Integrity

Exam week is finally over here at W&L, and today I encountered an interesting pair of parallel situations on which I'd like to comment briefly. It's a subject that is discussed ad nauseam, but I've not yet deigned to opine on it.

I took my third of three final exams this afternoon. Because of a bit of fine motor skill trouble, I am able to type tests and exams up on my computer. So, I took advantage of that accommodation today.

For those readers who don't attend college with me, W&L is governed not by an Honor Code, but the Honor System. Students are expected to be honest and honorable at every turn. Tests and exams, therefore, are unproctored.

I selected a classroom with a large, rectangular table to be where I would take this exam. A couple others followed suit a few minutes later. I opened a new Word document on my computer, set things up, and did my exam. No notes, no textbook, just my brain. Of course, all it would have taken were a couple double-clicks and I could have pulled up a Word document from a folder on my desktop containing a lot of information that would have aided me on my exam. Since no one could see my computer screen, no one would have been any the wiser if I had decided to cheat in that manner. But I know better, as do my fellow students. It's a good feeling to know that I am deemed fit to be accountable for my own decisions by my school.

Later on, I was watching coverage of the second round of the 2008 Masters, one of the most prestigious, pressure-filled tournaments in all of competitive golf. On the 15th hole of the tournament, 2007 U.S. Amateur runner-up and University of Alabama senior Michael Thompson readied to hit a birdie putt. He took his stance, but then he backed away, for no apparent reason. He had set the head of his putter down behind the ball and just before he began his stroke, the ball moved. It moved about an eighth of an inch forward: so little that the only person who could detect its movement was Thompson (neither his playing partners nor the hundreds in the gallery looking on noticed this, and it was only detectable via a highly zoomed-in camera replay). He backed away from his ball and informed his playing partners that he was penalizing himself one stroke and moving the ball back to its previous position.

In golf, if a ball moves after a player has set the club down behind it, the player is deemed to have caused the movement and is penalized a stroke. Thompson could have ignored the movement and the penalty and no one would have been any the wiser, most likely. But he did the honorable thing instead. That's why I love the game of golf.

Good night.