Honor Council releases results for second survey

Quarterly+publishing+statistical+data+of+Honor+Code+violations+will+help+the+community+

Shay Lari-Hosain

Quarterly publishing statistical data of Honor Code violations will help the community

Honor Council released the complete results for its second survey today, which examined the causes and characteristics of cheating in the Upper School.

The survey was sent out on March 10, and 450 participants responded to it.

82 percent of participants answered that they had shared information about tests or quizzes, and 64 percent had inappropriately shared work on an individual assignment. In addition, 57 percent said they rarely catch cheating or plagiarism, while 25 percent claim to often see it. Honor Council Chair Nicholas Manjoine elaborated on his reaction to the results.

“I think that a lot of the responses matched up with some of my intuitions about challenges that the student community faces, but I was certainly very happy [with] the robustness of the responses,” he said. “I thought that there were really good, thoughtful suggestions, so I was really happy to see that.”

Over 25 percent of students who participated in the survey submitted written responses sharing their ideas of what actions could be taken to decrease lapses in academic honesty.

“Many of the responses were personal things that people [had experienced],” Honor Council representative Rahul Bhethanabotla (9) said. “Some of them had advice that we could take, but some of those things were still person-specific.”

The Honor Council aims to have an increased involvement between all members of the Harker community so teachers are able to better understand the pressures that affect students.

“We wanted the students to reflect on the challenges they faced in terms of this particular issue and then hopefully use that as a way to be more responsive,” Manjoine said. “The Honor Council can use the data as a springboard for next year to do more outreach in [the] areas that the survey has highlighted.”

Though feedback from the survey may help students, teachers and parents in the future, the honor council has not made any changes to the Honor Code after seeing the results.

“If there’s a major consensus […] then we’ll start discussing changes to the Honor Code,” Rahul said. “But before that happens, I don’t foresee any changes to the Honor Code.”

The Honor Council plans on releasing biannual surveys, and the next one will be about honorable acts around campus.

This piece was originally published in the pages of The Winged Post on April 22, 2015.