Every student values our Honor Code – at least in that we’d be happy to talk about it on a campus tour or explain it to our parents when they ask. But we struggle in coming to terms with what it means to us on a daily basis. It seems that somewhere along the line, the Honor Code has fallen through the cracks of Connecticut College. While most students at Conn would say there is still a need for it, we have trouble fitting it into our everyday lives. As a former member of J-Board as well as someone who will be underage for three-fourths of her college career, I often have had difficulty fitting my beliefs as an upholder of the Honor Code and as a college student who just wants to have fun.
The Honor Code has recently been called into question for a number of reasons. Administrators want to make it more than something we think about during an exam. In terms of residential life, housefellows and floor governors have asserted that their job description entails nothing more than reporting violations of the Honor Code.
Corey Testa, the chair of J Board, thinks students are taking the Honor Code for granted. “Currently, students want all of the responsibility without any of the accountability,” he says, “However, the Honor Code expects every student to take responsibility for their actions and hold themselves and others accountable.” Even the chair of our student-run judicial system can only criticize the current system instead of offering solutions for how it could improve.
The President of SGA, Peter Friedrichs, said in a campus-wide e-mail that the entire school needed to reexamine our way of thinking about the Honor Code, as “it is a way of life.” Yes, the Honor Code makes up a large part of our school’s identity, but it doesn’t always govern my own way of life.
Misconceptions about the Honor Code are also widespread. Many students believe there are two Honor Codes, social and academic (there’s just one), that members of J-Board can get away with anything (we can’t) and that underage drinking isn’t included in our student handbook (it is). First, it’s hard to amend a system if not everyone understands its full implications.
While I acknowledge the positive implications of having one Honor Code govern our student body, I do see it as divided. Certainly, most of the student body strictly adheres to the academic part while not worrying about violations of the social component: our academic honor code acknowledges the college’s emphasis on the importance of honesty in the classroom, and one reason it is so widely valued is that it allows us to be treated like adults, with total responsibility for our own actions. However, our social honor code devalues our own judgment, making us feel more like children telling on a sibling than college students who will soon enter the real world. Students are supposed to turn each other in for infractions as common as underage drinking and drug use.
And yet these types of digressions are rarely, if ever, reported by students. Is it realistic to have an honor code that dictates that students should report others for violations they have probably committed themselves? Yes, I should be trusted to judge a situation before reporting it to any authority, but that sense of trust in judgment has never been conveyed to me by the administration. While I wouldn’t feel comfortable (as a student leader or otherwise) going up to someone with a beer in their hand, I would be more than willing to turn in a fellow student for knocking down an exit sign on my hallway.
One of the advantages of the Honor Code is that it holds each student accountable to every other student, which forces us to see our actions as affecting not only ourselves, but also the college community. In cases of academic infractions, a student who cheats not only hurts his or her fellow classmates, but also the professor. From my experience in hearing academic cases on J Board, I know how offended and upset professors can react to a student cheating in their class. There are social advantages to the Honor Code, as well: I feel more comfortable in the dorms, whether I am telling a hallmate to turn down their music or leaving my door unlocked when I go down the hall to a friend’s room. I always want Conn to be a place where students can leave their computers in the library unattended.
The administration is trying to insert itself further into our conversations and thoughts about the Honor Code than I feel comfortable with. Discussions of change to the Honor Code should be brought up by students who are unhappy with the system, not administrators who would prefer that the school function a certain way. I believe that many students do have legitimate concerns about the way our Honor Code works, but they should be the ones coming forward, not deans and administrators that are concerned about trips to the hospital or the number of alcohol violations. These types of occurrences are bound to happen wherever there is underage drinking, regardless of an Honor Code.
I would recommend that we focus on things that we can actually change – like feeling more comfortable in your own dorm, being able to talk to floor governors and housefellows about your problems without worrying that they’ll get you in trouble for drinking, and making sure that we preserve our tradition of self-scheduled exams. Students need to pick up the slack and start focusing on what we want our community to be like in order to uphold shared governance. We can’t continue to complain about issues while hoping they magically fix themselves, especially concerning issues that are so crucial to our experience at Conn.
