The Honor System Rift Between Undergraduates and Law Students
The Honor System Rift Between Undergraduates and Law Students
Former Executive Committee members from the two groups have held divergent and incompatible views on the institution's value and aspects.
NOTE: The Spectator will continue to monitor the Constitutional Review Committee’s actions and report relevant news to the public. If any members of the W&L community have anecdotes, news tips, or strong opinions, they are encouraged to write to editor@wluspectator.com.
(Washington and Lee School of Law’s Sidney Lewis Hall, left, and Washington and Lee’s Colonnade, right. | SOURCES: ChatGPT, Washington and Lee University and Alex Kagan)
Over the last fifteen years, Washington and Lee Law students and their Executive Committee (EC) representatives have held vastly different views on the Honor System than their undergraduate counterparts, a Spectator investigation found.
Former EC representatives from the 2010-2025 period confirmed substantial and enduring differences between undergraduate and law school representatives in interviews with The Spectator. Additionally, both interviews and survey data confirmed that many law students are unsatisfied with the current Honor System structure.
This comes as the Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) will conduct its regularly scheduled review of the Student Body Constitution. In an irregularity, the EC granted this year’s CRC the prerogative to review and suggest changes to the White Book, the governing charter of the Honor System, as well as the Student Body Constitution. Interviewees suggested several potential changes to the White Book, including bifurcating the system into separate undergraduate and law divisions, increasing transparency of cases and returning to a partially codified Honor System.
* * *
The Divide in How Undergraduate and Law Representatives See The Honor System
A former undergraduate representative who was on the EC during the 2010-2025 period told The Spectator that, during their time on the EC, a particular Law School representative systematically worked to acquit students that the undergraduate representatives broadly viewed as guilty. The undergraduate representative felt that, during their time on the EC together, the law school representative “killed the Honor System.”
In one case, after the committee heard from multiple individuals who testified that they witnessed academic cheating, the Law School representative indicated they planned to vote “not guilty” due to a lack of evidence. The Law representative said that a video recording of the student cheating would have been the only thing that would have convinced them to vote guilty. The undergraduates on the Committee viewed this as an excessive burden of proof requirement.
Another former undergraduate representative from the period confirmed that this occurrence was not an anomaly. They told The Spectator that “as a general matter, the law students are pretty hostile to the idea of the Single Sanction,” referring to the White Book rule that removal from the university is the only possible outcome for a student who is found guilty of an Honor Violation. Undergraduate representatives, on the other hand, are generally more inclined to enforce the single sanction.
“Their skepticism of the Single Sanction permeates throughout their whole approach to overseeing the Honor System,” the former representative concluded. “They would vote not guilty on Honor Violations that they didn’t feel rose to the level of expulsion.”
A third undergraduate EC representative from within the period confirmed this trend, telling The Spectator that “the representatives from the Law School, on average, had higher standards of evidence than undergraduate representatives.”
Additionally, according to current and former representatives from both student bodies, law students tend to be more mature and have greater depth of experience with judicial-like procedures than their undergraduate peers.
Zane Openshaw, ‘27L, who serves as his class’s representative on the EC, offered his own perspective on the ways that Law School representatives differ from their undergraduate peers.
“Being law students,” he told The Spectator, “I have observed that we are sensitive to issues that might not be as obvious to our undergraduate colleagues. This is manifested in evidentiary standards, witness questioning and when to apply the burden of proof.”
A former undergraduate representative on the EC offered a different perspective. “They’re lawyers in training … which can be helpful in these settings, but also can mislead how they interpret the Honor System. The Honor System is not a legal code, it's a system of community trust … it’s not just another set of laws.”
“There is a higher bar to clear to get a law student to vote guilty than an undergrad,” the former undergraduate representative told The Spectator.
Professor Emeritus Roger Dean, who taught at W&L for 36 years before his retirement in 2019, confirmed the longevity of these trends. He observed that Law representatives “who had been undergrads at W&L” prior to entering the law school “had a stronger commitment to the Honor System” than those who came from other undergraduate institutions.
Additionally, Professor Dean recalled a case in which a law student was convicted of multiple shoplifting offenses. In response, law students circulated a petition to support the student under the justification that “shoplifters are mentally ill and you don't expel a student who is ill with a cold.”
“Overall,” Professor Dean concluded, “I got the impression that law students viewed the Honor System as an interesting ‘prep school’ activity that didn't conform to real life.”
* * *
The Reasons Behind Law Student Distrust of The Honor System & The Single Sanction
The disproportionate representation that undergraduates have on the EC is a significant cause of concern among law students.
Under the composition of the EC, there are three law school representative seats, seven undergraduate representative seats, and three officer positions, which can be held by students from either school. Officer positions tend to be held by undergraduate students, as they make up the majority of the electorate in those elections.
This has manifested itself in the EC’s leadership and membership, as the student body has not had an EC President from the Law School since 2010.
According to Openshaw, many law students argue that the majority rule by undergraduates on the EC violates the “jury of peers” principle and forces law students to be governed by undergraduates.
