Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 1, 1990 TAG: 9004010039
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Long
On trial was Christopher Chapman, a student from Washington, D.C., accused by his sociology instructor of changing a grade on a test. For him, a guilty verdict would mean automatic lifelong banishment from the University of Virginia.
Also on trial on the fourth floor of Newcomb Hall that chilly day last month was a 148-year-old honor system that rarely finds its inner workings opened to public scrutiny. While Chapman was acquitted after a seven-hour trial, the verdict from the student body on the nation's oldest academic honor code remains far murkier.
For the last year, the UVa honor system has been the subject of considerable examination by students who wonder whether a tradition started in the 19th century still fits a school headed for the 21st.
The Chapman case and scandals that ensnared the past two chairmen of the student-run Honor Committee have re-energized longstanding questions about the system:
Can a quasi-judicial system be fairly run by students alone?
Why are a disproportionate share of the students who are charged black?
Is automatic dismissal, no matter the crime, overly harsh punishment?
Is the honor code unrealistically idealistic?
"The seas were rough," said Mark Allen of Arlington, a law student and chairman of the 11-member Honor Committee.
But he maintained that soul-searching is par for the course. "The honor system has always been a target of attention here and always will be," Allen said.
Established in 1842 to ease faculty-student tensions that had climaxed when a student murdered a professor, the honor code has become a cornerstone of UVa life.
Fewer than 100 of the nation's 3,400 colleges and universities have any form of honor code and fewer still have ones as revered, as inflexibly strict or as student-controlled as UVa's.
In its early days, the university's honor code - which specifically prohibits lying, stealing and cheating - was synonymous with the concept of "Southern gentlemen," and violations included everything from cheating at cards to insulting women.
Today, nearly all cases involve academic cheating. Each year, about 100 students are investigated and 12 to 15 leave the university after admitting guilt or after having been convicted by a panel of fellow students.
Every few years, someone proposes to do away with the single-sanction rule, arguing that few students are willing to turn in classmates if it could mean their dismissal.
Yet, whenever the matter has gone to a vote, as it may again later this spring, students have rejected that change.
In February, however, 70 percent of students did vote to allow juries composed entirely of non-Honor Committee members to decide cases, a major change that was seen by some as proof of frustration with the system after recent scandals.
First there was the case of J. Brady Lum of Houston, an Honor Committee chairman who, in late 1988, was accused of plagiarism in a letter he wrote to incoming students introducing them to the honor system.
Although he was cleared by an investigation, his Honor Committee colleagues issued an oral reprimand and opponents collected enough signatures to force a recall election, which Lum won.
Then came Lonnie Chafin of Christiansburg, Lum's successor, who was convicted of assault after a fracas with Charlottesville police in September. Soon after, Chafin resigned as Honor Committee chairman and was voted off the committee. The committee members are elected from their respective colleges within the university.
Chafin's case sparked a flood of articles and editorials in the two student newspapers, not just about Chafin but about the system as a whole.
The questioning led to the lowest point in the system's credibility since the 1984 honor trial in which basketball star Olden Polynice was cleared of cheating. Fairly or not, many students and faculty members at the time thought the acquittal was a result of Polynice's celebrity status.
Perhaps the most persistent issue surrounding the system is why a disproportionate number of blacks are charged.
Records showed that 27 percent of those brought up for honor investigations in 1988-89 were black and that three-quarters of the blacks who went to trial were convicted, compared with one-third of the whites. Blacks make up only 9 percent of the student body.
In an unscientific November survey by the student newspaper Cavalier Daily, fewer than half (44 percent) of black students interviewed said they agreed strongly with the ideals of the honor system, compared with 79 percent of whites.
"When they see something like [the Chafin episode], they have a hard time believing in something as idealistic as an honor system," said Tyrone Simpson, co-chairman of black fraternity affairs.
Although the Honor Committee plans to hire a consultant to study the issue of bias, some students said the problem lies less with the system than with those white students and professors who are prone to believe that blacks cheat and thus bring them up on charges.
Fourth-year student Douglas Webb, who was accused in 1988 of cheating on an exam and then acquitted, said he believes he was singled out because he is black.
Allen, the honor chairman, said that regardless of whether students or professors accuse someone because of race, those who are charged are treated fairly.
"The protections afforded the student are tremendous," he said. "We do not find factually innocent people guilty."
Christopher Chapman would disagree. Chapman, a black student who has since transferred to Howard University, was accused in 1988 of altering his grade at UVa and convicted in his first, closed trial.
Maintaining he was a victim of racism, he appealed.
According to testimony at his open retrial last month, Chapman received his test back from teaching assistant John Herrmann in April 1988. Herrmann had given Chapman 9.5 out of 10 points for the multiple-choice section of the test and 11.5 out of 15 points for the essay.
But when Chapman approached Herrmann with a question about his grade minutes later, the 11.5 read 14.5 and the total had been scribbled over to make it illegible.
After checking his grade book, Herrmann concluded that Chapman had changed the grade. Chapman denied it and no witnesses said they saw him do it.
Herrmann testified that he remembered seeing a seated Chapman hunched over as though writing on something after getting his test back, but Chapman denied he sat down. The tests were kept in an office that often was left unlocked.
Chapman said his experience taught him that the honor system would be more fair if administrators ran it, because "they're more aware of the magnitude of the decision than students who are rushing off to a basketball game."
by CNB