Student representatives of the Honor and Ethics conference held Friday, October 4, discussed the conclusions they reached at the conference with their advisors and peers during an extended advisory Thursday.

As part of an outreach effort, the Honor Council intended the discussions to expand the discourse from the conference to the entire school.

“It gives the [representative] the opportunity to share his or her experience of learning, so there’s that growth for that individual,” Honor Council advisor Evan Barth said, “but the biggest reason was to hopefully ‘spread the wealth’ to everybody in advisory and to bring the conversation to everybody.”

Since its inception, the Honor Council has worked with teachers and students to improve awareness and integrity across the student body. The biennial Honor and Ethics Conference, started two years ago, is the latest effort to increase transparency into the Honor Council’s case review process.

After Thursday’s discussions, student representatives met with Barth at an informal breakfast to share feedback, which will be considered as the Honor Council continues to promote integrity on campus. According to Barth, student response differed between advisories but remained mainly positive.

“The discussions were very effective, as they gave an opportunity for all members to provide personal views and opinions on how to react to situations that arise frequently in the school environment,” Srivinay Irrinki (11) said.

Raghav Jain (10) agreed that talking about the case studies was a useful reminder of the Honor Code, saying that it “helped reinforce the values of honor.”

On the other hand, some students felt that the discussions in their advisory were not very useful.

“It was interesting to be confronted with situations that could actually happen, but there wasn’t much discussion or any doubt as to [the interpretation of the Honor Code],” Connie Li (12) said.

Although three case studies were reviewed during the conference, advisories focused on one case about the discussion of tests outside of class, which the Honor Council chose because it represented a common occurrence in most students’ daily lives.

While this year’s conference and subsequent discussions took place all within Harker, the previous conference involved student representatives from four other high schools in the area.

Barth plans to continue this pattern of alternating inside- and outside-Harker conferences every two years, as the current system of conferences appears to be effective.

“I think the transparency for how the Honor Council works is absolutely conveyed,” he said. “I’d like to think that the level of honor is raised on campus, too.”