Honor Code Essay

2170 Words9 Pages
What is an honor code and where is it implemented? Is following/violating an honor code indicative of an individual’s personality? Is it truly necessary for institutions to have an established honor code? And if so, is this because stealing, lying, and cheating mean different things to different people? More importantly, do people feel the need to adhere to honor codes, whether written or unwritten? Is there a level of shame and or guilt connected to violating an honor code? When discussing honor codes and why people choose to violate them, it is imperative to first determine what it truly is and to determine if it exists in other cultures. An honor code can be an established set of principles such as “academic integrity” or an unwritten code that a community of people adhere to. It refers to truth and integrity, and presumably respect for oneself. However, what are truth and integrity? Your truth and its importance may be invariably different from my truth and the importance it has in my life, and integrity can be based on one’s appeal to ethics and even cultural diversity. In varying cultures, cheating and plagiarism are synonymous with advancement and therefore is an accepted societal norm. In some cultures cheating is considered networking, or collaboration, or leveraging technology, Trunk 2013 indicated that, “schools should loosen up about cheating and encourage students to network to find answers”. She went on to say that “what schools call cheating is what people in the work world call effective workplace behavior”. Strauss 2013, on the other hand believes that “what schools call cheating is more akin to the workplace behavior in which somebody gets a promotion by taking the credit for someone else’s work. When the boss condones this kind of behavior, you get a lot of disgruntled, back-stabbing employees, and a dysfunctional workplace”. This practice can

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