Curing the Moral Hazard : By Josh Hess

This post reflects the opinions of Josh Hess only.

Critics of the Honor System frequently insist that the inflexibility of its sanction creates perverse incentives for guilty students to lie once accused. At the heart of this contention is the realization that the system actually rewards those who decide to contest their guilt by allowing them to continue to accrue course credit until the date of their dismissal at trial.

In recognition of this state of affairs, critics of the system propose replacing the single sanction with an “informed retraction.” Under this new regime, students who admit their guilt within a certain period of time after accusation would be permitted to return to the University at some point in the future. Students who contest their guilt and request a trial would still face only permanent dismissal.

One problem with this approach is that it creates perverse incentives of its own. The potential disparity in outcomes for students deciding whether to “leave admitting guilt” or contest their guilt at trial is substantial. Students who are genuinely unsure as to whether they have committed an Honor offense confront a choice between admitting their “guilt” and facing mere suspension and contesting it and facing permanent dismissal. There is a very real risk here that not guilty students would subject themselves to suspension because it is the “safer” option.

But the realization that the informed retraction is undesirable (as students did in 2002) leaves the problems it sought to address untouched.

This past Sunday, the Honor Committee reviewed three proposals to address the “moral hazard” without stirring up new complications. These ideas represent a moderate, creative alternative to the informed retraction and my hope is that the Committee will adopt them.

The first proposal offers to change the transcript notation for students who LAG (“leave admitting guilt”) rather than request a trial from “enrollment discontinued” to “withdrawn.” “Enrollment Discontinued” is already meant to offer dismissed students a certain measure of confidentiality post-dismissal. The switch to “withdrawn” would simply offer one more degree of anonymity.

The differentiating degree is not large enough, though, to create the perverse incentives that one finds with the informed retraction. The shift simply makes the decision by knowingly guilty students to more clearly rational. The shift in transcript notation, unlike the informed retraction, does not present a stand-alone incentive to LAG for not-guilty students.

The other two proposals seek to place reasonable limits on accused students’ capacity to “game” the trial scheduling process to obtain more credit. One proposes giving accused students who request a trial a pre-determined set of trial dates in the near future from which to choose, shifting the burden on them to make a showing as to why none of the dates work and delay is justified. The other attempts to mitigate the incentive to delay in dishonest pursuit of credit accrual by giving the Honor Committee’s Executive Committee the ability to, with a unanimous finding of system-gaming, request that the Faculty Senate deprive delaying students of the credit they acquired post-accusation.

Animating these two proposals is an impulse to minimize the breadth of the moral hazard by making the “reward” of continued dishonesty post-accusation less certain.

My firm belief is that these proposals individually will not have a material capacity to address the moral hazard complications. But, passed together, I do think they would represent a substantial contribution.

Honor Psychological Evaluations Meet Modern Science

This post represents the thoughts and opinions of Sam Leven only.

In the 1970’s and 80’s, when the Honor Committee recognized that psychological factors needed to be considered when judging Honor Offenses, it identified two possible areas of concern. First would be mental or medical conditions that prevent a student from being able to know that the act they were committing could be considered an Honor Offense. This was called a Contributory Mental Disorder (CMD). The second area of concern was students who, by reason of some mental or medical condition, lacked the capacity to mount a proper defense, and as a result should not be forced to stand trial. This was called a Lack of Capacity (LC).

The Honor Committee also recognized that most University students were not capable of making the judgment as to whether or not these psychological conditions were legitimate, and so the modern psychological procedures were born. Instead of going to trial and making an “insanity” defense there, students claiming a CMD or LC take themselves out of the Honor System altogether, and instead have their psychological claims evaluated by an expert panel appointed by the Vice-President for Student Affairs. These panels usually consist of some combination of faculty members, trained psychologists, and staff members. If a student is found to have a CMD, the Honor charges are dropped, and the student must complete certain requirements (usually therapy, and often a short-term time away from school) or else face the re-filing of the Honor charges.

Additionally, the panel must decide if the student poses a “significant risk” of committing more Honor Offenses. If the panel finds that the student does pose such a risk, the student is suspended until the panel finds that the student no longer poses such a risk. The idea of this assessment is recognizing the purpose of our Honor System to begin with is to keep our community free of Honor Offenses.

