I didn't cheat, but often wondered if someone who did would think, "Golly. I cheated on this so I guess I can't sign the no cheating oath. Darn."

It's a bit like the "Are you a terrorist?" question on citizenship tests.

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I went to a school with a serious honor code and one of the benefits was that most exams were self-scheduled and self-administered. (The exceptions were stuff like art history slide exams where it would be a big pain to show 50 people the same 15 slides wherever they wanted to see them.) There was definitely a great academic culture that you were there to learn for yourself - a lot of people cared fiercely about grades, but only as a validation of your brutal hard work, not in a competitive sense.

We also had a social honor code that was very interesting - you were obligated to confront someone who was doing something that offended/deeply bothered you, and attempt to work to a mutual resolution. As you can imagine this was rather more controversial; I have some memory of a big brouhaha over dorm door whiteboard messages protesting Martin Luther King day. It was actually kind of like a bad Buffista social kerfuffle, now that I think of it.

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Now I want to create a questionnaire that has these questions:

• Do you lie on questionnaires?
• When asked about your truthfulness on questionnaires, do you answer honestly?

In Chicago there's a traffic sign that says, "Obay all traffic signs." I want there to be a sign that says, "Obay all signs that require you to obay all signs."

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The enormous state university where I teach now has no honor code, although it does have a policy against cheating. This puts faculty and students in an adversarial position, each one trying to outsmart the other. Instead of sitting in the hallway reading a newspaper, I spend exams walking around looking for cheaters. I would much prefer a working honor code (if only for newspaper time), but it's probably only possible in a small school with a real sense of shared mission.

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It was actually kind of like a bad Buffista social kerfuffle, now that I think of it.

I can see why. First you attempt to resolve in-thread, then you take it to Bureaucracy. But I'll bet your college honor code didn't have guacamole in it.

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it's probably only possible in a small school with a real sense of shared mission.

I know UVA makes a Very Big (and Pooh-Cased) Deal out of theirs in the same way a lot of smaller schools do -- part of the school's identity and tradition and the Jefferson thing yadda yadda -- but not having gone there, I can't say much about how it actually plays.

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The enormous state university where I teach now has no honor code, although it does have a policy against cheating. This puts faculty and students in an adversarial position, each one trying to outsmart the other.

In my tenure at this university we've had a plaigarism case where the professor believed that that student borrowed heavily from one paper to write another paper, while the student countered by saying they had followed the protocols of citation. Basically, the question was whether the student's paper was wholly original or not. Eventually the decision handed down was very down the middle and wishy-washy and left it to the professor to decide what to do.

I didn't see how the student could continue in that class after that, what with the professor continually in this "gotcha" mode.

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In jr. high & high school, copying homework was pretty routine. None of us were incapable of doing the work. More often, we were bright enough to know that we were being given busy-work, and so naturally we didn't see the point in doing it. Cheating on tests was much rarer, but certainly happened. I think the amount of cheating was inversely proportional to the amount of respect we had for the teacher. And the amount of respect they had for us. I don't think I cheated on anything in college, because I studying things I was interested in, with teachers I liked.

Maybe my schoolmates were unusually corrupt. I believe that a lot of people have cheated on schoolwork at some point in their lives, and that very few of those people cheat habitually. Sometimes people who cheat have more complicated reasons than just laziness. And since I don't know those circumstances, I wouldn't feel comfortable policing their behavior.

In college my dad was given a passing grade in a chem lab class that he should have failed. The person turning in the final grades was misinformed and my dad didn't correct him. If he had gotten the failing grade, he wouldn't have been able to major in chemistry. I can't take seriously the idea that, because he didn't do one semester's lab work, he didn't deserve his PhD or his career as a chemist.

In Chicago there's a traffic sign that says, "Obay all traffic signs."

It's like the signs that say "Buckle up -- it's the law!" Like that's a good reason by itself.

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Like that's a good reason by itself.

Yes it is! What's wrong with you people? When did you become this bunch of lawless anarchists?

Actually, have they changed laws so you can get stopped for not wearing a belt? Because it's a lame-assed law if you can't get busted for it on its own.

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Actually, have they changed laws so you can get stopped for not wearing a belt? Because it's a lame-assed law if you can't get busted for it on its own.

In Washington state, yes, you can be stopped if not wearing your seatbelt is your only visible violation.

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