0910G同主题活动第三期－－ARGUMENT242 by 得意滴飙

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242The following appeared as an editorial in the student newspaper of Groveton College.

"To combat the recently reported dramatic rise in cheating among college and university students, these institutions should adopt honor codes similar to Groveton's, which calls for students to agree not to cheat in their academic endeavors and to notify a faculty member if they suspect that others have cheated. Groveton's honor code replaced an old-fashioned system in which students were closely monitored by teachers and an average of thirty cases of cheating per year were reported. The honor code has proven far more successful: in the first year it was in place, students reported twenty-one cases of cheating; five years later, this figure had dropped to fourteen. Moreover, in a recent survey conducted by the Groveton honor council, a majority of students said that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without."


Grounding on a series of data from the surveys and the interviews, the arguer claims that the institutions should adopt an honor code similar to Groveton's(G's) which seems successful while dealing with the cheating problem. At first glance, the argument might be somehow reasonable, but according to the further consideration about the figure and the real effect of the honor code, obviously, to buttress the conclusion needs more supporting evidence.


First and foremost, from the analysis of the statistics, the evidence that the author provides is insufficient to support the cheating phenomena is for the better. Only given the number of the cases of cheating in the first year and the fifth year, how could the trend of cheating be verified to fall down during the 5 years? Maybe the trend was up and down such as the number now over 30 and then falls again, which means sometimes the situation was even worse than before. Thus, it is fallacious to say that the honor code plays a helpful role in solving the cheating problem.

From a deeper perspective, even the trend of cheating has dropped, a lot of things that hide behind the appearance should be taken into account seriously. For one thing, during the examination the students are always concentrating on their own papers, thus there is no time for them to identify whether the others is cheating or not, which makes the number of the cases is lower than before. For another thing, the word "suspect" itself is really difficult to define which means a lot of subjectivity is involved. Frequently, for not to break the friendship with classmates, it is possible for the students not to notify even though they find someone is cheating. Without exploring the further works of the surface phenomenon we can never assert that the situation is improved because of the honor code.


Besides, no one will say they are going to cheat in the exams when they are interviewed. So the feed back of the interviews is unreliable and challenges the reality of the honor code. Furthermore, even assuming that the situation of cheating has been improved, it is nevertheless unfair to infer the adoption of the honor code is the only cause of it. In fact there are other possible explanations for the improvement. For example, the students work harder and the examinations are easier or even changed into open-book exams, all these could contribute to fewer cheating cases or even none.


Last but not the least, assuming the honor code works well in eliminating cases of cheating in GC, there is no indication representing that the honor code could also be necessary to the other colleges.
The possible differences should also be concerned among G students and the others. For instance, G students have a strict examination system while other college and university students never have. Instead of taking exams, they may only have to cooperator with the partners to fulfill some projects. Under this case. the adoption of the honor code will be unnecessary.

In sum, the recommendation that other colleges and universities should adopt the honor code is not well supported. To convince me, the author should provide reasonable and detailed information about whether it is the honor code that makes the cheating phenomena better and rule out all the other possible causes that inhibit the cases of cheating. To better evaluate the advice. I need to know whether to adopt the honor code is the best way to solve the cheating problem.