Grinnell College considers modifying academic honesty process as number of cases rise

The number of academic honesty cases have more than doubled those in previous years. In response to this increase, the Committee on Academic Standing is reviewing the current academic honesty process with the goal of instituting substantial changes for the 2026-27 academic year.

Elaine Marzluff, chair of faculty, said that for a long time, Grinnell averaged around 20 academic honesty cases per semester. According to Andrea Tracy, the chair of committee on academic standing and associate dean for student academic life, there were 23 academic honesty cases in spring 2024, 44 in fall 2024 and 66 in spring 2025, totaling 110 cases in the 2024-25 academic year.

“We overwhelmed our ability to hear cases in a timely fashion,” said Marzluff. “We had a tripling of our number of cases, and we had the same number of people hearing the cases. That, for all practical purposes, broke our process.”

Marzluff said that much of the increase in academic honesty cases could be attributed to the increase in the uncited use of artificial intelligence (AI). Prior to spring 2023 — with ChatGPT opening to the public in November 2022 — large language model (LLM) use was not an academic honesty concern, and the most common type of academic honesty case tended to be inappropriate collaboration between students. Tracy said that in addition to AI use, cases involving inappropriate collaboration or the use of impermissible materials had also increased in the last year.

In the current system, if a faculty member suspects an academic honesty violation, they may report it to the Committee on Academic Standing. The Committee then chooses a subcommittee for academic honesty, who conducts a hearing in which they question the offending student, and then make a recommendation to the rest of the Committee.

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As this process is ongoing, the faculty member is not allowed to discuss the case with the student. Tracy stated that two aspects of this system were problematic.

“One, it’s a lot of work and it’s a lot of people’s time. With more cases it gets more challenging to have people available to do all of those hearings and have to put that time in,” she said.

Secondly, the duration of this process, which was only compounded by the increasing number of cases, made the experience deeply stressful for students.

“We want a fair and humane process with consistent outcomes,” said Marzluff.

Marzluff also noted that while the lack of faculty-student interaction during the adjudication made the process unbiased, it could also add tension to the faculty-student relationship and reduce opportunities for the student to learn from their mistakes. To address this, the Committee is discussing the possibilities of increased involvement of faculty members in the adjudication process, while adhering to fair and equitable guidelines.

“We want it to be an educational process,” said Tracy. ”We want to help students understand why we have those standards of academic integrity and what went wrong in this case rather than just saying ‘well, here’s your punishment, go back out there.’”

Tracy and Marzluff said that the Committee on Academic Standing is considering providing a modified process for students who want to admit responsibility to the violation, forgoing the full hearing and allowing the student to meet with a committee member or with the faculty member who submitted the complaint. This option is likely to reduce the duration of the process and some of the stress endured by the student.

“In some cases, students take immediate responsibility and in that scenario we simply move faster,” said Marzluff. “Sometimes just having an outcome allows you to move forward and not sit in this limbo phase.”

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Marzluff said that according to the Committee’s polling, faculty is currently divided on what the modified process should look like in terms of faculty involvement. About a third of faculty members were in favor of retaining the current model, another third were in favor of allowing guided conversation with students regarding the process, while the final third were in favor of making determinations regarding the case, within set guidelines, by themselves.

The Committee began discussing potential changes to the academic honesty system in earnest last spring.

While it has been their primary policy agenda this semester, they have no finalized their policy proposal.

According to Marzluff, the committee hopes to have a first recommendation prepared for faculty feedback by the end of this semester and submit a final recommendation for full faculty approval by the end of this academic year.