Reporting
As a member of the University community, if you have knowledge of a possible Honor Offense, you should file a report. Please be aware that once a case has been reported in the Online Case Processing system, it cannot be rescinded. If you would like to file a report without speaking to an Honor Representative or Advisor, please complete the Report Intake Form.
If you would like to be contacted by an Honor Representative or Advisor, please complete the Contact Honor form. During this confidential conversation, an Honor Representative or Honor Advisor can answer any questions you might have about the criteria of an Honor Offense or the honor case process. Though the Representative/Advisor will answer all questions, the decision to officially report belongs to the potential Reporter only. Calling an Honor Representative/Advisor in no way binds you to report a case.
If the report involves monetary disputes, you may want to consider Small Claims Court. The Honor Committee is not a collection agency and cannot force a student to make restitution.
Artificial Intelligence
The Honor Committee recognizes that generative artificial intelligence poses new, unanswered questions and concerns about academic integrity at the University. The Faculty Advisory Committee (FAC) has been hard at work to address AI-related concerns and fully understand the potential benefits and risks of AI in academic settings and our Community of Trust. AI usage is growing at the University; we expect this trend to continue as increasingly capable AI becomes more readily available. Honor’s approach to AI will be open-minded, community-based, and thoughtful.
To ensure the integrity of our Community of Trust, Honor is taking the following approach:
- Honor Committee representatives have been in conversation with the Provost, Academic Deans, senior administrators, and faculty of each school at the University. Our goal in these conversations has been to understand the potential benefits, risks, and uses of AI in each school’s unique academic setting. We are also identifying certain common AI uses/concerns in each school (e.g., using debugging AI in the School of Engineering, or generating an essay in the College).
- FAC has created new templates faculty may use to communicate their course’s Honor policy in their syllabi. These include a new section for AI use; faculty are provided space to list specific (but not necessarily comprehensive) acceptable and unacceptable AI uses for each of their courses.
- We are planning community events directed towards students and faculty to:
- Communicate Honor’s approach to AI, particularly in the multi-sanction system
- Ideate potentially constructive uses of AI in University courses and new assignment and exam designs
- Communicate how reporting AI-related Honor Offenses should occur.
- Honor Support Officers are working to understand how AI-related evidence may be presented in Honor Hearings, including considering the reliability of AI detection tools and the standard of proof necessary for AI-related evidence. FAC is also working to understand how citing an AI might be handled in an academic setting.
Generative AI represents a new and evolving era in academics. Honor will have to adjust to that new era, and aims to do so in an educated, balanced, and communicative way. We encourage all members of the Academic Division to consult the AI Task Force Report from the Provost Office for further guidance. Additionally, we encourage all faculty and students to visit the FAQs about Artificial Intelligence by the Provost Office for additional guidance. We welcome community input at our Committee meetings and upcoming public events. Questions regarding AI and Honor should be directed to [email protected].
FAQs for Reporters
While no Honor Committee member can give case-specific advice on whether something will be considered an Honor Offense by an Honor Panel, we encourage Reporters to look at the definitions below and make their own determinations on what may constitute an Honor Offense. The Honor Committee Bylaws define each Act as:
“Lying” shall mean the misrepresentation of one or more facts in order to gain a benefit or harm another person, where the actor knows or should know that the misrepresentation will be relied upon by another person.
“Cheating” shall mean a violation of any standards, conditions, or rules for which a student may receive benefit, credit, or acknowledgment, academic or otherwise. Cheating includes, but is not limited to, performance of any of the following acts, or abetting a fellow student in the performance of any of the following acts: using unauthorized materials in the completion of work, copying from a fellow student, plagiarism, multiple submission, false citation, false data submission, and/or unauthorized acquisition of advance knowledge of the contents of an exam or assignment.
“Stealing” shall mean the taking, keeping, or appropriation of the property of another without the owner’s permission or approval. Stealing also includes the planning of or participation in the taking, keeping, or appropriation of the property of another without the owner’s permission or approval. Stealing may include, without limitation, the passing of bad checks, the failure to pay for goods or services received, the failure to pay rent, and other failures to fulfill lawful financial obligations.
