Frosh to pledge against cheating

A tiny addition to the mountains of mail incoming freshmen receive from Penn before coming in the fall will be a card that asks them to take a pledge for academic integrity.

The Class 0f 2005 has been asked to sign the cards and send them back -- all as a sign that the student understands what constitutes cheating at Penn, and what the consequences are.

The pledge cards were one of the recommendations of a task force put together by University Provost Robert Barchi during the 1999-2000 school year. The task force looked at the state of academic integrity at Penn, as well as where it should be going.

According to the co-chair of Penn's Honor Council, Alan Bell, the Honor Council picked up the idea of the pledge cards and ran with it.

"From the Council's perspective, this is really a great way to get in touch with incoming students," Bell said. "Before their first academic experience here, they know that [academic integrity] is an important priority at the college level, that it's a different ballgame than in high school."

Lauren Davidson, the Council's other co-chair, said that exposing students to Penn's academic integrity policies is very valuable.

"I really hope that this encourages students to go to [the Honor Council's] website and check out the University's policies on academic integrity," she said.

With Penn's policies being presented in writing to each new student, Davidson said, "Students don't have an excuse anymore. There's no such thing as, `I've never heard of the academic integrity policy.'"

Despite the introduction of the pledge cards, the University's disciplinary procedures for cheating will not change.

Office of Student Conduct Director Michele Goldfarb said that cheating would still be met with the most serious sanctions that can be imposed.

"It's been clear from the start -- before pledge cards were even a suggestion -- that every student is meant to be familiar with our academic integrity code. Every student is responsible for knowing what the rules are," Goldfarb said.

Both she and Bell noted that the pledge cards are not in response to an increase in incidents of cheating at Penn.

"The anticipated impact is just to remind people of how seriously [cheating is] taken, and to keep it in front of everybody's consciousness. That applies to both faculty and students," Goldfarb said.

The freshmen are in no way forced to sign the card, nor are there any penalties imposed if they do not. However, signed cards have apparently been sent back at a promising rate.

"I don't know that signing the card will impact [how many students cheat] one way or another," Goldfarb said. "It's about keeping the issue on the front burner."

"It's really about awareness," Bell said of the pledge cards' function. "We're trying to start awareness as students come in, and then strengthen awareness through on-campus programming for everybody else."

Such programming includes a mandatory workshop that deals with issues of academic integrity during New Student Orientation, as well as an Academic Integrity Week that takes place early in the fall semester.

"The workshops are a lot more interactive than a pledge card, and can potentially be even more valuable," Goldfarb said.

Upperclassmen will not be asked to sign the pledge cards. Bell feels making older students do so would give the impression that academic integrity has only recently become an important issue to the University, which is not the case.

He feels issues of academic integrity are best dealt with in a preventative manner anyway.

"You can't really be reactive -- you have to be proactive with this issue, keep it fresh," Bell said.

Penn joins a host of other institutions that distribute pledge cards, although the numbers vary between schools that require students to sign them and those that do not.

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