Students at the University of Virginia once upheld the tenets of the Honor Code as an absolute ideal. Lying, cheating and stealing were impermissable behaviors… no exceptions. The penalty was expulsion. But those high standards are being corroded by moral relativism, situational ethics and rank opportunism.
An introduction to a story in The University of Virginia Magazine starts this way:
Warning to hard-core U.Va. traditionalists: What follows may upset you. Simply put, the University is changing—and has been for decades. So, too, is the Honor System.
While polls find that students endorse an honor system in concept, they appear less willing to hold each other accountable, preferring to leave the heavy lifting to an increasingly skeptical faculty. Meanwhile, fueled in part by a high-profile public trial last fall, critics charge that students’ unwillingness to impose the single sanction—permanent expulsion—allows some guilty students to go unpunished. Clearly, U.Va.’s Honor System is in danger of suffering irreparable damage.
In a society that does not uphold honor and integrity as supreme ideals, lies, dishonesty and corruption are sure to follow. Nowhere is this trend more evident than in electoral politics. The disgraceful news out of Washington, D.C., speaks for itself. But Virginia is not immune. The Old Dominion has become a place where candidates for high office routinely vow not to raise taxes then turn around when they get elected and raise them…. And no one, not even the Fourth Estate, the so-called guardian of the public trust, holds them to account. We get the politics we deserve.
