Walter Johnson’s administration enacted a new academic integrity code this school year designed to promote a more academically honest environment. The academic integrity pledge is one in a series of recent changes in the last year and a half made to school policy as a part of February 2003’s School Improvement Plan.

In first period classes, students received a letter from Principal Kevin Maxwell to parents explaining the new policy. They were then asked to sign the pledge, returning a copy to the school and keeping one for themselves.

The code is comprised of a list of behaviors that constitute academic dishonesty. This list includes actions as basic as forging a signature to as complex as “taking an exam for another student, or permitting someone else to take the test for you.” Most teachers hung the full list in their classrooms, but the code is also available for viewing on the school website.

According to Assistant Principal Chris Merrill, the policy changes were enacted this year because the committee in charge of school improvement, as well as a group of teachers, realized that it was time to establish a way of both consistently defining plagiarism in addition to regulating actions taken against students caught cheating and plagiarizing.

“[Plagiarism] is harmful to the school; it affects the school negatively…We needed to become more consistent about how we dealt with it,” said Merrill. “Last year, punishment was at the discretion of the teacher.”

Now, because students have signed the code, there is no question about whether what they have done is something they should be persecuted for or not.

“[Dealing with] cheating has been discussed for years…the system [was] a little frayed [before],” said Environmental Science teacher, and outspoken code supporter Corky Longsdon.

Many area high schools, including Bethesda-Chevy Chase and James Hubert Blake High School, mention academic integrity in course syllabi and student handbooks, yet they do not ask students to sign a specified pledge.