the academic honor code
The Academic Honor Code should help the SMC community to:
Foreground the importance of academic integrity in an academic community. With the new academic honor code, the entire SMC community will focus on the issue of academic honesty more clearly and systematically than under our previous policy. Under that policy, we expected students to behave with integrity, and we assumed that they were doing so more often than not; the new policy asks us to talk about integrity more intentionally and explicitly, so that our assumptions are made clear. For the most part, our policy/stance hasn't changed, but our way of highlighting this issue has.
Enhance community education about academic integrity. The Academic Honor Council will take responsibility for enhancing our educational efforts for all members of our community. They have already spoken about the issue at summer orientation, they have organized a pledge-signing ceremony for incoming students, and they will hold events throughout the year to promote and explain the academic honor code. Different educational approaches will be undertaken for: new students, returning students, new faculty, returning faculty, and other relevant constituencies (such as athletic department staff, student athletes, student leaders, advising services, etc.).
Encourage student leadership and broad community participation in the promotion of academic integrity college-wide. In our former system, academic integrity was a matter that was discussed by individual faculty members with individual students who had violated the policy (perhaps unknowingly). From there, the individual student had an appointment with an appropriate academic dean to review the policy, to discuss the charge, and to learn what sanctions would be applied. In the new system, a group of student and faculty representatives will oversee the investigation of concerns and will determine what sanctions are appropriate. Thus, rather than placing the responsibility for explaining and maintaining principles of integrity on administrators, students and faculty will assume primary authority over these matters.
Secure from students a public commitment to uphold standards of integrity. Through the academic honor pledge, we are asking students to agree to uphold our standards of integrity. We hope that the public statement of that commitment will lead students to embrace the underlying premises of the academic honor code. We also hope that the development of this new community ritual will be an important reminder of the transition that they make when they enter the SMC community.
