Column: The Broverman Experiment

This year the Honor Code was replaced with the Community Standard. Yet, a recent experiment made it abundantly clear that something is rotten.

We have heard plenty about the philosophical merit and hypothetical quality of the Community Standard. A quotation from the guest commentary in The Chronicle published in conjunction with the Standard's implementation illustrates my point remarkably well: "The purpose of the Duke Community Standard ... is to highlight the values that should inform any notion of community and to set an expectation for behavior in an undergraduate's life at Duke as a whole."

Great. But what is actually happening in our classrooms and computer labs? One of Duke's scientists decided to probe into alleged cheating in her class. I happened to be one of the students taking her course, and observed the Broverman Experiment firsthand.

Professor Sherryl Broverman gave the students in her 305-student "AIDS and Emerging Diseases" class a take-home midterm exam. Shortly after the midterm, several students told her they thought cheating had occurred. A scientist at heart, Broverman decided she needed a bigger sample size before she could draw any conclusions.

What do these results tell us? First, I hope it is not necessary to explain that they do not mean 70 percent of the class has cheated. They do not even mean that 70 percent of the students have observed cheating. These statistics only signify that students in AIDS and Emerging Diseases, by and large, do not believe everyone adhered to the Community Standard.

To see where the distrust stems from, it is useful to go through some of the postings.

A common sentiment was put crisply in the following anonymous post: "No one I know cheated, but some people probably did." It is entirely possible to give a positive spin to this response--after all, if you extrapolate from it, no one would have cheated. What I find disquieting, however, is the nonchalance with which utter distrust is uttered. If the Community Standard were all it is pretended to be, this sentiment would be antediluvian by now.

Some respondents blamed the issue on the class size and exam type. "Giving such an enormous class the opportunity to communicate with one another will inevitably lead to cheating in a competitive environment like Duke." The word that strikes me most is "inevitably." If this is true, the only solution would be testing in solitary confinement and Nazi-style proctoring by armies of TA's.

"If the honor code is going to mean anything, professors need to accept that it is in place and trust that students will abide by it, instead of merely using it to play a game of gotcha," another classmate adds. I feel that being forced to sign the honor code 17 times a week and before every fart takes away from the importance of our initial signature.

(As you read this, Professor Broverman is conducting a second experiment to see how people in our class feel about signing the code every time we take a test. Watch out for The Broverman Experiment 2.)

Under the Community Standard, students have the duty to report cases of academic vice. The merit of the ratting-clause is debatable, but one Blackboard post at least proves its futility. The author has overheard students talking about how they cheated, but has not acted upon this information. And I am sure he or she is not the only one.

One student in our class stated the following: "This is our only way to redress the wrongs of the Duke academic system. Professors cheat us all the time. I don't think there's anything wrong with a little discussion of answers here and there." I have no idea what this person is ranting about, but it seems safe to assume he or she cheated--the naysayers were wrong.

Kacie Wallace, Associate Dean for Judicial Affairs, gave Professor Broverman a call when the rumor about the Blackboard discussion reached her office. It had come to her attention that there was a problem with cheating in the AIDS and Emerging Diseases class. Dear Kacie--you cannot be this naïve. Treating this as an incident would be preposterous. The only reason it even came to your attention was because Broverman had the chutzpah to bring a fundamental problem out in the open.

What should be the ramifications of the Broverman Experiment? The Community Standard needs to be rethought--it does not work, it is not taken seriously and it cannot be properly enforced. Whether to move forward means more trust and freedom, or more proctoring and enforcement, I am not sure. It depends on the type of community we want to set the standard for. But something has to change.

Joost Bosland is a Trinity sophomore. His column appears every third Tusday.