Executive Speech

Why Honesty Matters
UVA Honor Talk

Remarks of
Thomas F. Farrell II
Executive Vice President, Dominion
at the
University of Virginia

July 7, 2003

Good morning -- and welcome to the University of Virginia.

First, congratulations on your acceptance to the first-year class. Virginia is one of the nation's elite universities. You have accomplished a lot by earning a place here.

As an alumnus, I speak from a rich and rewarding experience when I say that you are beginning some of the happiest and most important years of your lives.

As a member of the Board of Visitors, I am also here to tell you about our, rather - your honor system.

President Casteen has asked a member of the Board to address each orientation session - not because we are great speakers - but to emphasize the importance of honor at this University.

This is my third time at bat. Sadly, I return with no shortage of examples about why a notion as old-fashioned as honor should be the subject of urgent personal, academic and professional concern.

By this time last year, a cesspool called Enron had sullied the name of America's energy industry. You may remember that Enron was in the middle of a corporate accounting and fraud scandal that wiped out the nest eggs of thousands of innocent investors.

I am in the energy business myself, a largely honorable industry -- peopled mainly with honest professionals. But I dealt with Enron and its ilk more than I liked. My industry's experience reminds us again of the overriding importance of honesty and integrity in everything you do - every day - in every instance.

This matters - in your personal lives, in your future professional lives and in your current academic life. Last year, Enron showed us that good, competent, honest accounting matters.

Just last month, the New York Times showed us that plagiarism is not just a campus problem. Stealing the words, thoughts and ideas of others and representing them as your own is a serious concern in a free society saturated by 24-7 news and opinion.

And Martha Stewart shows how hard and fast you fall in public esteem when style and image trump personal integrity.

Don't let me get too heavy, though. She did a really tasteful "perp walk" to the courthouse.

I will lighten up by turning to one of my favorite characters in American popular culture, one W.C. Fields. As most of you know, W.C. Fields was the famous comedian, juggler, and man about town. He also had a well-known fondness for liquid spirits which I shouldn't speak about too much in front of minors.

At one point, W.C. Fields found himself in the hospital. A good friend stopped by.

To the friend's surprise, he found Fields reading the Bible.

This astonished the visitor -- who knew Fields as a life-long agnostic. The friend asked Fields why he was reading the Bible. Fields replied:

"I'm looking for loopholes."

Now I am not going to compare Virginia's honor system and all that it represents to the Bible - especially since Mr. Jefferson authored the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. But, in my book, it runs a pretty close second, which is why I'm alarmed by a recent national survey conducted by Donald McCabe of Rutgers University.

The survey found that about one-third of college students admitted to serious test cheating. Half said they had pulled a Jayson Blair and cheated on written assignments at least once.

So lots of students are looking for loopholes - seeking all sorts of ways to avoid the difficult but rewarding labor of getting a good education. Cheating is widespread.

Apparently, students find it easy to rationalize cheating, and they have a broad range of reasons. They also say teachers are ignoring it. Adding new dimensions to the problem is the Internet.

The Rutgers study found 41 percent of college students admitting in 2001 that they'd cribbed material from the Internet and presented it as their own work.

At Duke, academic misconduct cases have doubled in five years. At Carolina, cheating and plagiarism cases are up 60 percent since 2000. Last year at Maryland, a dozen students were accused of using cell phone text messages to cheat during an accounting exam.

These great institutions are fighting back in innovative ways that I hope will work. We found a way to deal with the issue at Virginia in 1842. Back to that in a moment. Meanwhile, the bottom-line results of all this are turning up in sad, almost comic ways:

Nearly a quarter of students between 12 and 17 do not know that the United States declared independence from Great Britain. And you read about students not finding Cuba on a map.

We see things like this in the press all the time. It's sad when you think that places like Syria, Iran and North Korea could affect our personal safety in big ways. It would be nice if our citizens could at least find these places on a globe.

Let me stop here to make a couple of points. First, while I am talking about your peer age group, I am not talking about you.

As in-bound "First Years" at one of the nation's top-ranked public universities, you've demonstrated a level of competence and academic accomplishment that only hard work and strong values can create.

You are already leaders of your generation, and you will remain so through the course of what I am sure will be long, productive and fulfilling lives.

You are the elite - made so not by birth - but by performance. You are the embodiment of Jefferson's vision of an enlightened meritocracy. He said, "There is a natural aristocracy among men and women. The grounds of this are virtue and talents."

Society expects the best from you, and you can only achieve your potential the old fashioned way. If you have been exposed to or tempted by the low standards exposed by the Rutgers survey, consider your start here a new beginning. Think of our honor system - your honor system -- as a cleansing opportunity.

My second point is that honor and ethics are about far more than the bottom line.

During your time here you will probably study Charles Darwin - you already know that Darwin argued survival of the fittest.

The truth is that the global market place will take care of those without honor who don't honestly acquire the intellectual weaponry now required to prosper. They will be eaten alive.

Anybody who thinks they can fake their way through during the course of this new century may as well leave school now and go tie up shrimp boats at the beach. It will be more relaxing.

Don't set foot on the campus of a Fortune 500 company. Forget about great careers in medicine or law, at big ad agencies, in the government, politics or the media.

You are entering a very competitive world and short cuts - like cheating - won't cut it.

But, more importantly, the honor system at the University of Virginia is about much more than not cheating - it's about, well, honor. It's about you and your peers -- and what you are made of inside.

It's about personal honor. Respect. And trust.

In your time here, you will encounter Emerson, a wise thinker who said nothing can bring peace but yourself and the triumph of principles.

The triumph of principles can't be learned from a code or a rulebook.

Our system here is, ultimately, less an honor code than an honor creed - a worldview, a way of living your life.

Live by the right creed, and the rewards of life will be endless:

Respect from peers and colleagues;

love and trust from family; and,

success in both its narrow career definition and in its far broader and more rewarding manifestations of spirit, emotion and self-esteem.

I was fortunate to be exposed to Virginia's honor system when I showed up in the early seventies - an Army brat from Northern Virginia barely aware of this University's unique and marvelous history. Hard to believe I didn't know it was founded by Thomas Jefferson.

The honor system was probably easier for me because I grew up in the home of a West Pointer - duty, honor, country is their creed.

Virginia is unique among the nation's elite schools because it administers a successful honor system based on trust in a large, diverse student population. It is administered solely by the students. If you violate your fellow students' trust - if you cheat or steal or lie -- you are dismissed from the University by your peers:

No second chances; no appeals to the faculty, the administration or the Board of Visitors.

You will find this system to be nearly unique in the country. Alumni and students are deeply - and justifiably- proud of this system.

The University of Virginia really is different, really is special and our 160-year old system is largely responsible.

The system has had its changes over the years. That is one of its great strengths -its ability to evolve effectively. The system today differs from what it was when I was a student. It's different from what it was ten years ago.

But its core values remain what they were in 1842. The presumption is that students at the University of Virginia do not lie, cheat or steal and that they conduct their lives in accordance with these principles.

While Thomas Jefferson did not establish the Honor System at the University's inception, we know how he felt about honor - particularly among young people. Writing to his nephew in 1785 - more than 30 years before Virginia was chartered - he stated:

Never suppose, that in any possible situation, or under any circumstance, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you.

That was good advice in 1785 and it is even better advice in 2003.

I hope many of you will take an active role with the Honor Committee in administering the honor system. I ask all of you to understand the system.

Cherish it - as the generations who have gone before you have cherished it.

On behalf of the Board of Visitors, I welcome you to one of the world's premier Universities and I thank you for choosing to join us.

Enjoy your summer and come back in August ready for the greatest experience of your life.

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