Matthew Murphy, Campus Carrier Deputy News Editor
Last year, a committee was created to over-see the possibility of an honor code at Berry. The idea never became a reality, but one student remains passionate about the topic.
According to the committee’s page on VikingWeb, an academic honor code is an approach to student self-government in terms of academic dishonesty policy. An honor code is designed to set all students to a standard of integrity.
One of the major purposes of an honor code is placing the responsibility of upholding academic integrity into the hands of students.
Junior Ben Riggs is very passionate about the idea of an honor code because of his personal experience with them.
Riggs attended a private boarding school called The Webb School during most of his high school years. The Webb School has had an honor quite for a lengthy amount of time. Riggs said that his attendance greatly influenced his passion for honor codes.
“The honor code at Webb, it greatly influenced my life in this way, it taught me the importance of virtue,” Riggs said.
Riggs said that the honor code at The Webb School dealt with a higher purpose than just cheating.
“This isn’t really something that’s end is predominantly to stop cheating or is academic, certainly there is an academic component of not cheating or not plagiarizing, but the end is really to educate the whole person for life,” Riggs said.
Riggs also said that the honor code helped to create a closer community among those at The Webb School.
Riggs said that an honor code could be effective at Berry, but it must be something that is led by students.
“I think an honor code would work at Berry, the problem is: honor codes have to happen organically…because they are upheld by students, it has to be something that students want to do,” Riggs said.
Riggs also said he thinks that an honor code could enhance school pride and spirit at Berry.
“I could see an honor code really building pride in the school, pride in our college, and that has been something that has been lacking in some areas, and I think if we did have an honor code, it would be something that students could put pride in,” Riggs said.
Riggs explained that if the students were not the organizers of the honors code, the code would more than likely phase out.
“It can only happen if this is something that is led by students…” Riggs said. “We looked at a few schools that had implemented an honor code basically from the administration down, and what we saw was that the honor code kind of hung around for five years or so and then fizzled out basically because the students weren’t on board with it,”
Riggs was not surprised at the final verdict of students because of low student turn-out at honor code-related events. He was however, surprised that an honor code was not already in place at Berry.
“I was surprised when I first came to Berry and it did not already have an honor code, because it seemed like the student body would be for something like that, where that it would have already come up,” Riggs said.
Though Riggs is passionate about honor codes, he said that he would not use his position as SGA President to further the issue.
“I realize that through my position I had to be objective because if I was not objective then it wouldn’t work,” Riggs said.
Last year, the Honor Code Exploration Committee was created as a sub-committee of the student life council. Debbie Heida, Vice President of Student Affairs, said the purpose of the Committee was to see if Berry wanted to adopt an honor code policy.
“The gist was to explore whether we were interested in pursuing becoming a college with an honor code is what the task force was set up to do,” Heida said.
In addition, the Committee’s page on VikingWeb said that the goals were to gauge the interest of faculty and students as well as look into possible honor code models specifically for liberal arts colleges.
The committee worked on this process for approximately a year and a half, but last year it was concluded that there was not enough interest on campus to continue the process of exploration.
“I think you have to really be able to show that you have sufficient student interest to move forward, and I don’t think we found that,” Heida said.