They’re Watching You

May/June 2008 Issue | Posted by Father Richard Gill, LC in Spirituality

Question

I am headmaster at a prestigious private high school that has a long tradition of maintaining an “honor code,” in which students are not supervised on exams but the penalty for cheating is expulsion. Six high school seniors stole copies of their semester exam and used them to study for finals. After a long and painful series of interviews, I managed to get some of the students to admit what they had done. I called the students’ parents in individually and told them their children would receive Fs on the exam and that those who lied about stealing the exam would be expelled from the school.

Two of the parents whose children were being expelled felt that the punishment was too harsh. Both are extremely powerful and wealthy; one is a nationally prominent celebrity. They hired a lawyer and have threatened to sue the school.

The school’s lawyer met with the parents’ lawyer. After many days of meetings he has a proposed settlement: The expelled students would leave the school, but their transcripts would say nothing of the fact that they were expelled and show no grade at all for the final exam or the semester. The only grade on the transcript would be the grade the students were carrying going into the finals. Finally, I would be restrained from telling anyone about the settlement.

If we turn down the deal, the school’s lawyer estimates that the cost to the school of defending a suit would be substantial — well in excess of $100,000. Finally, he pointed out that the fame of one of the parents and the high visibility of the school would guarantee that the story would get national coverage — especially in supermarket tabloids. What should I do?

Answer

The school’s policy and tradition regarding the honor code was well known to all and presumably accepted by the families when they enrolled their children at the school. There is no good reason why it should not be enforced.

Furthermore, your own integrity is at issue. How you decide this issue will affect the kind of leader and Christian you will be in the future. Moral choices in matters this serious inevitably have that sort of consequence. What has to be excluded is any self-interest or pragmatic calculation, in favor of a clear moral stance.

You are understandably tempted to give in on the issue. Going up against powerful people in the school community will be unpleasant, and you might even lose in a court. However, there are other important values at stake that are worth defending:

• It seems a substantial part of the prestige of the school has been built around its honor code. Those who founded the school and many alumni would rightly be shocked to see it compromised, and it would be an injustice to them as “stakeholders” in the institution.

• The other students need to know that everyone will be held to the same standard in fairness and justice. If that breaks down, the school as a community begins to lose its soul — and learns a message of “might makes right.”

• As headmaster, you are the one principally charged with being the bearer of the sound traditions of the school. You have the responsibility to defend the moral codes by which the school is run.

• The students who cheated need to experience the consequences of their dishonest actions for their own good. Their parents, by enabling them to escape without a record on their transcripts, are doing them a disservice.

• By accepting a compromise, you would be unfair to any student in the past who suffered the full penalty for cheating against the honor code.

If you should lose in a lawsuit, it will cost the school money. You will perhaps have to suffer from criticism and from the humiliation of seeing the cheaters legally justified at your expense. How-ever, you will still have the ability to articulate clearly that the court was wrong and that your school’s traditions matter to the school. That will be a moral victory worth fighting for.

Situations like this require courage, prudence, and the gift of counsel. Cour-age is a human virtue that enables us to withstand violence and pressure in pursuing the true and the good. The virtue of prudence is a habit that enables us to choose the good, despite the obstacles. And counsel is a gift of the Holy Spirit for which we must pray, so that we can do the will of God in the complex moral situations that we face. C

Legionary Father Richard Gill is director

of the Our Lady of Mount Kisco Retreat and

Family Center in Mount Kisco, New York.

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