Groveton Honor Code

The student author of the editorial seems to respect the honor code Groveton expects from its students, yet the author assumes the code itself is solely responsible for the alleged reduction in cheating at the school. Citing a survey to further empahsize the aforementioned assumption, the author only invites more speculation on the topic rather than providing further evidence as intended. While cheating is a frowned upon topic in all universities, this editorial is rife with assumptions and fallacious deduction, rendering the argument weak and unconvincing. First, the reporting system for Groveton 's novel honor code and the "old-fashioned" system it replaced both relyed solely on a human witness for reporting. Teachers used to monitor students and the new protocol calls for students to monitor each other and report any instances of cheating. Both of these employ the assumption that all cheating is caught. Just because there are reports of dishonesty does not mean all the students who did not get reported did not cheat. That being the case, the system of reporting itself is flawed, and cannot be used to calculate the objective number of cheaters. For example, students can be surprisingly innovative in their enterprise to cheat.

Who says these students are being honest in the first place. It seems too easy for a student to simply "agree" not to cheat. Furthermore, a student can file a faulty report of cheating on a fellow student. For example, what if a student cheated himself, then proceeded to report the student he copied from as the cheater? Is the school expected or willing to take action based on a single report alone? Additionally, students can band together and cheat and not turn each other in. Just because the reports have supposedly decreased, does not mean that actual frequency of cheating has changed