Personally, however, Openshaw disagrees with this sentiment, finding the argument to be “ignorant of how seriously the undergraduate representatives take the Honor System, and disrespectful of their maturity in adjudicating the System among our peers.” He continued, saying, “I also find it ironic to argue for a ‘jury of peers’ that excludes literal peers enrolled at the same institution. Already, with three representatives on the EC, the law school is overrepresented in comparison to the overall student population.”
Iain MacLeod, ‘22, who has written about the Honor System for The Spectator, added that “I think a lot of the law students just don’t like that 18-22 year olds sit and cast votes on a committee that can vote on the dismissal of law students, let alone hold a majority of seats on that committee.”
Law students’ concerns go beyond underrepresentation. A member of the W&L Law Federalist Society told The Spectator that, due to the bar admission process, “the single sanction is disproportionately impactful for law students.”
“There is no doubt that dismissal from an undergraduate institution, graduate institution, or a law school will result in serious consequences financially and for readmission,” the law student wrote. “However, dismissal from a law school has uniquely severe, career-ending consequences due to the specific attorney licensure requirement.” “In short,” the law student concluded, “undergraduate dismissal is a significant setback; law school dismissal is a career-ending event.”
Some law students are concerned that they could be expelled for a small mistake. Patrick Burr, ‘26L, the EC representative for his class, told The Spectator that “people fear being called before the EC for forgetting to swipe their student card at Marketplace — and nothing the EC does outside of first-year orientation does anything to correct that notion.”
Additionally, according to Burr, “law students also wonder if undergraduates possess the requisite knowledge of the law school's social and academic peculiarities to adequately decide whether a law student has committed an Honor Violation.”
Furthermore, law students interviewed by The Spectator expressed that they knew little about the Honor System and its history.
Openshaw agreed with the sentiment. “My undergraduate colleagues, from what I've observed, have a much more immersive experience in the cultural heritage of” W&L, he said, continuing, “I think a respect for the history of the institution matters a lot when thinking about the Honor System and its administration among students.”
Aya Hobeika, ‘26L, confirmed that, aside from an hour and fifteen-minute session during the annual orientation for 1L students, law students are given little exposure to or education about the Honor System.
* * *
Moving Forward and the Constitutional Review Committee
In interviews with The Spectator, multiple current and former representatives from both the Law School and undergraduate student bodies mentioned the possibility of bifurcating the Honor System, creating separate rules and governing bodies for both institutions.
According to one former undergraduate EC representative interviewed by The Spectator, bifurcation “makes sense.” “From my experience, the law students poison the well by just being in the room” during EC deliberations.
The former representative said that, during their tenure on the committee, Law representatives influenced how undergraduate representatives approached issues. “The influence that they have on the system is pernicious beyond individual members being skeptical of the Single Sanction or not being as rigorous in their application” of the Honor System.
Support for bifurcation is not limited to undergraduate students. To understand the opinions of law students on the Honor System, Burr conducted a poll of the Law School Class of 2026. Approximately 64% of the class responded.
It found that 76.1% of the class supported the idea of EC bifurcation. Additionally, two-thirds of respondents said that “undergraduates elected to the [EC] are ill-equipped to adjudicate honor matters involving law students.”
Others said that the EC benefits from having both law school and undergraduate representatives. Eric Hoffman ‘10L, the most recent law student to be president of the EC, told The Spectator that “there are differences in life experience between, for example, a freshman rep and a third-year law student rep.” Former President Hoffman “believe[d] the varied perspectives created by those age differences benefitted our decision-making process” during his time on the EC.
Some students hope to see amendments proposed that would increase transparency. Burr outlined potential changes to help students understand when the Single Sanction was being implemented. “To my understanding, the [EC] used to publish case summaries after closed and open hearings,” as well as “collect and share the demographic data of those found guilty in hearings. These and other measures of transparency, again to my understanding, have been quashed in recent years under the instruction of W&L General Counsel due to confidentiality concerns,” he told The Spectator.
“Whether or not I've correctly identified the impetus of this trend here,” Burr added, “what's been lost is the student body's trust in the fairness of a fair system, merely because their methods for seeing how that system is conducted have been curtailed.”
Lastly, some interviewees expressed a desire to codify aspects of the Honor System to make it less ambiguous and subjective. Openshaw, for example, argued that “there is too much discretion in our system to make our current single sanction effective. If we reverted back to codification, I think it would solve many of the issues of discretion built into the system.”
On the other hand, even partial codification could limit the discretion that the current system allows.
One former undergraduate representative told The Spectator that “because removal from the community is such a serious sanction, the current student body must have complete discretion to define an honor violation.” They continued, arguing, “Each generation must determine what constitutes a breach of the community’s trust according to their own values. Imposing today’s moral standards on future students would turn our living system into a legal code and undermine the principle of student self-governance that makes W&L so unique.”
While amendment proposals and views on the current system differed, The Spectator identified a common theme from all interviewees: a passion for preserving the community of honor that all W&L students benefit from. The key question for the Constitutional Review Committee and the student body is whether the divide between law students and their undergraduate peers can be bridged or whether bifurcation is the best path forward.
