Twilight protagonist

“No one on the Committee kids ” themselves that it’s anything less than a deeply unpleasant process Dylan Shapiro ’23 Honor Committee Clerk

they almost choose to take an action that’s self-destructive but in keeping with how badly they feel about themselves.”

Asked about the extent to which a student’s mental health ought to play a role in the Honor Committee’s proceedings, Chen Shueh wrote that “a student’s stated mental stress while taking an exam or writing a paper is not considered a mitigating factor in the Committee’s determinations or outcomes.”

“To do otherwise would require highly subjective judgments that would, inevitably, result in different outcomes for the same infraction,” she wrote. “The adjudicating bodies must rely on an objective interpretation of the evidence presented in reaching conclusions and applying sanctions.”

A history of slow and unsteady progress

Stanley Katz, a Professor Emeritus who first came to Princeton in 1978, said that throughout his four decades at the school, he has come to see the Honor Code in a radically different light from administrators.

“We’re probably one of the earliest schools that adopted an Honor Code. And I think Princetonians who know about it tend to think it’s an admirable and distinctive part of the experience,” Katz said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “My own view is that those are students who haven’t thought about it very much.”

Katz, a decorated scholar of U.S. constitutional and legal history, said he believes the honor system is “overly punitive.” The iterative attempts at reform he’s witnessed, while at times reaching modest success, have ultimately left the structure in place.

At the Honor Code’s inception, the standard penalty for an academic integrity violation was expulsion. In 1921 came the first real attempt at reform, when leniency was introduced for “exceptional cases.” The next substantial revision would come five decades later, in 1974, when suspension was formally added as a disciplinary alternative.

Seven years later, in 1981, despite calls for change among the student body, the Honor Committee declined to hold an “open session” to hear suggestions for reforms, with one member telling the ‘Prince’ at the time the Committee had decided “not to seek to stir up more controversy right away.”

Two more efforts at reform similarly saw no results. In 1994, an Undergraduate Student Government (USG) referendum called for accused students to be given at least a sevenday period to prepare their defense. Although it gained 57 percent of the student vote, it failed to meet the 75 percent threshold for adoption. And in 2003, four Honor Code referenda made the USG ballot, but only one passed — allowing accused violators to bring a representative with them to hearings, thus paving the way for the creation of Peer Representatives.

More recently in 2018, referenda passed by the student body were not implemented immediately and instead remanded to the Committee on Examinations and Standing for faculty input. Having met the criteria outlined in the Honor Constitution for referenda, student activists felt deflated by the University’s inaction.

“You’re always fighting an uphill battle,” Micah Herskind ’19 told the ‘Prince’ about his experience advocating for change at the University. Throughout his Princeton career, Herskind protested, petitioned, and demonstrated on behalf of numerous activist causes. The 2018 attempts to reform the Honor Code were the only time in those four years where he felt the rules were on his side. When the referenda were remanded, he said, “They ended up throwing out that rule book.”

“There’s a process in place, we followed it to the tee, it was done, and even still, it didn’t matter,” Herskind said.

Yet some of the reforms he fought for later came to fruition. In response to the 2017 referenda, four committees convened and recommended adding alternate potential penalties — a reprimand and onesemester suspension — for certain violations.

Even so, the Committee is cautious in adjudicating with leniency. Ultimately, the Honor Committee’s recommendation is non-binding, and the administration can overrule it. So, Carson said, “When we thought it would be accepted by the University, we tried our best to err on the side of disciplinary probation. But when we thought that it would not be accepted by the University, we assigned a one-semester suspension.”

The one recourse students found in violation are told they have is appealing the Committee’s decision through ODOC.

But according to several Peer Representatives, successful appeals are incredibly rare. Bobo Stankovikj ’20, a former chair of the group, estimated that one case in every five years was overturned. Masback and Ethan Thai ’21, also former chairs, could not recall a case that had been won on appeal. (ODOC does not release statistics on appeals, and Chen Shueh did not respond explicitly to an inquiry on the number of students who appeal each year and the number of appeals that are granted.)

The preparation of an appeal is itself an arduous process. According to Nathan and Elena, both of whom experienced it firsthand, appeals require students to repeat the same exhaustive evidence documentation they performed for their hearings.

“You have a student who was just found responsible,” Stankovikj said. “And you’re telling them that, by the way, try writing this type of document that you’ve never written before and that will also almost certainly get rejected. That’s weird. That’s an absurd system.”

Disproportionate impact on FLI students

One of the strongest criticisms leveraged against the Honor Code over the years points to how the system appears to put low-income students at a unique disadvantage. Leo said that, in his own experience, it felt as though the system “disproportionately affects students of color and FLI students.”

“Latinx and FLI students I’ve spoken with who have been called before the Committee discussed the extensive anxiety induced by the Committee’s initial phone call,” Soraya Morales Nuñez ’18 wrote in 2017 in a guest opinion piece for the ‘Prince.’ “Others who have testified before this Committee told me about experiencing severe intimidation as well as unnecessary mental and emotional distress at the hands of peers that walk the same halls as us.”

Students receiving financial aid who are found responsible for an Honor Code violation also experience an added financial burden compared to students who pay full tuition.

