Written and reported by Leilani Davis, Max Johnson, Oliver Lavallee, and Jessica Schott-Rosenfield
As Haverford students, we pledge our commitment to the values articulated in the Honor Code. During this semester’s Fall Plenary, a Haverford committee by the name of CSCAR (Committee for Student Community, Agency, and Responsibility) will present an entirely new version of the Code, conceived of and written over the course of the last several months. The revised Honor Code has been broken down into five resolutions to be voted on by the student body. The remaining sixth resolution to be presented this Plenary involves changes to the Student Constitution, which will allow the new Code to be voted on.
Following recent changes at the federal level, CSCAR was formed in April to articulate a clear code that is compliant with legal requirements, and more accurately represents Haverfordian values. The proposed Honor Code is a succinct 11-page document, compared to the prior 53 pages, that breaks down the core values of Haverford, the expectations of the academic and social codes, and the way Quaker ideas apply to students today. The re-write entailed not only a theoretical but a complete structural re-organization, into five articles and a preamble.
Resolution #1: Constitutional Updates
Because the Constitution currently does not allow changes to the Honor Code passed in the fall to be put into use until the spring, CSCAR is proposing that this policy be changed to allow any resolutions passed this semester to go into effect immediately. Other changes include alterations to the election procedures for The Representative of International Students, which formerly required candidates to be international students themselves. The new policy would allow any students to be nominated for candidacy. Similarly, the election procedure for Officer of Multiculturalism would no longer “strongly encourage” students of color to run for office, instead eliding this note to keep the document in line with current federal legal standards.
Resolution #2: Changes to Preamble and Article I
Changes to the Preamble
The newly proposed preamble has been expanded from one to three paragraphs since the Spring of 2025, notably leaving out the phrase “diverse community” and putting less emphasis on embracing interpersonal differences in this particular section. However, Perez-Flesler notes that the phrase “diverse community” remains in the introduction to the Social Code later on, and that in his view, “if anything, the Code as a whole more strongly emphasizes embracing difference than it did before.”
The preamble favors rhetoric on the “spirit” of the Code, and its status as a “living document,” interpretable by each successive generation of students. The language urges students towards a “shared commitment” to “growth, accountability, and dignity,” embracing the core values of a liberal arts institution: continual curiosity and critical engagement.
Changes to Article I: Introduction
The Code’s revised “Article I” defines the Haverfordian values of Trust, Concern, and Respect, the jurisdiction of the Code, and articulates the written “commitment” all students must sign upon matriculation. The extensive definitions are new additions to the introduction – previously, the terms were laid out in the “social” section of the Code.
Another key change is a statement in the “jurisdiction” section which states that the revised Code applies only to students, rather than the community as a whole. Instead, “because only students participate in the writing, ratification, and adjudication of the Code, it does not prescribe expectations of other community members. Instead, College staff and faculty members are subject to the policies of the Staff Handbook and Faculty Handbook, respectively.”
Resolution #3: Adopting Article II (Confrontation)
The beginning of Article II discusses confrontation, which underlies the values of concern, trust, and respect that are present throughout the document. The previous Code’s discussion of confrontation is embedded in the Social Code, much further down; in contrast, the revision clearly seeks to situate confrontation as a principle crucial to understanding subsequent sections. Here, we see the term “confrontation” used many times in the previous document laid out in less than a page, informing readers of the purpose and the value of reflection in changing our behavior.
Resolution #4: Adopting Article III (The Social Code)
Newly arranged in a sequence delineating the Social Code “in action,” “in our physical environment,” and “in academic spaces,” the revised Social Code lays out expectations for the ways in which we must “embrace the opportunity that … closeness provides us for meaning, connection, learning, and support.”
The Social Code begins with a major cut from the previous document, which includes a list of potential categories and identities students may fall into that make them susceptible to harm in a social environment. The list, which included “students of color, students with disabilities, queer and trans students, first-generation students, low-income students, survivors of sexual assault, and international students,” is absent the the updated document. When discussing concern in a social setting, the word privilege is also changed to “personal identities and perspectives.”
Other sections have been similarly erased from the previous Honor Code. These are parts of the Code that elaborate on specific kinds of discrimination, and take a position of anti-racism, as opposed to being passively “not racist.” The revision also elides a statement about the necessity of re-evaluating our personal beliefs if they perpetuate discrimination.
