As a 2014 physics alum, I feel this discussion warrants heavier consideration towards:
1. The immense pressures that students are under (see: Wabash report).
2. The fact that there’s a genocide happening before our eyes, and a refusal from the administration to engage with its own role in that with the severity and urgency it deserves - not to mention escalation of dangerous anti-protest tactics used on students. When you see that sort of betrayal and lack of ethics from an organization like Mudd, it shatters your belief in the community, and cheating on a test to get through the week sure seems like much less of a big deal in comparison. Why would students care about upholding the community values of an organization that shows itself to not care about upholding its own mission statement?
Agreed. ('06 grad here). Certainly there were some extremely wonderful and unusually complex-consciousness people (for lack of a better description, "really smart" doesn't even begin to cover it) at my time at HMC, displaying positive behaviors and complex thinking at a level which would be totally foreign to most American college students, but I still found it a deeply flawed environment.
Thanks for writing this - have been thinking a lot about this as ASHMC discusses the recent protests and how different members of staff and faculty are perceiving the honor code. Agree with a lot of what you're saying and honestly would love to personally look more into honor-code related literature!
Mudd graduate 2014 here. When I was president of ASHMC in 2013-2014, we put up the honor code plaque in the Teaching and Learning Center, but I think that even then, there were serious problems. In particular, as a member of the honor board all four years, I remember a student being surprised they had received a sanction after what was -- to a majority of the board -- a pretty obvious case of cheating (in that particular case, the professor reported it). Recently, after some alums have told me about recent events on campus, I was reading the Harvey Mudd subreddit, where students (anonymously) have shared that cheating is rampant(!). I must have been a goody two-shoes since I always followed my professor's instructions carefully, which probably explained why I flunked my chem courses and had to retake them :).
I broadly think you are correct. Despite what I wanted to be the case, the truth was that many members of the honor board, including the honor board chairs in some I sat on, were actually not interested in seeming like 'prosecuting' their peers. In particular, I became ASHMC treasurer after previous CAP chairs had silently taken some ASHMC money for their own use without following procedures. This is a big no-no in any non-profit, and I was surprised that the honor board chairs had basically no interest in doing anything about it. Having the benefit of a decade of life more than what I had then, I think it's pretty obvious what needs fixing, and you hit the nail on the head. The student-run nature of it is toxic for both the accused, the accusers, and the panel of peers.
This is probably my favorite post that I've read so far. As a Mudd student, I agree that their needs to be more trust between students and faculty/admin, and I mostly agree with your "dos" and "do nots." Unfortunately, I feel like adherance to the honor code has ben significantly damaged by COVID (due to cheating in online classes) and probably will not recover in a long time. I like in particular your point about how studies should be about who you become, rather than what you learn. I think that should be the most emphasized point in school. Unfortunately, our society is built upon unrepresentative metrics, so it is difficult for a student to want to focus their studies on developing character when all a prospective company is seeing is a GPA. In my opinion the pursuit of knowledge is meaningful in itself, but there is not necessarily a correlation between knowledge gained and grade earned, and most people evaluating you only care about the grade.
I do kind of disagree that there should be more faculty/administration involvement. The point of the honor code is that it is upheld by the students, and I think more faculty/administration involvement is too much of a "top-down" approach and I feel would cause the process to feel more punitive, not less. For example, recently a member of admin sent out a call for self-reports for protest damage. Given how Pomona has suspended many students for protests, this can feel adversarial and punitive, whereas it feels less so when the ASHMC student leaders do it. I think the main solution is strong student culture around the honor code, but again, that kind of died during COVID.
Oh yeah—also, this might be a hot take the concept of a "self-report" is kind of a joke now. Many (I would even guess most, though I don't have the case summaries on me to say for sure) people who "self-report" actually only do so after a call for self-reports, and after that, some people even still refused to self-report after the professor reached out to them. I think that when it gets to the point of "call for self-reports" it's barely a self-report and even moreso if the professor has to reach out to someone individually.