“If you are required to repeat a semester for disciplinary reasons,” the University’s financial aid award terms state, “you will not be eligible for a University grant for the repeated term. Student loans may be requested to cover your need in this situation.”

Chen Shueh wrote that financial aid unused from the voided semester can carry over to the semester when a student re-enrolls, and that the “Financial Aid Office will work with them to extend loans to cover any shortfall.”

But for students like Leo, a semester without aid could have had dire consequences. “My parents at the time made under $25,000 a year,” he said. “If I were to be found guilty, I wouldn’t be able to come back to Princeton.”

Sociology professor Patricia Fernández-Kelly, who is often called to defend students accused of Honor Code violations, has witnessed this dynamic play out since 1998, when she arrived at Princeton and first noticed the unique impacts of Honor Committee proceedings on FLI students.

“Those are the families and these are the students who will actually suffer the most from these kinds of interruptions in their education,” she said. “Banishing students for a period of one year, when they are 18, 19, or 20 years old, is enormously harmful.”

Another group that may face disproportionate harms in the Honor Code process is varsity athletes. In the case of Jen and Sophie, both felt that their status as teammates played a key role in the accusation against them.

“The majority of the case against us was based on the fact that we were teammates and could have done it together or texted each other or whatever — even though there was no evidence of this,” Sophie said.

Fernández-Kelly said she’s also noticed a systemic disadvantage for

athletes. In some cases she’s witnessed, she said she felt athletes had been stereotyped or treated differently.

On a case involving varsity teammates last fall, “the fact that they were athletes living in the same location was seen by the professor or the preceptors as possible indications of the likelihood of malfeasance,” Fernández-Kelly said. According to her, the University’s criteria and standards “would be laughed out of court of law in the United States of America.”

ANGEL KUO / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Co-Chair of Peer Representatives Claire Schmeller ’23.

“I want people to have more ” grace with people who have been found in violation. Dr. Calvin Chin Director of CPS

‘I felt like I had a moral obligation to the accused students’

In a system obscured by a lack of transparency, a seldom-successful appeals process, and anxiety-inducing procedures, COVID-19 and the honor system’s evolving policies seem to have only amplified preexisting hardships for students who come before the Committee.

For those students, Peer Representatives felt like the only line of defense in helping them avoid suspension. For Peer Representative Abby Meyers ’22, that work is personal. In the spring of 2018, when Meyers was a first-year, she received a disciplinary suspension following an incident in a data science class.

“I didn’t have a Peer Representative. I didn’t have any assistance, mentorship, or guidance,” Meyers said, looking back. Despite having “absolutely zero clue” how to build her defense, she wrote her opening and closing statements alone. “I felt like there was no justice, there was no rationality within the system,” she said.

Meyers first received a letter from the Committee on Discipline notifying her that she was being investigated for academic misconduct while on vacation with her family. Left feeling ashamed and alone, she said she did not confide in her parents and attended the virtual meeting with the investigators at 5 a.m. her time, in secret.

By the end of the process, she faced a year-long suspension — and once back on campus, felt a renewed sense of purpose. “I thought, I need to help students who get accused,” Meyers said. “That’s kind of the motivation as to why I joined. And I’m happy I joined. I think we can make the Peer Reps better and more involved within the honor system.”

On Nov . 7, the Honor Constitution was amended to add explicit language codifying Peer Representatives as a part of the system. After three iterations of Peer Representatives’ leadership — from Stankovikj in 2019 to the current chairs, Thange and Claire Schmeller ’23 — the group has progressively seen greater success in developing working relationships with the Honor Committee Chairs, though their overarching goal remains unchanged.

“My first and most important goal is making students feel like they have power,” Schmeller said.

But despite this goal and the progress to date, being “honor coded” on

campus still carries with it a lasting stigma and sense of shame.

“I think the hardest part about it all was telling people,” Meyers said. “When you go to Princeton, the #1 school in the world, you come in with expectation and some pride on your shoulders and a little ego. So when something like this happens to you, it’s a big weight you have to take off. So having to tell people so close to me, who admired me and what I did, that was very difficult.”

Chin, the CPS director, said he hopes the campus community can move away from a culture of shame around the issue and toward “a place where we could be more accepting of one another and less judgmental.” Publicly acknowledging experiences with the honor system among the student body, he hopes, “maybe will help the next student who’s feeling that same level of pressure” get the support they need.

“I want people to have more grace with people who have been found in violation,” Chin said.

For now, Chin’s hopes for the student body remain just that — hopes.

Until change comes, whether on a campus culture level or on a University level, some students who have worked within the system continue to question whether it should exist at all.

“If you believe that students are not intrinsically bad, that most academic violations are a result of the massive stress that Princeton creates, and admittedly, some bad decision making by students,” Stankovikj said, “then perhaps the entire structure of the honor system doesn’t need to exist in the way that it does right now.”

Marie-Rose Sheinerman is a senior writer who has reported on COVID-19 policy, faculty controversy, sexual harassment allegations, major donors, campus protests, and more. She can be reached at ms78@princeton.edu or on Twitter at @rosesheinerman. She previously served as a news and feature editor and presently assists with content strategy.

Claire Silberman is a senior writer who has covered USG, student activism, and graduate student affairs. She can be reached at cbms@princeton.edu. She serves as Head Satire Editor and previously served as Head News Editor.