Honor System and Code

On the application for admission, students sign a statement agreeing to conform to and uphold the Honor Code. Therefore, students are responsible for understanding the provisions of the code, which are set forth below. To maintain an academic community according to the standards of the Honor Code, students and faculty must report all alleged violations of the Honor code to the Honor Committee. Any student who has knowledge of, but does not report, a violation may be accused of lying under the Honor Code.

The Honor Code of George Mason University deals specifically with:
  • Cheating and attempted cheating
  • Plagiarism
  • Lying and
  • Stealing

Cheating encompasses the following:

  1. The willful giving or receiving of an unauthorized, unfair, dishonest, or unscrupulous advantage in academic work over other students.
  2. The above may be accomplished by any means whatsoever, including but not limited to the following: fraud; duress; deception; theft; trick; talking; signs; gestures; copying from another student; and the unauthorized use of study aids, memoranda, books, data, or other information.
  3. Attempted cheating.

Plagiarism encompasses the following:

  1. Presenting as one's own the words, the work, or the opinions of someone else without proper acknowledgment. (This includes material appearing on the Internet)
  2. Borrowing the sequence of ideas, the arrangement of material, or the pattern of thought of someone else without proper acknowledgment.

Lying encompasses the following:

The willful and knowledgeable telling of an untruth, as well as any form of deceit, attempted deceit, or fraud in an oral or written statement relating to academic work. This includes but is not limited to:
  1. Lying to administration and faculty members.
  2. Falsifying any university document by mutilation, addition, or deletion.
  3. Lying to Honor Committee members and counsels during investigation and hearing. This may constitute a second charge, with the committee members who acted as judges during that specific hearing acting as accusers.

Stealing encompasses the following:

Taking or appropriating without the permission to do so, and with the intent to keep or to make use of wrongfully, property belonging to any member of the GMU community or any property located on the university campus. This includes misuse of university computer resources.

For Further Information

Additional information on GMU Honor System and Code is available from the GMU Catalog and the Honor Committee

Last updated: Fall 2007