Honor Code extends into real life

"In a university community, there can be no doubt that honor and the pursuit of knowledge are inexorably intertwined," or so reads the 2001-'02 JMU Student Handbook. An ideal of how things ought to be in a learning environment, we regularly sign our names at the end of exams pledging that we've upheld the honor code set forth by the university. Do all students realize the need? We, as students, realize the need for standards of honor and truth in our education. Sadly, we also freely scoff at the idea that our fellow students actually uphold such standards.

At the college level, and through most of our years in school, it's accepted that there are people who cheat. In elementary school it was the bullies who never thought twice about copying homework from the studious kids. In college, we hear cases of people buying term papers off the Internet, unjustly stealing copies of tests before the exam date and even plagiarizing works from noted scholars, academic sources or even fellow students. Such behavior strickly is forbidden by the Honor Code and punishable to the severity of expulsion from the university. Yet, however large a travesty to our honor system and to our learning environment, most of us are conditioned to expect it, to brush it off and look the other way.

Sometime after graduation, however, a great change in attitude occurs. Where in school we often let the cheaters slip by and receive diplomas with all the rest, once in the professional setting we assume honor and honesty prevail. We assume, despite sitting next to cheaters in our classes, that once walking across that graduation stage they become honest, upstanding scholars with the highest of professional ethics.

We are shocked when we find out that this is not always the case. Just this year, two prominent historians were accused of plagiarism in some of their highly praised scholarly works. In January, Stephen Ambrose, author of "The Wild Blue" about World War II and about 25 other well-known books, was accused of taking text from another prominent historian, Thomas Childers, without acknowledging the use of direct quotes in his footnotes. This week, JMU uninvited historian and scholar of the James Madison presidency Doris Kearns Goodwin as its keynote speaker for James Madison Day as Goodwin currently is facing accusations of plagiarism. According to the March 7 Richmond Times-Dispatch, Goodwin "has admitted passing off scores of passages written by others as her own in her 1987 book 'The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys.'"

While none of these accusations are proven as of yet, the controversy surrounding both cases caused an uproar in many circles. Many university professors who used works by Ambrose in their teachings have since pulled the texts from their syllabi. In the wake of the controversy, Goodwin also was uninvited as the commencement speaker at the University of Delaware, began an indefinite leave from PBS' "NewsHour with Jim Leher" and stepped down as a Pulitzer Prize judge, according to last Thursday's Breeze.

Not likely to be brushed off, issues of plagiarism in the professional sector are a monumental ordeal. Even the slightest misquotation, as could be the case for both Ambrose and Goodwin, can destroy one's reputation in the scholarly and professional world. In the collegiate world, students often play off cheating as misunderstandings, mistakes and accidents in their work.

But Andy Perrine, co-chair of the Madison Committee and director of the Identity Leadership Team put it best in the March 14 edition of The Breeze when he said we have to ask the question, "How far can we distinguish an honest mistake … from downright plagiarism?"And similarly, why are we so willing to "let things slide" in the classroom?

A controversial debate for many years, the University of Virginia began to question its own approach to cases of plagiarism with an unprecedented campaign to reform its honor system. Soliciting $2 million in donations, the school plans to "bolster an honor system that has shown signs of weakening," according to a January article in the The Baltimore Sun.

JMU's own efforts have increased through the years in an attempt to crack down on honor code violators. But until we begin to take academic honor as seriously as we take honor and ethics in the professional world, until we expect the same standard of truth from our classmates and ourselves, we will continue to pass a trend of "brushing things off" to what we call the "real world."