Similarly, if a student is found to have an LC, the student is not required to go to Trial. Instead, the student’s case is suspended until the student regains the capacity to defend him or herself.

When these procedures were established, however, the Honor Committee recognized that they could easily be abused. Savvy and dishonest students could try to make up claims of a CMD to prolong their case while hoping that many of the witnesses of their offense might forget important information during the months that a psychological evaluation for a CMD often takes. Similarly, a student with a condition that would qualify as an LC had no deterrent whatsoever from committing as many Honor Offenses as he or she wanted to. As a result, the Honor Committee adopted two caveats to the psychological claims. First, to claim a CMD, the student must admit that he or she committed the act in question. As a result, if a CMD is denied, the student may only defend him or herself on the grounds of intent or triviality at Trial, as the jury will be informed that act has been confessed. Second, a student found to have an LC is automatically found to be a “significant risk,” and is suspended until the LC ends.

The system above, however, assumes that there are no disorders that could be both a CMD and qualify as an LC as well. Since that time, psychological study has shown otherwise. The most obvious example of this is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. If a student was in the middle of a traumatic event or period at the time of the alleged offense, and the student suffered Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder afterwards, the traumatic event would very likely be a CMD, but Post-Traumatic Stress often destroys or damages an individual’s memories of the trauma and everything going on at the time of the trauma. As a result, the student likely will not remember the alleged offense at all.

In this situation, a student has a legitimate claim to both a CMD and an LC, but both frivolous claim deterrents seem unfair. If a student cannot remember any of the events surrounding a trauma, and the student feels that he or she is generally extremely honest, the student probably will not believe that he or she actually committed the alleged act. As a result, the student would probably be unwilling to admit act, and unfairly be deprived of a CMD hearing. Similarly, if the student is generally honest, and there’s strong evidence that, if an offense occurred at all, it was just due to that trauma, it also seems improper to declare the student a “significant risk.”

This situation comes up more often than most realize. I, myself, have served on a case where an issue similar to this one arose, and I have heard stories to lead me to believe that I am not alone. While these situations are rare, this is nonetheless a hole in our current system. So, what’s the best way to patch up this hole?

What Would You Do?

There are several possibilities. We could eliminate the automatic finding of “significant risk” for lack of capacity and leave that up to the same panel that decide if the LC actually exists. However, in such a case, what should the deterrent for frivolous LC claims be? Similarly, we could eliminate the admission of act requirement for CMD claims, but again, how do we then deter frivolous claims? We could create a third category of psychological evaluations specially for combined CMD/LC claims, but what would the procedures, findings, results, and deterrents be? We could also eliminate the deterrents for both CMD and LC and just accept that some frivolous claims will occur, so some cases will take a long period of time. Finally, we could end the prohibition on using psychological evidence at trial and give students the choice between pursuing the certified psychological panel route or trying to make a psychological argument to get off at trial.

All of these ideas have positives and pitfalls, but it seems unfair to keep putting students in these challenging situations through yet another challenge. What would you recommend?

Benefits: The Honor System and Flexible Exams

By Catherine Anne Daley and Sophie Staples

The concept of flexible exams is a simple one. Basically, students take unproctored exams at a location and time of their own choosing. Or, professors have control over timing and retain flexibility in location in order to mitigate logistical problems. The benefits for students of flexible examinations are obvious. A personalized exam schedule with exams spaced for optimum study time means that students’ grades will be determined by something other than the randomness of UREG. The benefits for faculty are also important. Under a flexible exam system, the burden on faculty of grading deadlines would be ameliorated by receiving exams on a rolling basis or within a window determined by the preference of each instructor. Computer based exams would also eliminate the hassle associated with administering, collecting, and grading regular paper exams.

The Honor Committee’s interest in flexible exams stems from its focus on benefits. Honor sees flexible exams as a benefit students should have given the unique community in which we live. Because we have an Honor Code, we as students should be trusted by our professors and our peers. The basic manifestation of that trust in the academic sphere would be unproctored and flexible examinations. The opposition surrounding the leap to unproctored exams stems from the unsettling fact about any Honor Code: It will never work unless you trust it.

