Have you ever had a question about a potential violation of the Loyola Maryland Honor Code or wondered how violations are dealt with? The Student Honor Council is the group to consult.
Made up of 25 students from the sophomore, junior, and senior classes, the Honor Council works to promote and uphold the Honor Code. Each spring, new members are selected after they have received two faculty nominations and completed the application process. In the following fall semester, the new members are trained and ready to officially join the council by the end of September.
There are five student chairmen and 20 panel members on this year’s council. Council members are tasked with the role of sitting in on Honor Council hearings. During these hearings, the council members decide whether violations of the Honor Code have taken place. While faculty members are included in the hearings, the council itself, and its meetings, are led by the student members. The council has been run and managed in this manner since its establishment in the late ’90s.
“Being a member of the Honor Council at Loyola has given me the opportunity to meet several students and faculty that are focused on maintaining and upholding the academic integrity of our university and the value of a Loyola education,” Samantha Figler ’19, a chair member of this year’s Honor Council, said.
The council is not to be seen as a court of law, and students in question are never “guilty.” The main role of the Honor Council is to discern whether a violation has occurred and if so, teach the student how they can accept responsibility, and then move forward without encountering another violation.
Jillian Borruso ’18, the senior chair, reemphasized, “It’s really important for students to understand we are not the ‘cheating police!’ We are a group of students, just like them, who want our degrees and names to be strong and full of academic honesty and integrity.”
Loyola also places an emphasis on the fact that the council is student-run and student-led, as it has been since its establishment in the 1991-1992 academic year.
The Honor Council came to be after an article in the Baltimore Sun was published on May 12, 1990, where a Loyola student made a comment to the about students receiving high grades due to cheating. Loyola created the council in response to the criticism from the Sun article.
Aside from reading the Loyola Honor Code, the Honor Council recommends a few other resources around campus that can help students avoid potential violations of the honor code.
For example, the Writing Center is a great place to start when writing a paper. The Writing Center can help students learn how to properly cite different works, so students are not faced with an accusation of plagiarism. It is a resource to use in order to ensure that credit is given when it is due.
Loyola also offers study skills and time management classes at the Study, which is located on the third floor of Jenkins Hall. The Honor Council often sees cases in which students haven’t properly set aside time to do their work and end up rushing to complete their work. In these cases, students occasionally are tempted to cheat in order to complete their assignments by the deadline.
“Avoid procrastinating, do not misrepresent yourself or your work, and don’t do anything that will give you an unfair advantage over others without professor permission,” Borruso also added.
For more information regarding the specifics of the Loyola Honor Code and Honor Council, visit their website. On the website, members are listed and a PDF copy of the code is attached.
One of the requirements of the Honor Code is to uphold the code. If you witness an Honor Code violation you can anonymously report it here.
