All too often, I have found myself excitedly discussing my most recent English paper thesis with a friend, asking someone how to differentiate a particularly nasty problem on a take-home math test, or begging my mother to supply me with a few suitable synonyms for “Colonial American” (a surprisingly difficult task when you get around to it), only to begin to feel afraid that I am breaking the rules. The fine line between collaboration and plagiarism is often blurred at Phillips Academy, and it is easy for students to unintentionally cross that line in a desire to please teachers, parents, and themselves. It is a sad, but true, fact that Phillips Academy needs the stringent rules about plagiarism that are currently in place. Far too many students turn to Wikipedia, CliffsNotes, their friends and their parents in an effort to produce something worthy of a good grade, and all morals are at risk of going out the window in this academic free-for-all. This is not to say that teamwork is explicitly discouraged at Andover. On the contrary, we are encouraged to reach out for help—but only from the “right” people. Writing Center is okay; a paper swap in your friend’s dorm room is not. Conference period with your math teacher is great, but asking your dad to work through a few problems with you is risky. We are placing values on what kind of help we can receive to the detriment of academic cooperation. However, this shared honor code creates problems for those students who genuinely benefit from collaborating on projects with their friends or having a good buddy read over an English paper the night before it’s due. These students (and I count myself among them) feel that working together with their peers often comes dangerously close to unintentional plagiarism. Creativity is thus at risk of being stifled as we thumb through the Blue Book, desperately email teachers, and try with all our might to avoid the academic dishonesty that can land a Phillips Academy student in some very, very hot water. Such fear is not conducive to doing our best work, even individually. Yes, we are stuck in a dilemma here—how do we nurture collaboration among those students who can honestly make the most of it, while still clamping down on those others to whom such teamwork is merely an excuse to succeed off of someone else’s labors? Most of the effort will need to come from the student body—once more of us start behaving in a responsible manner and the number of plagiarism DC’s decreases, our teachers will trust us more. But the other piece of the puzzle is this: in order for us to feel safe in making our own mistakes and yes, occasionally failing splendidly, the emphasis on grades needs to be taken down a notch. It is a difficult proposition, I admit, at one of the best high schools in the country, in a world where college admissions are increasingly competitive and knock-your-socks-off intelligence is rewarded. But it’s worth a try. The decision to move English 100 to a pass/fail grading system (a choice discussed at length in last week’s Phillipian) was one way to alleviate the stress of grades for a small part of our student body. Some Juniors liked it, others did not, but in theory this new method of grading did make life a little bit easier for the Class of 2011. This option is one that should be considered by other departments at the end of its trial run in the English department next year. The removal of grades, though it might be a bit frustrating and something of a shock at first to those of us who are accustomed to seeing numbers at the bottom of our teacher comments, would be an interesting experiment. And beyond that, it’s the job of us students to reevaluate our priorities and see if we can get morals and ethics back on the top of that list. After all, grades last in our memories for a few days or weeks, but those virtues are the ones we will carry with us for the rest of our lives. In the real world, we will not be living our lives at cramped desks, isolated and without the ability to reach out for help when we need it. We will be thriving in workplaces where creativity and hard work are both encouraged and rewarded, and many times, those virtues will be the direct result of teamwork. Phillips Academy, in preparing us for that world ahead, should maintain the honor code it prizes so highly in order to teach us integrity and the value of our own hard work, but the school should not enforce it to such a high level that certain types of collaboration between students seem downright discouraged. If our obsession with the rules takes precedence over our desire to do the best job we can with as much help as we need, then we place at stake the very interconnectedness that is needed to sustain our community.
