How the Honor Code applies to this class…

By Vince "TechnoCrat" Cavasin

I knoW, I know. This is supposed to be a technology column. But occasionally, dear reader, you must allow the TechnoCrat to nurture his warmer, fuzzier, more evangelical side.

Today, I want to digress on a topic that may represent the most important promise we MBAs ever make, but nonetheless is something few of us think much about: the honor code. (Moreover, I figure if I ignore the column’s charter enough, maybe I can sucker a more fastiduous first-year into taking it over.)

I’ve often thought about writing this, but what finally convinced me that it was time (other than I hadn’t a germ of a fresh idea for an actual technology topic) was the "How the honor code applies to this course" sections I keep finding at the tail end of my class syllabi this semester.

According to those little wallet-size cards we all receive when we first get here (yeah, I lost mine too), the honor code, briefly stated, says:

I affirm that I belong to the honorable community of the University of Texas at Austin Graduate School of Business. I will not lie, cheat or steal, nor will I tolerate those who do.

We sign a similar statement during orientation.

Why? What difference does it make? Does your name, scribbled in ink on a piece of dead tree, prevent you from lying, cheating or stealing? Really, does it do anything besides stain the paper, which will simply spend the rest of its days decomposing in a file cabinet someplace?

Don’t get me wrong; this article is far from a tirade against the honor code. My point is simply that the value of the honor code exceeds the value of the paper it is written on only and exactly by the amount each of us lives up to it. It is a promise to no one if it is not first a promise to oneself. In that respect, it is an almost laughably inadequate attempt to formalize what each and every one of us, both as intellectuals and as the future business leaders of the world, ought to hold as dear as life itself: our personal integrity.

Honor is not a gift; it is not a favor; it is not a good to be bartered. Honor is an inherent personal code that must guide one’s every ethical decision—not just on exams and in study groups—automatically and reflexively. It requires no interpretation, no contemplation, no "technical legal definition", no half-page explanations stapled to the back of a syllabus.

Sadly, honor is falling out of vogue. It seems that Americans no longer expect from each other—not even from the leader of their country—even the most basic notion of honor.

This is a disturbing trend that we must do our part, however small, to reverse. Beyond sitting through a 3 hour workshop and signing a piece of paper, each and every one of us has a responsibility—to ourselves as much as to each other—to sit down and do some serious thinking about our own personal ethics; to develop our own personal honor code, and then to follow it, always.

If you’re interested in a more formal study of ethics, you can find courses in the MSIS department under the LEB prefix, or better yet, in UT’s outstanding Philosophy department. You can apply graduate-level ethics-related Philosophy courses to your MBA via some simple paperwork available from your advisor.

As MBAs we regularly concern ourselves with finding value-adds: MVA, EVA, etc. Let’s add HVA to the list, and make sure we assign that piece of paper its true value. u

Vince Cavasin, ’99, would like to thank his first-year mentees for telling him what the honor code actually says.