New Package!

<p>ssshhh! we aren't meant to give or take assistance!</p>

<p>oh for goodness sakes, such, LOL.
pav, just do your best to convince them of your sincere belief in the system. If you think expression of this would be strengthened by discourse on the 'essential notions' then that's totally valid too. If it's not good enough they'll let you know.</p>

<p>oops I forgot to add this smiley to my previous post...:p</p>

<p>"sincere belief in the system" <--- haha :D :D</p>

<p>and guys, wha do we do now, huh? You saw me, i tried to cheat, will you be rats and tell on me?! :p </p>

<p>no really, there is a small bug here: how does the duty to denounce go along with camaraderie and all that? yes, i suppose it doesn't matter and all... <em>sigh</em></p>

<p>mea, thanks, that just what i'm gonna do: try to make it convincible yet not exaggerate... we'll see :rolleyes:</p>

<p>"I hereby solemny pledge my honor to uphold the noble values of truth and justice..." lol kidding, i have no idea what to write either</p>

<p>As I understood the honor system from the admission offer package, there are 2 things about the honor system :
1. You don't cheat!
2. If you see somebody cheating, you have to tell some teacher???
Now, the first point is ok (I hope I will not need to cheat :) )but the second one is against what I think about friendship and being a student in general. So as I understand, if you see somebody is cheating, you should look the opposite direction...If in the opposite direction someone else is cheating - Look into your paper! :D
So, what do we do about you, Pavalon :) ? I think we should pretend we didn't read your posts??? Anyway...I don't think you violated the Honor System (YET :D )...and you also didn't sign that paper (YET :D )</p>

<p>The second clause won't apply to me - I am totally unobservant in any case :p</p>

<p>mm, i know what you mean about camaradie, and it does have that aura of Mao's rectification campaigns/mcCarthyism etc. However, I think it's a little different now. In high school, if a student cheated, the responsibility was primarily the teacher's to sort out for the good of all the other students. But now, the professors, at the specific request of the students on the honor committe, have given up the responsibilitiy to the students. That's huge, and the responsibility is now ours where it may not have been before to watch out for the student body/learning experience as a whole in this respect.</p>

<p>Basically put, if we don't ensure that people aren't getting an unfair advantage, no one will. Moreover, the thought that being a friend means tolerating cheating scares me.</p>

<p>Friendship is one of the strongest bonds a person will ever ever ever have and I totally believe in sticking by through thick and thin. However, I don't believe in sticking by through dishonesty and betraying the trust of others unless I can believe that the person didn't know what he/she was doing -- in which case I would at the very,very least pull the friend aside and remind him/her of the values he's signed himself to....</p>

<p>I know that it's not as simple as that, though. I've been lucky in that none of my friends are the type who would cheat, so I've never had to face this problem. But I do feel that fundamentally to turn a blind eye would be wrong, especially after having signed myself to an honor code.</p>

<p>Very well said, mea. I concur.</p>

<p>


Mea, people have unfair advantages all the time: it's the way this world works! Someone is much smarter, another can learn impressive amounts of material etc. By nature, we find ourselves in unbalanced positions. Will it be an unfair advantage that many americans know english better than most of us internationals? no!</p>

<p>let me give you an example (a bad one, but still): a person X has a much worse memory than everybody else; this is an unfair disadvantage. At a test, he/she pulls out a paper with some formulas/names/dates which he/she would otherwise forgotten. Thus, he/she gets an unfair advantage. Is the situation clear, from the point of view of fairness? I don't think so!!</p>

<p>And besides that, remember that honor is soooo complicated and vague and interpretable:
honor is to report a friend/student who cheats and
honor is to respect friendship and make a tough decision for somebody, when he/she needs it.</p>

<p>Apart from that, if we're not talking about ranking exams, then getting a higher grade by cheating will only affect the person who cheats, and it's his/her problem to live with that thought... i don't care!</p>

<p>My opinion is that the honor code is like a law. You can apply it blindly, and report a guy who took out his wallet during a test and looked at a X dollar bill to remember the first name of what president... or, you can use your judgement and interpret the law. honor being such a relative notion, some relative judgement is necessary...</p>

<p>And one more thing about the honor code and not only:
"an absolute statement always has a flaw!" </p>

<p>:D:D:D</p>

<p>Anyone think there will be more snitching especially with the 35% A's grade capping?</p>

<p>I seriously doubt there will be a need to invoke any kind of clause within the Honor Code. I mean, if you're at Princeton and you're cheating, something's wrong. That's why people study their arses off at Princeton: so they don't have to resort to what can often (but granted, not always) be chalked up to laziness.</p>

<p>Phil: be aware of making sweeping generalizations! If i understand correctly what you're saying, then: it's unnatural to assume that all 4500 students at P have this (beautiful and fair) pride of not being considered lazy or dishonest, and this prevents them from, ahem, using alternative methods :D .
Besides, the desire to study one's arse off should come from inside, and there, inside, there's no reason to over-achieve...</p>

<p>Edit: If you're lazy, then... that's it!
I'm lazy! :D horribly lazy... :rolleyes:</p>

<p>PS sorry if i'm commenting on something you did not say.</p>

<p>Sorry, pav, but that doesn't follow. There is no pride resulting from not cheating, or at least there shouldn't be. It's just something you...well, don't do. Just like I wouldn't say I'm proud of the fact that I haven't gone and stolen something from my classmates', neither would I be proud of the fact that I don't cheat off of them. In most cases (but not all, as I said), cheating (especially plagiarizing, which is unjustustifiable in my opinion) is the result of a lack of initiative on someone's part to fully apply themselves to whatever task is at hand.</p>

<p>I realize I'm making a sweeping generalization, but it stands to reason that when I've been in several classes where 60% of the people are cheating and they're cheating because "Oh snap, I forgot there was a test today. Could you move your arm a little so I can look off your paper?" (or just plain don't even ask and do it anyways), I've kinda been able to put 2 and 2 together ;)</p>

<p>I'm lazy, too. Trust me. I procrasinate worse than most if not all of the incoming class of 2009. But cheating's at the extreme of that, and something I don't see many of us engaging in. At least I hope not, hehe. As we've all read from the Honor Code, the consequences are pretty severe.</p>

<p>Bah, enough of that. Prom's tonight! Must go transform myself into Super Sugah Daddy USA :cool:</p>

<p>go get'em, :cool: ! </p>

<p>Have fun!! :)</p>