Before Emory University’s new honor code went into place, Associate Dean and Director of the Honor Council Jason Ciejka (11G, 17L) said that about half of students with honor code violations opted to have an informal resolution meeting (IRM). Now, Ciejka said they’re seeing over 70-75% of students use the IRM process, which allows students to accept responsibility for the violation and bypass the formal investigation process.
Emory University implemented a new unified undergraduate academic honor code across Emory College of Arts and Sciences, Oxford College and Goizueta Business School at the beginning of the 2022-23 academic year. Previously, every school at Emory had its own honor code.
Ciejka believes that students choose to go through the IRM system because it is often to their advantage to utilize the expedited process.
“Because they are accepting responsibility in the IRM process, they typically receive a verbal warning and not a probation warning as a result of the information process, but it depends on the severity of the case,” Ciejka said.
The new honor code was made to create a more “consistent environment” for students across the University’s different undergraduate and graduate schools. According to Ciejka, students have more flexibility under the new honor code in choosing an advisor to guide them through the process.
The Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing is the only school that’s not part of the new unified honor code because the school has both undergraduate and graduate students and opted to maintain additional professional standards.
There are still individual honor councils for each of the three schools that collectively enforce the new code. Emory College Honor Council Co-Chair Hanifah Ali (23C) noted that this allows each school to adjudicate cases they receive in a timelier manner.
“If cases across all three schools had to be resolved by one single body of honor council members, it opens the possibility for bottlenecks and delays in the process,” Ali said.
Although the new honor code offers students more avenues to provide students with support in the honor code violation process, Ali urged students to continue to take academic integrity seriously, knowing that there are serious repercussions from cheating.
“Academic integrity is a cornerstone of higher education,” Ali said. “Adherence to this principle by all members of a community promotes scholarly pursuits, safeguards the integrity of our institution and ensures that everyone is on an equal playing field and has an equal opportunity for success.”
Ciejka discussed the projected outlook of the new honor code this year, noting that they typically see anywhere from 100 to 200 students reported to the Emory College Honor Council in an academic year.
“At this point, we are so early in the year,” Ciejka said. “There is nothing unusual in our data to suggest that this will be a particularly light or a particularly heavy year.”
He added that the importance of students’ rights and the unified honor code seem to be set in stone for years to come.
“The rights of students are so core to the code that we wouldn’t expect to need to change that very frequently,” Ciejka said. “It is possible that we have to make some minor adjustments over the years, as the three schools are working closely together for the first time.”
Executive Editor Matthew Chupack (24C) and Managing Editor Gabriella Lewis (23C) are members of the Emory College Honor Council and had no role in writing or editing this article.
