In this capitalistic era when we tend to focus on material things, we often find ourselves facing decisions of morality versus profitability. By looking at corporate America in recent years, it is easy to see just how great the temptation to “cook the books,” or otherwise manipulate the system, can be. There are, of course, laws against this sort of thing, but they’re often ignored; many simply see the potential to gain as greater than the potential to harm.
The very same applies in academia. Especially today, there are many opportunities for people—students, professors, and researchers alike—to cheat in one way or another. This may be by a failure to credit sources or the outright theft of an answer key; both are particularly heinous cases of academic dishonesty. We have rules against this kind of fraud at RPI, and in many cases they’re backed up by federal laws. Even so, there are cases, such as the one cited by Linda Layne’s “My View” in last week’s edition of The Poly, in which this sort of behavior continues.
Some people have proposed that an Institute-wide code of honor might address the problem; in particular, Layne mentioned the West Point Honor Code as an example of such a policy. Unfortunately, this idea would not translate well to RPI. The Institute already has rules enforcing academic integrity, and rightly so. One must bear in mind that West Point is the United States Military Academy, where all cadets—before deciding to attend—made the choice to take that Code of Honor as the backbone of a life philosophy as opposed to a simple guiding principle. We are a fundamentally different type of institution; we cannot assume that all members of the Rensselaer community would be willing to commit to this type of lifestyle.
The decision to take up a code of honor must be a personal choice. It is more than a moral decision and one that we encourage everybody to consider individually, but it is not one that can ever be effectively enacted as policy. Such a creed cannot be forced upon individuals by the student senators, professors, or administrators. To change our personal values is beyond the scope of their authority. We already have a policy for academic honesty and the repercussions of infractions; we do not need a way of life.