An Act of Lying, Cheating, and Stealing must have occurred with Knowledge that it was an Honor Offense, and it must be considered a Significant breach of the Community of Trust, in order for it to be considered an Honor Offense. If you have questions or believe that an Honor Offense may have occurred, we encourage you to speak with a confidential advisor (contact via website or stop by the Honor Committee office)
You are strongly encouraged to show your support of the University’s Honor System by using the Honor System for Significant Acts of Lying, Cheating, and Stealing. The Honor System’s Constitution, however, does not require that you report cases for each Act that you encounter. The University does not have a non-toleration clause – i.e. a student is not required to report an Honor Offense that they see – and this spirit is extended to faculty members. Your school or department policy may have other requirements with regard to the Honor System.
If you are a faculty member, you have the freedom to speak to other faculty members about the incident(s) (as long as you preserve the identity of the student in question), to speak to the student(s) involved, and/or to solely address the incident through the Honor System.
The first thing a Reporter should do after suspecting an Honor Offense is write contemporaneous notes of the Offense in question with as much information as possible. Please include any useful background or contextual information as well as the steps you took leading up to your decision to report a case.
No. After you formally report an Honor case against a student, the case will be in the system until it is resolved. This policy was instituted to avoid situations in which the Reporter might be pressured to drop a case against their will.
If you suspect a student has used AI in violation of the Honor Code, we highly recommend that you report it as an Honor Offense. Investigators and Counsel for the Honor Committee have been trained on AI evidence in Honor proceedings, so will be able to handle such Offenses.
You will be assigned an Honor Advisor, who will serve as your confidential personal contact and source of information throughout the process. Two Honor Investigators will serve as impartial investigators. If an Informed Retraction is not filed, they will interview you, the Investigated Student, and any other witnesses who may have information about the case. After the investigation is complete, the case will proceed to an Investigative Panel composed of three Honor Committee members. If the panel finds, based on all the evidence, that it is more likely than not that an Honor offense has occurred, the case will proceed to an Honor Hearing. If the Panel finds that it is not more likely than not that an Honor offense has occurred, then the case will be dropped.
As a reporter, your responsibilities are to participate in the Reporter Interview, which usually takes about an hour, then testify at the Hearing, if the case proceeds to a Hearing.
Each Honor case is unique, and timeliness can vary based on a student's experiences and participation in the process. On average, the Informed Retraction takes 32 school days to complete, from the date of the Report to the meeting of the Panel for Sanction.
In order to most effectively investigate and adjudicate the case, we ask for all original documents relevant to the situation. Please do not destroy any physical evidence that may be useful in an investigation.
If the Student asks you about the case after you have reported an Honor violation, you should tell the student that any questions related to the Honor process should be directed towards their Honor Advisor, or they can contact the Honor Committee Chair directly at [email protected].
No, you are not obligated to inform a student of an Honor report in advance, although you are more than welcome to communicate with them about an alleged Honor Offense. We request that you submit all communications with the Student regarding the alleged Honor Offense when filling out the Report Intake form. In addition, regardless of if you choose to inform the Student of your Honor Report, an Honor Advisor will notify the Student of the Report.
All grade penalties related to the suspicion of an Honor offense are under the sole discretion of the course instructor, so the Honor Committee will not sanction any grade penalties. If grade penalties have been assessed prior to resolution of the Honor case, please notify the Panel for Sanction so they may consider this as part of their sanctioning deliberations.
Faculty faith and support is crucial to the longevity of the Honor System. As long-term community members, faculty have a substantial role in shaping students’ attitudes towards the Honor System. Faculty members also enjoy many benefits of living in a community of trust. When you put Honor information of your syllabus or discuss your Honor policies in class, you are showing that the Honor System is alive in the classroom. When you trust students’ excuses, leave the room during a test, or give a take-home exam, you are enjoying some of the benefits of the Honor System. Faculty members also participate in the Honor System by reporting Honor cases when they see a violation of the Honor code.
It is incredibly important for faculty members to explicitly communicate your Honor policy and AI policy on your syllabus. Even if you do not have a strict AI policy in class, we suggest including language such as "if you plan to use the tool for any coursework (grade or ungraded), ask your instructor in advance how the tool can or should be utilized". Discuss your position on Honor and AI in first days of class and throughout the year. Be explicit about what “Pledged” means to you on each assignment. Eliminating ambiguity goes a long way towards ensuring honorable student behavior.
Research regarding college cheating reveals that, when a student believes a faculty member is supportive of the school’s Honor system or academic integrity policy, that student is much more likely to take the policy seriously. If students feel trusted, they will rise to that trust. Trust students, and let them know why you are trusting them.
- Give take-home exams.
- Give unproctored exams.
- Believe a student when they request accommodation unless you have some reason to believe otherwise.
- Encourage students to write and sign the pledge on all graded assignments.