The Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, Evelyn P. Jennings, released the yearly report on violations of the academic honor code this week. The report is given to Thelmo, Faculty Council and The Hill News for review.

The report compiles the total number of cases of academic dishonesty seen by the Academic Honor Council and reported by faculty. The results of these violations are also included.

Chair of the Academic Honor Council, Cecelia Rooney ’20, says that many of these cases are first time offenses from first year students. “The first semester of the year, freshman may not understand what plagiarism is and are still learning what it means,” says Rooney. “A lot of these cases aren’t of malicious intent.”

Rooney said that for first time offenders, the focus is on learning what plagiarism is, rather than on the punishment. “The downward trend in the spring semester shows that there is education happening and people are learning from their mistakes,” she says. “It’s important to take away from the experience, and not be a repeat offender.”

Jennings echoed Rooney, and hopes that the report creates a greater conversation between faculty and students. “One thing that I would like to work on over the next year is a more restorative process between faculty and students, especially for first time infractions,” she says.

Faculty and student relationships can suffer after a student is reported and punished for an honor code infraction. This can lead the student to do worse in the class. “The student might miss out on a subject or topic they really love if the cases are solely punitive, rather than education,” Jennings says.

Associate Dean of Advising, Dr. Elun Gabriel, wants to use this report to look at what needs to be changed in order to decrease the number of cases.

“This report tells us what kinds of problems there are, how serious they are, and how students are understanding the academic honor code,” Gabriel says. “The recent spike in Fall 2017 tells us that we need more education and conversation about the academic honor code. The First Year Convocation originally existed to make academic and personal integrity more meaningful to the students so that they would not make these kinds of mistakes.”

Jennings also mentioned that faculty recently ratified a section of the Academic Honor Code that mentions their own rights, as well as students. This is something that will have to be passed by the Student Body, which Jennings hopes will foster the restorative process that she has been hoping for. “There’ll be a campus wide conversation about this, which creates a wider conversation about what academic integrity should and could be if we’re supposed to be a community of learners,” she says.