Honor Council Rede nes Purpose

is is a phrase all Greenhill students have heard countless times, the foundation of the school’s Honor Code. If a student disobeys this code, then further action is considered by the Upper School Honor Council.

e Honor Council is a group of Upper School students and faculty tasked with reviewing and adjudicating potential violations of the code. All current members of the Honor Council are juniors and seniors, as they have not held elections for underclassmen in recent years.

In the instance of a student being accused of violating the Honor Code, a hearing with the council will be conducted.

“ ere’s a process that faculty should follow,” said Head of Upper School Trevor Worcester. “ ere’s a form they ll out. ere’s obviously a conversation that should be had with the students they feel may have done something to violate the Honor Code.” e council then determines appropriate repercussions on a case-bycase basis. Consequences can range from zeroes on assignments for mild infractions to suspensions for more serious violations.

Upper School Math Department Chair Darryn Sandler ’95 has noticed a di erence in the goals of the Honor Council from his years as a student member to his time as the previous faculty advisor.

According to Sandler, the council primarily served an educational purpose when he was a student member.

“It was signi cantly more about educating the students and trying to get them to understand the importance of integrity,” Sandler said of the council during his student days.

e group would use creative ways to educate students, he said. Council members would demonstrate Honor Code violations in skits and watch movie clips to challenge students to spark conversations about integrity. e members would also seek input from student advisories about how they would respond to infractions.

ere were consequences, and sometimes they were very severe, but there was de nitely more of an educational component than what you would think about,” Sandler said.

e council’s role on campus has continued to change due to the COVID-19 pandemic – including how the Honor Council functioned, what cases they judged and if they even met. e inconvenience of bringing cases to the council virtually over a Microso Teams call or Zoom caused a sharp decrease in cases being heard.

“We have had the biggest change over COVID particularly because how teachers chose to interact with the Honor Council changed,” senior Azal Amer said. “Because suddenly over COVID it became inconvenient to talk to [the council] online instead of just dealing with it yourself, especially when cheating shot up.” ere was no “meaningful” Honor Council during the pandemic, according to Upper School English teacher and Honor Council faculty advisor Blake Harkey.

“We had all shi ed so much of our work and mindset to independent focus and online classes,” Harkey said. “And as a result, there are a lot of things that before might have been within the purview of the council started to be a little bit more daily practice.” e pandemic also made those resources much more accessible, which made cheating easier, senior Luke Brodsky said.

In particular, being online made creating a “sca olded structure” for class much harder for teachers, Harkey said. Without that strong sense of supervision, the line for what was acceptable conduct became less clear.

According to Harkey, although discussions did happen over Teams, they were not robust. Students would rely more on Googling and end up on sites such as Spark Notes and Cli Notes.

Finding ideas on websites is not plagiarism, but it is also not that sense of community development, Harkey said. at fuzzy understanding was re ected in the cases Honor Council saw that year, senior Vijay Agrawal said.

“A lot of the cases that we had in 10th and 11th grade, things that people did or at least what their testimony was that they didn’t know that what they were doing was an infraction,” he said.

“With every school, everyone cheats,” Brodsky said. “It’s the truth and the teachers know it, too. With [being] online, it was just so much easier. I think people got used to it, and once you build up a habit, it’s hard to break just like that.” e Honor Council has reviewed only four cases this school year.

While school has returned to in-person learning, the Honor Council still operates with limited capacity.

“It’s too much work for teachers,” Brodsky said. “ ey have to report to Honor Council and they have to talk with [Dean of Students Jack] Oros and then they have to come to us. Or they could just fail them on the assignment and move on.”

In fact, some members fully support the council’s shi away from being an adjudicating body.

“I actually think it’s better not to go to the Honor Council because getting caught is enough,” Brodsky said. “You get caught, there’s nothing you can do about it. e Honor Council should fully switch away from trials and go to just a [preventive] mode.”

To ful ll a more preventive role, Honor Council members are currently having discussions about what steps to take next. ese steps include informing faculty about new plans, reviewing the current Honor Code and tackling the unclear instances of academic dishonesty.

“We’ve been having these robust conversations about running scenarios and trying to gure out which of the scenarios that we’re discussing actually t in with what’s currently listed in the Honor Code and where are some gaps that we do need to address,” Harkey said.

As a result, the Honor Council is now considering dramatic changes to their role on campus. ere would be a fundamental shi that would reduce emphasis on the punitive aspects of cases and pivot to education moving forward.

Honor Council members say they hope to emphasize that cheating is not only against the rules, but ultimately lowers the quality of education students are receiving. Part of this starts with recognizing the root causes of cheating.

“People don’t want to get bad grades,”

Brodsky said. “I think that getting good grades is more important to people than actually doing the work and learning something.” is is an issue that schools, colleges and universities are constantly trying to tackle.

“What we’re trying to do right is solve a problem that every academic institution has faced, and every academic institution has put barriers into trying to repair,” Amer said. While Greenhill does not explicitly boast a competitive culture, Brodsky says that competition is inherently present among the student body.

“Everyone wants to do better than everyone else,” Brodsky said. “Everyone wants to do the best they can and sometimes cheating is not the best way, but the easiest way they can do well.”

As a rst step, members of the Honor Council will speak to Upper School students during class meetings, discussing the disciplinary and practical consequences of cheating.

“ at’s why we want to go around and have real discussions, probably without teachers,” Brodsky said. “We want students to feel free to say whatever they want without consequence and hopefully change their mindset.”

In the long term, the council hopes to reduce the xation around grades through structural change in the grading system or through a change in mindset among the student body, Amer said.

Harkey says he hopes that the Honor Council can revise Greenhill’s Honor Code and Student Handbook to utilize as guiding documents.

“[ e Honor Code and the Honor Council are] always going to evolve,” Harkey said. “Right now, it seems like what we’re doing is having the conversations but not doing the function. But again, what function is that to be? I think we need to answer that question really, really strongly before we say, ‘okay, now we’re getting back to action.’”