Topic of the Week: Honor awareness

The open honor trial held Sunday was tried by a random student jury. Photo by Bennett Sorbo.
This week is Honor Awareness Week. What that means, I'm not sure. So we're going to do something a little different this week. Obviously all University students are aware that we have a student-run honor system, which asked one student to leave this weekend after he was found guilty of lying. Fortunately for The Cavalier Daily, that was also the only open honor trial this weekend, and you can get the full scoop here. A student can request to have an open or closed honor trial, and in three closed honor trials this weekend, four students (two involved in the same case) were found not guilty. But the University community knows next to nothing about these closed honor trials. An open trial earlier in the semester that found the accused not guilty led students to question the honor trial process. Maybe it's in the best interest of everyone to have an open honor trial, although that's unlikely to happen because of FERPA. But why is it four non-guilty students chose to have closed honor trials? If they were truly innocent, it would seem they feared some failure in the honor system that might find them guilty. Or maybe it was just an embarrassing situation to be involved in, and those students didn't want to be tainted by association with an honor charge.
Since it's Honor Awareness Week, what should we know about the honor system that we don't already? What does the University community need to be made aware of? I would say we need to be aware of how the honor system works more than anything else. I hope no University students need to be made aware of what constitutes lying, cheating or stealing. So this week will be more about posing questions than taking a position. What do you want to know about the honor system? I'll do my best to find the answer to questions throughout the week.