Resolution #5: Adopting Article IV (The Academic Code)
In short, the Academic Code covers expectations for students regarding the integrity of their scholarship, defining violations, the consequences of such violations, and confrontation. It also discusses the interaction between the Academic and the Social Code, stating that the Social Code applies in the classroom. A primary goal for the new Code was to combat academic dishonesty on campus, which has been increasing in recent years. Additionally, since many students report that they haven’t read the foundational document, or meaningfully engaged with it, CSCAR hopes to close this divide between students and the Code.
Resolution #6: Adopting Article V (Related Practices, Policies, & Procedures)
The fifth article of the proposed Honor Code discusses other related practices, policies, and procedures; these issues were more sporadically discussed in earlier versions of the Code. The subsections included under this broader section cover consensus, academic confrontation procedure, Honor Council procedures, academic freedom, other policies and avenues for support, and the ratification of the Code itself. These procedural sections outline the steps involved in how confrontations and violations of the Code are to be carried out. There are also links to other resources relevant to student conflicts, standards, and legal processes.
Reflections and Ratification
In an interview with the Bi-Co News, Quirk and Perez-Fleser acknowledged general upset about the removal of language related to DEI. However, they emphasized that even without explicit language related to marginalized identities, the protections that have been provided to students through the Honor Code remain. Rewriting the Code was an undertaking involving a great deal of back and forth between members of CSCAR, students, and the faculty with the goal of serving the community while acknowledging concerns.
“We wanted to make a code that people felt invested in, and we have this great supportive group of people who are now here ready to see it pass at Plenary,” said Quirk.
When writing the new code, they also looked at past iterations of the code and the values within it. “We’ve also tried to make something that really reflects both our history and is grounded in what the Honor Code has always been,” said Perez-Fleser, who looked through documents from the 19th and 20th centuries in an effort to understand what the Honor Code has been in the past. “We tried to take the best and the most enduring out of that and synthesize it with the community that we have today and [will have in] the future,” he said.
Students’ Council Co-President Sarah Weill-Jones ’26 said of the resolution in an interview with the Bi-Co News, “The Honor code will affect all of the resolutions that are going to be presented and how we enact our policies at Haverford so making sure that we have a firm and good honor code to base all of those resolutions on is really important … I’m incredibly proud of what CSCAR has produced and really heartened. We had so much community buy in and that makes me really happy.”
Co-President Ben Fligelman ’26 agrees. “Plenary gets its power from the united voice of students as a community, and without an honor code, it’s really hard to claim that that voice exists.”
He added, “Because the Honor Code is the basis for all that we do, I’m really glad that A., we have a plenary centered on it, and B., that we’ll be able to continue this discourse … We hope that students, when they inevitably have concerns about the Honor Code, will continue thinking about those and discoursing about those and working to improve it in the years to come.”
At least two-thirds of the student body must vote to ratify the new Code in order for it to be implemented. If the vote fails, a new committee at least 50% composed of students not elected to Students’ or Honor Council positions will be created to evaluate and implement changes to the document proposed during the ratification process, to be re-visited at the next scheduled plenary.
This vote continues the greater conversation about Haverford’s relationship to the federal government and how much a document like the Honor Code should reflect students’ beliefs and values, even when they may conflict with changes in the federal landscape. Now that the Honor Code has been rewritten, and in the hopes that it will pass, Quirk and Perez-Fleser look forward to returning to CSCAR’s original mission of facilitating student connection with the Honor Code and bringing it back into student life and culture.
The plenary packet can be found here. The version of the Code implemented in May 2025, which was altered by the administration in reaction to the shifting legal landscape, is linked here with tracked changes. Finally, the proposed revision of the Code and charter in full are linked here.
Fall Plenary 2025 will be held on November 9 in the GIAC. Doors open at 1:00 PM, and satellite rooms will be available in the GIAC conference room or Sharpless Auditorium. A Zoom attendance option is also offered; contact Zora Khuene ([email protected]), Students’ Council Officer of Access and Disability Inclusion, for more information.
Corrections:
A previous version of this article characterized the changes to the Students’ Constitution incorrectly, suggesting that the Representative for International Students and the Officer of Multiculturalism are one position. The two are separate roles, and the resolution proposes different policy changes to each election procedure, respectively.
A previous version of this article implied that the phrase “diverse community” no longer appears in the revised Code. In fact, the phrase appears in the new Social Code introduction. An explanatory quotation from Perez-Flesler has been appended to the referenced paragraph.
