History of the Honor Code

The University of North Carolina is the oldest State University in the nation. When Carolina enrolled its first students in 1795, the trustees called for strict regulation of student conduct, and assigned powers of investigation and sanctioning to the faculty.

Disorder among the students was common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Not atypical were the "riots" of 1799, 1816, and 1840. In his History of the University of North Carolina, Kemp P. Battle reports on students expelled or suspended for "firing of pistols," assault, arson, drunkenness, throwing rocks at their tutors, stealing their professor's horses, and evening dueling.

Beginning in the 1830s the Dialectic and Philanthropic student societies began to work in conjunction with the faculty. Students took the societies' trials seriously, as they feared their loss of status as "gentlemen" more than they feared expulsion from the University!

When the University was revived in 1875 the faculty turned over their responsibility for maintaining "a high level of propriety" to the two debating societies. By 1890 matters of academic cheating along with the by-now-traditional cases of social misconduct, were turned over to the student societies for trial and punishment. In 1904 a new form of student self-rule, the Student Council, emerged. Since then disciplinary matters have been handled in the name of the University rather than in that of the "Di" or the "Phi."

Continued growth in the size and diversity of the student body made new disciplinary bodies necessary. In 1946 the first student body constitution was adopted, establishing the five student courts. Criticism of this system in the 1950s and 1960s prompted reforms, principally the implementation, in 1974, of The Instrument of Student Judicial Governance.

The Instrument serves as the University's definitive statement on student disciplinary governance. It delineates the Honor Code and includes all structures and procedures of our Honor System. In 2003 the Committee on Student Conduct significantly revised the Instrument, providing more opportunity for faculty and students to discuss alleged violations, expanding the range of sanctions, expediting the Honor System process, and giving the Honor Courts more flexibility to administer educational sanctions.