Honor took on the project of flexible exams and explored the possibilities for logistics, support, and faculty participation. The new course management system Collab provides instructors with all the same options they have for the form and content of their exams while at the same time making it easy for them to administer their exam on a flexible basis. While we realize that there are some courses for which flexible exams will never be feasible, a pilot program using Collab is in place and is being used by several professors this semester to administer flexible exams and quizzes, and to handle paper submission. This is the first step in the right direction, and it is the hope of the Honor Committee that more professors will see the benefits for themselves and for their students of giving a flexible exam as the use of Collab becomes widespread over the next three semesters. Honor is also confident that when students begin to feel tangible benefits of living in this unique environment, these benefits will remind them of their continuing commitment to uphold the ideals of the Community of Trust.

Whether or not you think that widespread implementation of flexible exams is a realistic proposition, the idea gets at the heart of what the Honor System is all about: trust. The fact that many professors already give take home and open book finals outside their designated time slots indicates that the idea of trust between students and faculty is still alive at the University. A continuing dialogue among students, faculty, and administrators should serve to cultivate and support these practices.

As high school students visiting grounds, many of us heard U-Guides gush about taking an exam on the Lawn. Students should arrive at UVA to find that these visions are the reality, not just a recruiting technique. In choosing to attend this school, every single student here at the University embraced the Community of Trust. Is it too much to ask that our professors do the same?

Honor and Spotlighting, Dimming

This post represents the thoughts and opinions of Josh Hess only.

At the end of the fall semester, the Honor Committee hosted a round table discussion with representatives of several minority groups. One topic of discussion was the disproportionate rates at which non-majority students are reported to the Honor System. From that discussion, I took away a few difficult questions. Answering these questions should receive high priority in our community.

Why are minority students more likely to be reported to the Honor Committee?

There are several possible explanations. Two in particular receive much attention. It is important to decide which is most plausible if we have any hope of tackling this problem.
The first possible explanation is “spotlighting.” That is, minority students are unduly singled out because they stand out from the crowd of students. My experience suggests that this is the conventional wisdom’s explanation for the disproportionate rate. But I am not yet convinced it tells the whole story.
A second explanation is “dimming.” The theory is that underreporting of majority students is the problem, rather than over reporting of minority students. Data available to the Honor Committee lend some credence to this explanation. A study from a few years ago indicated that, though minority students are more frequently reported to the system, the outcomes of their cases do not vary from majority students’ outcomes in a significant way. To my mind, this might indicate that reporting witnesses are not unfairly targeting minority students (at least not regularly). Instead, majority students’ cases are more often being handled informally outside the Honor System.

Why is addressing this problem important?

I can think of at least two reasons. First, the demographic distortion in the Honor Committee’s reporting rate cannot help but alienate a significant portion of those which it serves. The imbalance creates a perception of discrimination that surely illegitimates the Honor System in the eyes of many.
Additionally, the distortion could also be a sign of other problems. If dimming is, indeed, a root cause of this problem, then we should be concerned about systemic underreporting of Honor cases.

How can we address this problem in an earnest, forward leaning way?

It is easy to throw up one’s hands when confronting a problem like this. Naturally, one attributes the distortion to latent macro-cultural problems whose solutions will be found far outside grounds. While it is true that there are limits to what we can actually do, that does not mean that there is nothing worth doing. Some possible mechanisms for addressing the problem include:

1. Encourage members of the University and local community to report case of lying, cheating, and stealing to the Honor Committee rather than handling them informally.
2. Relatedly, find ways to better inform members of the community about the distortion that might be created by informal case resolution.
3. Continue to seek ways to improve recruiting for Honor support officer positions among minority groups. Doing these helps keep this problem on the agenda, counter the sense of alienation, and increases the reservoir of ideas on how to address the problem.


What do you think?

This is a sensitive and very difficult issue. Please offer your thoughts in response to any of the above mentioned questions. You can contact me directly and jch6b@virginia.edu or post below. Please observe reasonable standards of propriety when offering your thoughts. I reserve the right to remove posts that are inappropriate.