the facts of the case, but because of juries inability to stomach a consequence.

So, what is the solution? I don’t know, but whatever it is, it should be focused on restoring true honor to the honor system, not intent on saving a golden calf that looks oh so good. If nothing else, the referendum on the ballot represents an attempt to move the discussion forward. You may not agree with the solution proposed, but rather than rejecting anything that interferes with your precious consequence, suggest something that will restore the system to what it should be: a system whose most potent, enduring symbol is the honor and integrity of those who agree to adhere by it.