Radcliffe Honor

While Harvard has never had an honor code, Radcliffe College used a formal honor system for much of its history, and even experimented with unproctored exams from 1946 to 1954.

Radcliffe's honor system, which covered library use, and social and academic behavior, formally existed as part of the student government from 1907 to 1961. But unlike honor systems in many schools today, Radcliffe students were not required to report on each other's infractions--that is, until 1945. Radcliffe only began to administer unproctored exams a year later.

"I thought the honor system was great. I don't ever remember seeing someone cheat," says Norma Jean T. Fix '54, now a resident of Marlborough, Massachusetts.

Since Radcliffe and Harvard students enrolled in their classes together, the female students could only have unproctored exams when the class was sufficiently large to merit administering exams seperately to men and women, Fix says. "Whenever we had to take exams at Harvard, having those proctors walk up and down [the aisles] would drive me completely nuts."

And yet, between 1951 and 1954, only three cases of cheating were reported--and that prompted concern at the highest levels of the all-women's school.

Concern about the honor code's effectiveness ultimately prompted a student-faculty committe to examine the system in 1954, says Radcliffe's archivist, Jeanne Knowles. The committee concluded that "...in the academic sphere, the honor system is ineffectual as a guide to conduct at the present time."

Not everyone agreed with the committee's findings. A Radcliffe News article in February, 1954 reported that "Not one of the 10 Radcliffe proctors when questioned said she had ever since any cheating in an exam... They felt unanimously that there was no cause for abolishing the honor system."

But proctored exams were reintroduced in 1955, although students were also expected to report each other's violations. "There was still the general idea that you were on your honor and should report cheating," Knowles says. "It gradually eroded because the reporting process didn't work."

The reporting rule was eliminated in 1958. Although the honor system was never formally abolished, it gradually faded away. By 1962, the student handbook no longer reported that it existed.