Dispatches from the Buckland Common Room: 1.1

At Mount Holyoke, finals come in manila envelopes. Once you've fought your way to the counter where you pick up your final, you take it to a designated testing room, remove it from its envelope, and spend three hours writing your answers in a bluebook. Then you put your test and your bluebook back into the envelope, seal the envelope, and sign it.

I was informed before taking my Art History* final yesterday that not licking and sealing your envelope while you're still inside the designated testing room is a violation of the honor code. I might just be confused due to the fact that my brain is sleep-deprived, over caffeinated, and fed only on what I've been able to steal from the Buckland kitchen, but this seems like a blatant abuse of the power given to honor code legislators.

The honor code exists, because Mount Holyoke has self-scheduled exams, and it would be easy for us to cheat if we weren't guilt tripped out of doing so. It would be reasonable to say "If you don't lick and seal your envelope while still inside the designated testing room, we will assume that you have been cheating, which is a violation of the honor code," but I don't see how failing to lick and seal your envelope in the testing room is, in itself, detrimental to the community. Turning irrelevant actions into violations of the honor code undermines whatever legitimacy the honor code may have.

*Taking an Art History exam, as it turns out, is much like being a psychic. You do well by making statements that sound specific but are general enough to apply to anything. For example, "Vermeer lived during an historical period in which artists were reexamining the role that art and the interpretation of art should play in people's lives," or "Caravaggio painted his figures with expressive hand gestures in order to draw the viewer's focus to the emotion of the story," or "Breugel was painting at a time when technological advancement brought economic pressures into conflict with traditional values."