Last spring, Williams College saw a 40 percent increase in honor code violations. The report of the honor and discipline committee released last week showed that the number of instances of violations rose from 16 in the 2000-2001 academic year to 27 cases last year, reported The Williams Record.

The rise in the number of honor code violations may be due to increased usage of the Internet, as five of the violations over the past two years were related to Internet usage. "I think the general academic community is still struggling to define [the Internet's] role as an intellectual tool," the faculty chair of the honor and discipline committee, Duane Bailey, told The Record.

Senior Freeden Oeur, who is the student chair of the committee, explained that when students are under heavy time constraints to complete assignments, the Internet becomes an easy way out. "When the pressure mounts and thousands of pages of material are easily accessible through Google, a student might be compelled into making a bad decision," he told The Record.

Students found guilty of such violations face consequences ranging from failure in the class to disciplinary probation for a full year.

The committee, which is comprised of eight elected students, four members of the faculty and the dean of the College, is revamping its efforts to educate the community about the honor code. Last spring, committee members began speaking to freshmen to discuss the severity of violating the honor code. According to The Record, 56 percent of total cases involved first-year students in 2000-2001, and 40 percent in '01-02. Because of these statistics, the committee especially wants to target freshmen in its discussion of the honor code, which all students sign at the beginning of each academic year. The committee is also urging all students to read carefully and understand the honor code and to ask professors if any part of the code is unclear.

Despite the increase in violations of the honor code, members of the honor and discipline committee feel confident that students will realize the importance of following the honor code. "If you imagine that 2,000 students complete a total of, say, 100,000 individual assignments over an academic year and only a handful of efforts are called into question. We must be optimistic about the integrity of our academic work," Bailey told The Record.