Vote “No” on the Proposed Honor Code

Tim’s Note:

My fellow students, you received an email yesterday about a proposed new Student Honor Code that is three sentences long, and a pending vote next Monday to send it to the faculty for a final vote and adoption. You should vote against the proposed Honor Code for two reasons.

First, it erases the current Honor Code’s enumeration of student rights, including the “right to engage in the free exchange of ideas,” “right to protest and to dissent,” “right to complain of injustice and to bring grievances,” and “right to privacy in one’s assigned room.” We should never favor concision of expression over substantive detail when it comes to the statement of our rights as students, especially in this political climate. The College Council has provided no substantive reasons for why “a more concise expression of those values” in the proposed Honor Code “might better reflect the Amherst of today.” It does not. The Association of Amherst Students’ (AAS) substantive reasons are flimsy (see Joe’s Note below). The “Amherst of today” should value an explicit enumeration of our rights.

Second, the timeline to vote on the proposed Honor Code is too short for any realistic public deliberation on the matter. As I just mentioned, the Amherst student community was first informed about the proposed Honor Code yesterday with a vote pending next Monday. That gives us six days. But most student deliberation that occurs at Amherst happens through the college’s newspaper, which publishes on Wednesdays with submissions often generally required days in advance. Thus, this voting timeline allows virtually no time for the student body to rationally consider — and thus legitimately accept — the proposed Honor Code. In fact, the whole context of the proposed vote is strange. If the change is not consequential, it would not even be put to a student vote. But if the change is consequential, we should certainly have more time to decide. Overall, even if you prefer the proposed Honor Code, we should have at least one more week to decide, so you should vote no this Monday.

If the College Council wished to capture the spirit of the Honor Code in more brief form, they could have proposed merely an addition to the current Honor Code. Instead, they have sprung upon us a paltry three sentences, eliminated all explicit enumeration of our rights, and given us less than a week to decide. This is unacceptable. Vote no.

Joe’s Note:

The rationale behind the proposed Honor Code, as provided in an email sent out by the AAS, is that the current Honor Code, being “several pages long” (four pages long, mind you), is “difficult to understand and internalize.” Let’s go through this rigorous rationale point by point.

1. Difficult to understand: If reading a longer body of text is, in-and-of-itself, a barrier to understanding at one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country, then the point has to be conceded. Were I to speak on my own behalf, however, I would say that the vague wording of the proposed statement, no longer tied to an explicit account of the rights and duties of both students and faculty, poses a far greater danger to a clear understanding of just what an Honor Code is all about.
2. Difficult to internalize: Well, certainly. Just as the Constitution would be easier to internalize were it only the Preamble. Nonetheless, I appreciate that they thought to throw the Bill of Rights in there.

This is strange, guys. Make history! Vote no.