Students at the elite Episcopal High School in Alexandria are asked to live by a simple code — don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t steal and report your classmate who does.
“That fourth point is the kicker, of course,” said F. Robertson Hershey, headmaster at Episcopal. School historians say the campus is home to one of the oldest honor codes in the nation, instituted around 1870, and one of the few remaining schools that demand responsibility for classmates.
“From that time forward it’s been our cornerstone value,” Hershey said. “Our feeling is if students don’t take responsibility for their own code, it becomes a cops-and-robbers system where the faculty are out to get the students.”
Episcopal’s system relies upon a committee of seven elected students and four appointed faculty to decide matters of integrity. Violations are completely confidential and range from three to 10 per year, Hershey said.
He said that recent national scandals like Enron and Eliot Spitzer have influenced discussions about the system.
“There’s no question some kids say ‘That isn’t how the world really works,’ ” Hershey said. “We tell them ‘You’re absolutely right, but you also have the potential in your own sphere, and your own life, to impact that, and make things a little different.’ ”
