Many universities and institutions pride themselves on integrity, demand allegiance to an honor code, and form a community of trust in which its members must pledge not to lie, cheat, or steal. With community buy-in and mutual respect, the results can be astounding. Everyone together is able to lift each other in collegiality. Instead of focusing on competition, students not only cheer and support one another but also hold each other accountable to core values. Some universities uphold single-sanction honor codes which require expulsion for any proven violation. Most colleges try to vigorously enforce expectations to ensure adherence to the principles of the honor code. Our local high schools also try to instill these core values in their own honor codes; however, violations rarely result in expulsion.
During the pandemic, with face-to-face accountability minimized, honor codes are under threat. Rampant cheating has seized college campuses and high schools. West Point, a beacon of honor, expelled eight cadets and is holding back another fifty cadets this year following a widespread cheating scandal on a calculus exam. Dartmouth medical students stand accused of cheating on exams administered remotely. GroupMe Chats and the use of Chegg by students to either find or share answers to exam questions have resulted in violations of the honor codes reportedly at over a hundred colleges. Our high school students are not immune; they too have been lured to compromise their integrity, and many have done so.
Juxtapose these temptations with the fact that parents during the pandemic have felt forced to overlook reprehensible behaviors. At wits’ end, parents watch their children miss deadlines, become gaming addicts, overeat, abuse bedtimes, and stream videos at all hours. We all share immense empathy for our children’s losses, with sports, social events, in-person learning, camps, and proms canceled for over the past year. Even vacations have been largely compromised. We, as parents, have often abandoned our stations, forgiven our children’s trespasses, and written off the year.
No matter how tired and worn down we may be, however, we must recognize the importance of treating integrity as sacred. We must guard our children’s integrity.
C. S. Lewis wisely said, “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” Getting ahead today by cheating on an online test will not help our children find success on the AP exam, nor will it serve them well as they move onto the next level in school. Students who cheat their way to the “college of their dreams” will only find themselves out of their depths, drowning in a sea of competition. The Varsity Blues College Admissions scandal left us aghast because of the flagrant lying involved: photo-shopping faces on athletes, generating false accommodations to access extended time on standardized tests, hiring proctors to correct standardized test answers, and paying money to buy a spot away from another, more deserving student. If we truly believe that we would not stoop to such a level, we must uphold the importance of integrity.
We must encourage our children to act honorably by highly penalizing any acts of lying, cheating, or stealing, by modeling integrity, by confessing any of our own missteps, by expressing genuine remorse, by accepting responsibility, and by refusing to blame others, for our own transgressions and especially for our children’s. Most of all, we must not be complicit in the process. This absolutely is not the time to say, “Well, everyone else is doing it . . .”
If we have lost trust in the government, trust in the media, trust in the postal system, trust in college admissions, trust in virtually everything we hold dear, we are truly lost ourselves. We must act together to reclaim the importance of trust. We must value integrity. The rebuilding process must start at home and in our own community.
Cheating now will lead to even bigger problems later in our children’s lives. Our children are much better served to get these lessons today. We all have heard about students or young adults who get booted from college for an honor code violation or fired from a job, ousted from a career, or even jailed for embezzlement. Hold the line on integrity! Lying, cheating, and stealing never yields true fulfillment.