Honor is usually considered a good thing. Given that fact, should we be worried that UNC-Chapel Hill recently discontinued its longstanding student-run Honor Court?
On July 17, 2024, Provost Christopher Clemens and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Amy Johnson sent a message to the campus community entitled “Adapting the Student Conduct Process.” While the email was full of the pandering at which university administrators excel, it was clear that “adapting” really meant the end of something. The provost announced that the administration had concluded that the “honor court”—the student-run disciplinary system—was no longer effective. Consequently, the administration had decided “to shift the Student Conduct processes to a conduct board model that reflects national best practice and is designed to better serve students involved in cases.”
The honor system that has been replaced was indeed complex.The system that has been replaced was indeed complex. It was governed by a document called the Instrument of Student Judicial Governance, which was adopted in 1974. First, that document laid out expectations of student conduct and defined specific violations. These covered a familiar range of offenses: academic dishonesty, interfering with academic processes, wrongdoings towards other students, inappropriate behavior relating to cars, substance abuse, and property damage, as well as conduct that undermined the university’s integrity (such as misrepresenting one’s academic standing). Second, the document established a system for adjudicating these offenses. The system consisted of two courts, each with three similarly structured offices (i.e., six offices total). One court was for undergraduates, the other for graduate and professional-track students. Violation reports were received by one of the offices of the student attorney general, who decided whether to bring cases forward and assigned “counsels” to represent both students and the university. The student attorneys general were appointed by each unit’s student-government bodies. The honor courts (including their chairs) were also chosen by the student-government bodies. The undergraduate court consisted of at least 25 students, with the chair appointing panels for specific cases. Finally, each unit had an outreach office charged with educating the university community about the honor system.
Provost Clemens’s message cited several problems with the former system. It was time-consuming and took a long time to settle cases, with the average span being around a hundred days. It was also complex, with multiple offices governed by different rules, resulting in a decentralized process encompassing “several policies, all with distinct standards of evidence, timelines and other requirements.” While Clemens’s message said the new system was still under discussion, he nonetheless explained its basic parameters: “Hearings and related processes [will] be guided by University staff to ensure consistency across cases and to reduce unreasonable burden on student adjudicators.” Rather than being student-run, the board model will involve input from an “advisory board of students, faculty and staff.” The new system will have the added benefit of bringing UNC-Chapel Hill “into alignment with peer institutions across the country and other campuses within the UNC System.”
Under the old system, UNC-Chapel Hill belonged to a cohort of American colleges and universities with honor codes and related organizations. Honor codes have a distinct and complex history in American higher education. “Honor,” of course, refers to a moral code that entails far more than obedience to laws and rules: It implies an ethos in which proper conduct is incumbent for individuals due to their status in society. Thus conceived, honor can inspire respect from others and pride in oneself. It is particularly valued in traditional and hierarchical societies and was frequently prized in elite circles of the early American republic. It was especially important in the military and the South. The 1821 regulations of the United States Military Academy implicitly referenced the idea of honor when it stated: “Any cadet who shall be guilty of conduct unbecoming a gentleman shall be dismissed [from] the service.”
University codes adhered to a traditional concept of honor while also dealing with the more practical matter of enforcing discipline.It was not until after the Civil War that a number of American colleges began to adopt formal honor codes. The core principle was that the (mostly male) students would pledge to follow expected standards of conduct and that violations would be monitored by the students themselves. Honor codes thus adhered to a traditional concept of honor while also dealing with the more practical matter of enforcing discipline among sizable groups of young men. The 1901-02 university catalogue at Washington and Lee University, which has a longstanding honor code, declared: “This system [of honor] is traditional at [the university]. […] In the few cases in which a student has had the hardihood to cheat in class or examination, he has been required by his fellow students to leave the institution.”
Even if they thrived mainly at smaller institutions and military academies (often in the South), honor codes were, through the 1950s, in sync with social norms as well as the elite populations higher education then served. In many instances, honor codes were simply pledges to uphold campus rules and, in some cases, commitments not to cheat on exams (making proctoring unnecessary). By the 1960s, however, public universities were rapidly expanding, and the very concept of honor was viewed with suspicion.
Though UNC-Chapel Hill has had an honor code in some form for well over a century, the Instrument of Student Judicial Governance seems to have been the outcome of 60s-era critiques of the earlier system. While the university’s latest system was an Honor Court, this name was in some ways a misnomer—or at least a leftover from an outdated model. Unlike the honor codes at the 19th-century U.S. Military Academy or Washington and Lee, the Instrument of Student Judicial Governance was less about honor per se than about establishing a student court system that mirrored state and federal court systems. The “judicial reform process” that began in 1969 and culminated with the adoption of the instrument in 1974 was less concerned with “honor” than with developing a robust system for defending student rights at a time when students often felt at odds with faculty and professors. Students served as prosecutors and defense lawyers, acted as judges, and considered standards of evidence. A story in the Daily Tar Heel from November 15, 1973, quotes a student whose criticism of the process captures contemporary preoccupations: “What started out as a reform may turn out to be a document protecting the University administration rights, but not protecting student needs and interests.” This focus on ensuring student rights was reflected in the fact that several Triangle-area law firms specialized in representing students in these courts (see here and here).
The decision to replace the Honor Court with a Conduct Board certainly smacks of an expansion of administrative authority. Students involved in the honor system released a statement regretting the fact that the “university administration did not consult us—or any member of student government to our knowledge—about their decision.” Moreover, questions relating to student discipline have been at the heart of recent political controversies that have drawn attention to UNC-Chapel Hill, such as the protests against the Confederate statue in 2018-19 and the anti-Israel demonstrations last spring.
The new system, by diminishing the role played by students in upholding campus rules, could contribute to undergrads’ further infantilization.Though administrators have said these events did not determine the policy change, it seems likely that they provided an occasion for university attorneys to end a system with which they were uncomfortable. The more the Honor Court resembles an actual court, with real attorneys and legal consequences, the more it will expose the university to legal risk—and the scrutiny of lawyers. The new policy thus may be an indirect result of the trend whereby student conduct is increasingly colonized by legal concerns.
Despite being a local issue, the new policy at UNC-Chapel Hill captures some of the tensions found on contemporary campuses. Though this was most likely not the intent, the new system, by diminishing the role played by students in upholding campus rules, could contribute to the further infantilization of today’s undergraduates (on this issue, see UNC-Chapel Hill professor Rita Koganzon’s interesting op-ed for the New York Times). Yet, while this is not particularly likely, the new system could have the opposite effect. Honor codes are in many ways relics of a time when student populations were small, homogeneous, and unabashedly elitist.
Honor codes did get something right: the idea that students should have incentives to uphold the standards of an academic community and take pride in doing so. This is an idea worth reinventing in our more tumultuous, egalitarian times.
Michael C. Behrent is a professor of history at Appalachian State University.