Is Rice Honor Code Too Strict? It discourages cheating effectively, but is it unfair?

[oneshotdeer1990]

I am an incoming freshman to Rice, and I spent some time looking at the honor council website.

First off, I want to say that I would not consider myself a cheater. I fully support punishing students who cheat on exams, plagiarize papers, etc. I do not encourage academic dishonesty.

But reading some of these cases and the Honor Code Module for the Rice Honor System (which I found on the honor code website http://honor.rice.edu/ ) gives me great concern.

In case 1 for the 2016-2017, a student essentially copied straight from an answer key to finish his chemistry (lower level course) problem set. The assignment was worth less than a percent of his grade, and the Honor Council found a one letter grade drop to be a suitable punishment.

I strongly feel like this was an unreasonable punishment. I don’t see why they didn’t just give him a zero for the assignment, which I think they should do instead of dropping grades left and right. It isn’t unfair to give punishment for this, but the level of punishment this system gives sure seems unfair.

Furthermore, I saw a few cases that brought up evidence that seemed to go over the line.
Case 20 Fall 2016 (exam investigation) cited images of a ‘Student B’s’ Home
Case 16 Fall 2016 (exam investigation) cited an email chain between students
Case 31 Spring 2017 (quiz investigation) cited a google search from a student’s device (context of search was unclear though)

I understand that it is important to uphold the integrity of examinations, but this seems like a full out criminal investigation. In comparison, schools like Princeton only have these things for in class examinations. This goes way beyond a TA seeing a student glancing at someone else’s exam paper and reporting them.

I think this honor system is excessive. It isn’t as bad as Stanford’s (which can even give community service), but it still seems to give harsh punishments and steps over the line (invasion of privacy). But I know that I cannot change the honor system, and my opinion on it doesn’t really matter because it is in place. But I just generally want to know about student experiences with Rice’s system.

Specifically, I want to know about things like collaborating on homework assignments and how this system impacts student interactions.

During my visit to Wash U St. Louis, I saw that students collaborated on each others’ lab reports/helped each other frequently. Cheating on tests wasn’t accepted, but no one saw any issues with helping each other do a problem set or getting labs done even if a professor did not give them explicit permission to do so. Even if the professor said to not work together or to not use online sources, the students didn’t care because working together and using the internet helped them learn the material easier. The students seemed to be hardworking (bio medical engineering at that school is very hard, it is nicknamed business major eventually), good students that wanted to learn and were not just trying to exploit holes in the system to get a good grade.

This is why I was very surprised to see the Rice honor code module. It gave an example of two students who were allowed to take/record data together, but were apparently not allowed to discuss trends in the data/explanations together. I understand that they should write their own lab reports, but I think that banning them from talking about what to say in the lab report is a little excessive. In high school, my groups talked about trends in the data and why certain things were happening but wrote different lab reports and often received different letter grades.

It also gave examples of a student seeing their roommate use online material (unauthorized assistance) on a homework assignment and being expected to report them. The student would be forced to accuse their roommate of a validation - likely leading to a letter grade drop over something so insignificant - or receive the same punishment.
This just seems like they are encouraging students to rat on each other. Students should report cheating on an exam, but I just don’t see why reporting on people about homework assignments is encouraged like this.

As I said before, I would not cheat on an exam or plagiarize a paper. But if a professor did not give explicit permission to work together on a lab or a problem set, I would have no qualms about working with other people - like the students at Wash U. And honestly, I would not want to rat on someone unless it was a particularly heinous offense - I would rather administration or faculty take care of things like that.

Does everyone at Rice truly care about the honor system this much that they would stab each other in the back over insignificant homework assignments? (I mean what kind of person would report on that kid for the insignificant chemistry problem set, knowing that it would mess their grade up - who would care about rules that much other than a teacher)
Or do they simply not dare to do anything because the possible punishments are too severe?

I have heard people live by the code and die by the code at Rice, and I think the way this honor code is integrated in Rice’s culture seems to make it a sort of rules obsessed cult. I have heard people say they like the system because it bans cheaters from the community, but I still feel like the system gives harsh punishments and classifies every minor and heinous offense as an invalidation as if they were they same thing.

I understand that most professors give clear honor code guidelines for each assignment and that students should ask about their professor to clarify the honor code for certain assignments as needed.
But it seems right now that people show no hesitation to report others over insignificant things (I know the honor code system is supposed to invoke a sense of trust in students, but how can you trust someone who is expected to report you if you do something as insignificant as copy a chemistry problem set worth less than a percent of your grade), and if any sort of invalidation is found the committee will most likely drop your GPA in an undeserving manner.

Again, please let me reinstate that I am not posting this because I am afraid of getting caught cheating. I am posting this because I still am having a hard time processing that doing things like working with someone/using the internet to complete assignments not even worth a percent of my grade or talking with a lab partner about why certain things happened in the experiment can result in a grade letter drop or worse.
Obviously if I don’t do these things I don’t have anything to worry about, but I feel like people shouldn’t care this much about very slight infractions and be punished so severely.

[Srabookworm]

I completely understand your hesitancy to embrace the honor code given its seeming degree of strictness. I can’t speak for every Rice student, but personally I’ve never had any problems with the honor code and don’t know of anyone who has. I’m a humanities student, so any violations of the honor code would pretty much look like copying on a paper or using unauthorized information on an exam - like I said, I’ve never heard of that being an issue and have never run into concerns. In my experience, professors will usually put the honor code on their syllabus and say something to the effect of “You know the rules - don’t be stupid.” And they largely trust students to abide by the honor code on their own. I have heard of professors in the STEM fields who are much stricter about the honor code, but they’ll make such expectations clear. I have never heard about students reporting other students - I’m sure it does happen, but it’s not as prevalent as reading honor code cases might make you believe. Usually, people won’t report others unless they feel like someone’s really abusing the system - they’re not just trying to get you in trouble for attempting to complete your work. Usually any upperclassmen mentors you have will know the honor code rules and will let you know if there’s info that they can’t share, not report you for it. As to whether the honor code is too harsh, personally I’d agree that it seems pretty intense. However, there’s nothing that can really be done but try to steer clear of honor code infractions. You shouldn’t have to live in fear of the honor code - just be aware of the rules and study with integrity, and you should be fine

[weinreb]

You really, really have no cause for concern. The honor code website, of course, in their attempt to really crack down on cheating, have really overexaggerated the cases. You’ll get much more information during O-Week (though those presentations might be a bit exaggerated as well). (Another important note: Honor Council is actually a student organization, so the punishments decided upon by a group of college representatives, if I remember correctly.)

Anyway, collaborations on problems sets and lab reports are TOTALLY NORMAL. And usually encouraged. The problem, on the other hand, lies when students “collaborate” on assignments that the professors has specifically designated as being non-collaborated (e.g. “pledged problems” in physics or essays in humanities classes–though those can still be edited by your peers). A lot of this is due to the immense faith Rice puts in its students: professors often give take-home tests or take-home quizzes or, yes, sometimes lab reports, in place of class exams because they feel comfortable that students won’t cheat due to the honor code. However, in the case that a student cheats, even if someone else finds out, unless that person is bound by their authority (read: a TA) to report the incident, most students will let it slide.

Honestly, as someone who got into and visited WashU, I can say without a doubt that Rice fosters a much more collaborative environment. Compared to other universities of a similar caliber, Rice is much less cut-throat, no one is actively out to destroy you or “rat you out”–it’s definitely no “rules obsessed cult.” (It’s almost offensive that you, as an incoming student, would think that.) Take a deep breath. You’ll be fine.