As a 2014 physics alum, I feel this discussion warrants heavier consideration towards:
1. The immense pressures that students are under (see: Wabash report).
2. The fact that there’s a genocide happening before our eyes, and a refusal from the administration to engage with its own role in that with the severity and urgency it deserves - not to mention escalation of dangerous anti-protest tactics used on students. When you see that sort of betrayal and lack of ethics from an organization like Mudd, it shatters your belief in the community, and cheating on a test to get through the week sure seems like much less of a big deal in comparison. Why would students care about upholding the community values of an organization that shows itself to not care about upholding its own mission statement?
Agreed. ('06 grad here). Certainly there were some extremely wonderful and unusually complex-consciousness people (for lack of a better description, "really smart" doesn't even begin to cover it) at my time at HMC, displaying positive behaviors and complex thinking at a level which would be totally foreign to most American college students, but I still found it a deeply flawed environment.
Thanks for writing this - have been thinking a lot about this as ASHMC discusses the recent protests and how different members of staff and faculty are perceiving the honor code. Agree with a lot of what you're saying and honestly would love to personally look more into honor-code related literature!
Mudd graduate 2014 here. When I was president of ASHMC in 2013-2014, we put up the honor code plaque in the Teaching and Learning Center, but I think that even then, there were serious problems. In particular, as a member of the honor board all four years, I remember a student being surprised they had received a sanction after what was -- to a majority of the board -- a pretty obvious case of cheating (in that particular case, the professor reported it). Recently, after some alums have told me about recent events on campus, I was reading the Harvey Mudd subreddit, where students (anonymously) have shared that cheating is rampant(!). I must have been a goody two-shoes since I always followed my professor's instructions carefully, which probably explained why I flunked my chem courses and had to retake them :).
I broadly think you are correct. Despite what I wanted to be the case, the truth was that many members of the honor board, including the honor board chairs in some I sat on, were actually not interested in seeming like 'prosecuting' their peers. In particular, I became ASHMC treasurer after previous CAP chairs had silently taken some ASHMC money for their own use without following procedures. This is a big no-no in any non-profit, and I was surprised that the honor board chairs had basically no interest in doing anything about it. Having the benefit of a decade of life more than what I had then, I think it's pretty obvious what needs fixing, and you hit the nail on the head. The student-run nature of it is toxic for both the accused, the accusers, and the panel of peers.
This is probably my favorite post that I've read so far. As a Mudd student, I agree that their needs to be more trust between students and faculty/admin, and I mostly agree with your "dos" and "do nots." Unfortunately, I feel like adherance to the honor code has ben significantly damaged by COVID (due to cheating in online classes) and probably will not recover in a long time. I like in particular your point about how studies should be about who you become, rather than what you learn. I think that should be the most emphasized point in school. Unfortunately, our society is built upon unrepresentative metrics, so it is difficult for a student to want to focus their studies on developing character when all a prospective company is seeing is a GPA. In my opinion the pursuit of knowledge is meaningful in itself, but there is not necessarily a correlation between knowledge gained and grade earned, and most people evaluating you only care about the grade.
I do kind of disagree that there should be more faculty/administration involvement. The point of the honor code is that it is upheld by the students, and I think more faculty/administration involvement is too much of a "top-down" approach and I feel would cause the process to feel more punitive, not less. For example, recently a member of admin sent out a call for self-reports for protest damage. Given how Pomona has suspended many students for protests, this can feel adversarial and punitive, whereas it feels less so when the ASHMC student leaders do it. I think the main solution is strong student culture around the honor code, but again, that kind of died during COVID.
Oh yeah—also, this might be a hot take the concept of a "self-report" is kind of a joke now. Many (I would even guess most, though I don't have the case summaries on me to say for sure) people who "self-report" actually only do so after a call for self-reports, and after that, some people even still refused to self-report after the professor reached out to them. I think that when it gets to the point of "call for self-reports" it's barely a self-report and even moreso if the professor has to reach out to someone individually.