Argument 242

TOPIC: ARGUMENT242 - The following appeared as an editorial in the student newspaper of Groveton College.
"To combat the recently reported dramatic rise in cheating among college and university students, these institutions should adopt honor codes similar to Groveton's, which calls for students to agree not to cheat in their academic endeavors and to notify a faculty member if they suspect that others have cheated. Groveton's honor code replaced an old-fashioned system in which students were closely monitored by teachers and an average of thirty cases of cheating per year were reported. The honor code has proven far more successful: in the first year it was in place, students reported twenty-one cases of cheating; five years later, this figure had dropped to fourteen. Moreover, in a recent survey conducted by the Groveton honor council, a majority of students said that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without."

WORDS: 381 TIME: 00:30:44 DATE: 2008-3-26 21:49:35

The conclusion of this statement is that the honor codes should be adopted extensively by colleges and universities, who reported considerable rise in cheating. To support this conclusion, the speaker argues that Groveton has seen several positive outcomes since Groveton adopted the plan of honor codes. Besides, the arguer also quotes a recent study lea by the Groveton honor council and this study supports the arguer's conclusion. However, close scrutiny of evidence unveils that this statement actually suffers from a few critical fallacies that would undermine the statement.

Firstly, according to the detailed content of the honor codes policy of Groveton, no teacher will monitor students when students are having examinations. Perhaps these students have formed a private "policy": everyone cheats and no one is allowed to notify a faculty member. Thus, the morale of Groveton has become even worse. Besides, the comparison of number of students who cheated between the beginning of honor codes policy and five years later is quite questionable. It is highly possible that a lot of students who cheated in exams were not unmasked because other students concentrated on their own test paper and did not care about whether other students were cheating. In short, any case mentioned above would weaken the conclusion.

Secondly, the survey conducted by the Groveton honor council seems a powerful reason for adopting the policy advocated by the arguer. Nevertheless, the arguer fails to consider certain other factors that contribute to the result; therefore the conclusion of the survey may have alternative explanations. For instance, the survey does not tell us how many participants were covered in it. Perhaps only a few students less than 100 were asked to respond questions. Moreover, the credibility of responses given by students who were conducted is doubtful. Without sufficient evidence that these students had told the true thought in their inner mind, no one would take the results of the survey seriously.

In summary, the statement indeed has a few flaws as discussed above. To solidify the conclusion, the speaker would have to prove that students of Groveton actually conform to the honor codes and report every cheating in academia, and further demonstrate that all the participants in the survey conducted by the Groveton honor council had told the truth and had not lied.