Please note: This is not an abstract, but a letter that Honor Council suggested Lizzie write to the community.

Preface:

Lizzie, a student studying at Austen University in Finland, emailed the Honor Council Chair about the situation described below. Professor Darcy handed back a quiz in Victorian Morals class one day. After class, Wickham, a Finnish student in Lizzie's class, asked Lizzie if he could borrow her quiz. Lizzie gave Wickham the quiz and later that evening realized that he had not yet taken the quiz. The next day, she confronted him. Wickham told her that he had not yet taken the quiz nor had he studied from her quiz, but he intended to. Lizzie asked for and received the quiz back, and contacted the Honor Council Chair. Honor Council's initial recommendation was that she should contact Professor Darcy and explain the situation to him. Lizzie responded that, because of cultural differences, she did not feel at all comfortable approaching Professor Darcy. Honor Council reached consensus that there was no suspicion of violation, but suggested that Lizzie might want to write a letter as a way of bringing closure to the situation, and as a way to educate the community on the challenges of dealing with the Honor Code in a different cultural context. The following is her letter.

Lizzie's Letter:

I believe that each of us is a mixture of some inherent self and environment. And yet, the precise formula, those qualities which are mutable, contrasted with those which are not, evades me. Confronted with a world with values that contradict those of the self you have molded, an uncomfortable choice is presented. Some compromise, I think, is inevitable -- too much, personally fatal.

The Honor Code is the prime element of the environment which surrounds us at Haverford. Some of us came to Haverford whole-heartedly in response to that environment -- others came simply aware of it. As a beginning, I want to state clearly that I fall into the latter category. The Honor Code appealed to me in many ways -- in just as many, it scared me to death. I feared it demanded a strength that I fundamentally lack. Hardly fond of confrontation, I committed myself to clauses that I fervently hoped I would never be required to fulfill. And it's a credit either to the system and the community, or to my own oblivion that in two years at Haverford I never was.

This fall, my surroundings changed dramatically, as I found myself studying in Finland, a place where the concept of an Honor Code was wholly alien. In one class, entitled Victorian Morals, my professor complacently initiated a discussion beginning from the assumption that all his students cheat, asking them simply whether, on such an occasion, it was guilt, or shame that they experienced. And the students shared, one even stating that he would cheat whenever possible without the slightest sensation of either. The professor commented that there was a word for him -- "amoral" -- but if either of them were disturbed by this, it was not evident to me. And that was the word for it: Austen University in Finland is an amoral place, yet to recognize it, to feel distress, was to experience a sentiment of cultural superiority and distance, which seemed in other ways, contrary to my purpose.

One afternoon in this same class, a quiz was returned. I received a perfect score, a fact which was announced in front of the class by the assistant. After class, I was waiting for a friend, and speaking to another student: a native simply named Wickham -- very bright, fond of criticizing Finnish society, extremely Western, his English was indistinguishable from my own. He asked to see my quiz. I thought little of it -- this, originally uncomfortable, and still slightly so, was not at all uncommon in my classes there, and I generally saw no cause for a scene. Then he asked if he could keep it, and return it later. I agreed.

Whether I knew of his intent at the time, I'm hardly sure. I had reasons to believe that he would not, or could not cheat -- I had others that pointed to the contrary. I know that at the time I had an awareness that there were questions I ought to have asked before passing it over. I was caught somewhat off guard, not wishing to expose a faulty assumption, unwilling to attempt a confrontation. Through the course of the night, I found I didn't remember him taking the quiz, I remembered this place, where I was, and the somewhat unsavory possibility seemed more and more likely. I determined to find him and ask him the next day.

When I did, he informed me directly that he would be taking the quiz in a few hours and had not yet studied mine for it -- could he return it when he had finished. I informed him that we had a problem. He seemed incredulous of my scruples, of the background which I shared with him. Accompanied with a fairly heavy guilt trip, and the proclamation that I possessed a "taboo morality," the quiz was returned.

I never spoke to the professor. I had a dozen reasons not to do so, cultural, personal, and "constitutional." I did not, and do not believe that it was simply a "taboo." Yet, I did not want to punish Wickham particularly for following the norms, although breaking the rules, of his own society, exposing him to the punishment of his institution, for not conforming to the rules of my own.

But, as well, I chose not to speak with the professor, because I simply did not wish to -- under the circumstances, it seemed too difficult. The precise correspondence between justice and expedience, I cannot measure, as I am uncertain of so many things throughout this period.

Each of us will leave Haverford one day, for what we are fond of calling "the real world." I hope and expect that my experience at Haverford, as I think of those of most, will not have left me barren, rather leaving an indelible imprint on myself, and my character. However, in that world, where the circumstances and choices confronting us are certain to be very different, Haverford can hardly constitute the whole of our varied outlooks. At that time, in my view, we will need to determine what will be the permanent moral legacy of those years -- which values are absolutely inviolable, which may require some flexibility. For me, the events of this semester, however uncertain of them I may be, represent a preliminary choice, whose challenge, both of the past and the future, is the avoidance of irresponsibility, and, concurrently, of corruption.