Why Are Honor Codes Important

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Many high schools, colleges, and universities through out the world employ a system called an ‘Honor Code,’ according to which students will abide by a set of rules. These rules include things such as no cheating on exams and no stealing from lockers. The catch is that the administration does not enforce the code, it is enforced by the students, and the students are the ones expected to report foul play. Honor codes are a useless system that is doing more harm than good, creating a perfect atmosphere for students to get into a place where they are allowed to do whatever they want, and get away with it. One reason honor codes should not be used anymore is that it allows students to cheat in a ‘safer’ way, where there is little risk of being caught and it is very easy. According to statistics from one small public university, 40% of survey takers …show more content…
Many well respected universities also employ honor codes, yet they have the same problems as the smaller schools. An article written by a newspaper in Virginia tells of cheating scandals at the University of Virginia, a prestigious university founded by Thomas Jefferson, who began the school’s honor code. Mr. Bloomfield, the teacher of a popular introductory physics class, began worrying about cheating in his class after a student admitted to him that she cheated on a paper. He created a computer program to find repeated lines, and ran the program on around 1,500 student papers. He handed his results to the newly formed Honor Committee, who were shocked to see that he had found over 100 cases of cheating. Other students at the university who were found out to have cheated after they graduated had their diplomas taken away (Source D.) These examples show that relying on students to be honest can end up hurting them. Would the students who cheated not have if it wasn’t so simple? We may never know. Honor codes are trying to do good, but are actually making things