Communications

Date: April 15, 2013

To: The University Community

From: Evan B. Behrle, Honor Committee Chair

Re: An Important Change to the Honor System

To the University community:

This past year, the 170th of the Honor System's existence at the University, was marked by robust discussion about the nature and functioning of the Community of Trust and its Honor System. These conversations culminated in a University-wide vote in which students ratified a ballot measure that added a new element to the Honor System's Constitution: the Informed Retraction (the "IR").

The IR is one of the most important and substantial changes to the Honor System in recent memory. The IR has its philosophical roots in the Conscientious Retraction (the "CR"), which has been a feature of the University's Honor System for more than three decades. The CR involves the admission of an Honor offense before the student in question believes that the offense is suspected or reported by anyone. The IR extends the opportunity to admit an Honor offense through a period after a student learns that an Honor report has been received. The IR is predicated on a student taking responsibility for the commission of an Honor offense and making amends for his or her actions, both by admitting the Honor offense to all affected parties and by taking a leave of absence from the University community for two full academic semesters. A student who submits an IR agrees, implicitly, to recommit him- or herself to the Community of Trust by not committing any further act of lying, cheating, or stealing. To read more about the IR, please click here. (The conditions and procedures for the filing of a valid CR, and for the filing of a request for, and acceptance of, an IR, are set forth, in detail, in Article III of the By-laws of the Honor Committee, which can be viewed here.)

In order to review the IR and discuss the future of Honor at the University, the Honor Committee is hosting a town hall panel in the University Chapel at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 18. The panel will feature Dean Allen Groves; Professor Sherri Moore; Student Council President Eric McDaniel; Cavalier Daily columnist Forrest Brown; Rachna Pathak, the former President of the Asian Student Union; and Evan Behrle, the Chair of the Honor Committee. As space is limited, please RSVP here if you plan on attending.

Student self-governance has always been and will always be the foundation of our Community of Trust. Student participation gave our System the IR, and only with further student participation can we ensure that our System continues to live up to its founding ideals.

Sincerely yours,

Evan B. Behrle
Chair, Honor Committee 2013-2014

Stephen A. Nash
Chair, Honor Committee 2012-2013