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Academic Honor

Virtue, courage, and wisdom, goods of the highest order being the aim of a liberal education, it is necessarily the policy of Hillsdale College to act firmly and decisively to promote the academic integrity and honor of this institution. Honesty in academics, as in all walks of life, is a matter of personal honor for which each individual must ultimately take responsibility. It is the primary purpose of this policy, by its very existence and application, to increase and ensure academic honesty within the Hillsdale College community.

This policy on academic honor places upon the students, individually and collectively, the following responsibilities:

  1. That they will do their share to ensure that others, as well as themselves, uphold the spirit and letter of the policy;
  2. That they will not, for example, give or receive aid in examinations; that they will not give or receive unpermitted aid in classwork, in the preparation of reports or in any other work that is to be used by the instructor as the basis of grading; that they will not copy or paraphrase without proper acknowledgment; that they will not forge an instructor’s or an administrator’s signature;
  3. That they will familiarize themselves with and adhere to the standards for proper acknowledgment of sources set out in section 1.6 of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 7th edition.*

The faculty on its part hereby manifests its confidence in the honor of its students, but recognizing that honor, like all other virtues, must be learned and nurtured, undertakes:

  1. To avoid, as far as practicable, academic procedures that create temptation to dishonorable conduct;
  2. To assist in educating and strengthening the students in their growth as honorable men and women;

While the faculty alone has the right and obligation to set academic requirements, the students and faculty will work together to establish optimal conditions for honorable academic work.

NOTE: Violations of academic honor carry sanctions by the institution as well as by the individual instructor. The details of these sanctions are contained in the complete policy statement available in the Registrar’s office.

*The MLA Handbook is available for reference in the library and for purchase in the College Bookstore.