Honor Code

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In “Why Colleges Should Ditch Honor Codes” Susan Greenberg is trying to inform the audience as to why society does not require the honor code anymore. The rules that lie behind this regulation are becoming outdated and more students are finding themselves punished for disobeying it. A lot of honor code schools are trying to get rid of this process because it only brings the students more pressure. Typically, students that are in honor code schools tend to cheat more than schools that do not possess it. If a student is enrolled in a more prestigious school, he/she is more tempted to cheat in order to maintain his or her good grades. Greenberg explains a situation that took place in Stanford University that led more than 100 students in academic …show more content…

This has become an ongoing problem relating back to the honor code. Specifically, students at more prestigious schools tend to have a lower percentage of students turning other students in for cheating. Despite that fact, Greenberg assumes that students do not want to tell on their peers when she states, “It’s clear that honor codes fail to stop cheating on college campuses.” These students have more pressure to maintain their grades because of how rigorous their coursework is. Greenberg depicts a fallacy involving circular reasoning in this quote because this statement is not proving that honor codes fail in all colleges. Stating that the honor code fails in all of the colleges is not definite. Most students that do see someone cheating do not end up reporting it. The reports are very low regarding students admitting in honor code schools that they participated in cheating or have seen someone cheat. Overall, students do not like to report if they see someone cheating or not. Students at higher schools have more pressure on them so reporting someone else of cheating would not benefit them. That does not become an overall failure for the honor code everywhere. The article does not have enough statistics to conclude that students do not report forms of cheating. Plus, the statistics given in the article are outdated when stating, “just 2.5 percent honor code complainants during the 2008-2009 academic year were students.” If we were given statistics every year, then this could potentially become evidence that the honor code is failing in these

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