This is the long-procrastinated blog about the Honor Code. Well, not really. I felt it would be appropriate now because it is midterms time.
Before we go any further, here is the Honor Code (in one line) that every Caltech person keeps to heart.
“No member of the Caltech community shall take unfair advantage of any other member of the Caltech community.”
There are no loopholes in this statement. The trust that we give and preserve for one another is why Caltech functions the way it does and why Caltech is such an amazing community.
Let me take it into context of midterms week. Midterms and finals can never be 4 hours in one continuous sitting each (or the 24-hour finals in some classes)—honestly, professors do have a life and other important things to do—unless they give the students the liberty to start it whenever convenient. The exams come stapled quite extensively, and students must follow the instructions. We obey professors blindly because we know the professors have the best in mind for us and have a way of judging our knowledge of material. If we break their trust and work rebelliously on exams, in the end it hurts us. We as students wouldn’t receive a proper assessment of our knowledge, and we as students lose our confidence if we know (or don’t) that we didn’t meet the professor’s standards because we cheated. Say for we don’t do well although we strictly followed the professor’s instructions. Then we can easily get support from Caltech’s amazing resources (like free tutoring, office hours, etc) and improve ourselves.
Teo has already mentioned the collaboration policy in context to the Honor Code, so I won’t delve into the topic too much, but I can say that because of the Honor Code, student collaboration on homework is possible without exploitation. No one will backstab at others on homework or projects because we are a community that grows together. Plus, the professors can test us with “non-collaboration” questions on problem sets, so there is still assessment of individual achievement.
The Honor Code is probably the reason why the campus is so safe and free to move about. As I mentioned before, my study group is usually in the SAC (Student Activities Center), which is a maze of rooms under the Hovses, a good ten-minute walk across campus for me. Well, most of my classes are not close to my dorm, so I end up lugging my things around. If my friends and I are hungry at midnight and need to make a run to the student coffeehouse (lovingly known as Chouse), we can leave all our things in the study room (laptops, textbooks, you name it), spend half an hour in Chouse (5 minutes getting our coffee and 25 minutes waiting for the one person who ordered mozzarella sticks), and come back to find everything still where it was. Plus, walking across campus at night is pretty safe because no random student is going to come out of the bushes to mug you (but nevertheless, random non-Caltech people may do so like in all schools, so I take security when walking back to my dorm at 1 in the morning). Plus, students have 24-hour card access to many facilities like the library, the math, physics, and IT buildings; all student dorms, and, for me, the astrophysics building (a TA last quarter has office hours in there, so I got access). I have gone to turn in problem sets at 11 at night simply because I didn’t want to forget to do so the next day, and it makes life so much easier to know no one is going to ransack the building because of the Honor Code. Along that note, a lot of people can freely leave their doors open without the fear of other students taking stuff away (people don’t advise it though because it is a false indication of presence, and the victim will at most suffer an icebox or oven of a room because of changed thermostats).
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to attend another university where there are proctored exams, the constant fear of others, and limited resources. Then I feel extremely awkward and cuddle back into the cozy haven of Caltech. No, I am not sheltered; I in fact have more responsibility to my community and to myself, but the responsibility takes a load off my shoulders because I know others are being responsible as well.
Quote of the day: More Chinese New Year fortunes from Caltech Dining Services. “Fortune not found. Abort, Retry, Ignore?”
