The summer before freshman year, every student receives a packet with a pledge card asking them to uphold the Code of Academic Integrity. The importance and effectiveness of this pledge is a subject of debate among students.
Assistant to the Interim Provost Anita Gelburd said, as has happened in past years, approximately 60 percent of the incoming class has already returned the cards and more may be in the mail.
The University Honor Council, together with the academic integrity task force, started sending packets to incoming freshmen four years ago, including a cover letter, a copy of the Code of Academic Integrity and a pledge card. Although it is optional to sign, the goal was to have as many freshmen as possible read the code and pledge to uphold it.
The code defines academic dishonesty as cheating, plagiarism, fabrication, multiple submission, misrepresentation of academic records, facilitating academic dishonesty and giving oneself an unfair advantage.
Gelburd believes putting something concrete in front of students would reduce academic dishonesty.
"Cheating is not something we do," she said.
However, some students feel that a pledge card is unnecessary.
"I don't feel I need to fill out a contract to know I'm not going to cheat," Engineering sophomore Ishaan Puri said.
Although College senior Ayesha Mansukhani asserts that it is important to remind incoming freshmen about academic standards, she feels that the cards are degrading.
"It implies that I have different morals than what they put down," she said. "Instead of instilling values in me, it scared me. ... It was more like a threat."
College sophomore Emily Goldman thought it was good for the University to lay out its policy and hoped it would change people's behavior, but doubted that it actually would.
A number of students said they knew of others who had cheated at Penn and succeeded, and some who had been caught. Both Mansukhani and Engineering sophomore Laurie Duncan said that most of the cheating happens in group projects, when one or two people do most of the work for the entire group. Other methods of cheating noticed by Penn students include copying homework assignments, splitting problem sets to share the workload and changing around someone else's electronic assignment.
Duncan stressed that the cheating was sparse, though, and that some students only try to get ahead on small assignments.
"When it comes time to take the exams, people know their stuff," she said.
"There's no reason to cheat with the grade inflation here," College senior Nick Harris said.
Unlike some other universities that have honor codes, Penn has an integrity code. UHC Co-Chairwoman and College junior Rachel Kohn explained that in an honor code, students must turn in people they know are cheating, whereas in an integrity code they are not required to do so. In addition, the punishment for violating an honor code is expulsion, while the punishment for violating an integrity code is usually suspension for a semester.
When asked if she would turn in someone for cheating, Duncan said that cheating on small assignments didn't bother her and that she would only say something for cheating on tests.
If you tattle, "you won't have the allies you'll need later in your college career," Duncan said.
The UHC also hosts programs during New Student Orientation, organizes Integrity Week and holds a high school conference in the spring.
