The Honor Council expanded its total number of student solicitors and defense advisors from four to eight in Spring 2025 following concerns about a growing caseload. As election season approaches, the Council plans to maintain the expansion and restructure the election process.
Traditionally, Honor Code violations are processed by four students: one pair of student solicitors, who review potential violations and determine whether to pursue consequences, and one pair of defense advisors, who support students throughout the process and advocate on their behalf. Under the new policy, which took effect prior to last spring’s elections, students may be represented by one of two pairs of solicitors or defense advisors.
The change in system is in response to council members feeling overwhelmed. Honor Council Chair Maggie Woodward ’26 said the old system often left students juggling too many responsibilities while balancing full-time coursework.
“I watched them just get super overworked, same with [our] defense advisors. And we are all full-time students anyways, and so it wasn’t fair to be like, ‘you need to manage this all, just the two of you,’” Woodward said.
Student solicitor John Endres ’26 said the new structure is more manageable.
“I think there were about 40 cases in like a two week span during finals week for the team last year,” Endres said. “And just that was two people who had to work through all of that, and when they had finals to work on themselves, […] when they have other things going on, it’s just really hard to ask one group of two people to do all of that.”
Dividing and conquering helped students manage cases. “By adding a couple more solicitors to the team, you’re spreading out,” Endres said. “And what we found this year is that we couldn’t imagine it being any other way.”
The expansion allows members to divide tasks and collaborate on cases, giving each incident the attention it needs. “Having a team of four on each […] side has allowed for a lot more collaboration and delegation of tasks that I think has been helpful,” Woodward said.
Because the Honor Council has incomplete information about the number of past cases, Woodward is hesitant to speculate about whether there has been a significant increase in alleged violations. The type of violations, however, has shifted noticeably.
“[There] has been an increase, not so much in volume, but in the type of cases—a lot of AI,” Endres said.
AI cases, particularly in computer science and math classes, now make up the majority of the council’s workload, according to defense advisor Cole Mooney ’26. Determining responsibility in AI-related cases can be challenging.
“The problem […] we’ve been having with AI is just determining whether or not a student is responsible or not, given that’s such a hard thing to track,” Mooney said.
Endres also noted that differences in departmental policies complicate some cases. “You have different professors in the same department with different rules and regulations about AI. So what some [people] would view as viable AI use in one class is not the same as another class in the same department,” Endres said.
The Honor Council is also looking to restructure its election process. “In the past [it] has been kind of unorganized and the communication has been sparse,” Woodward said.
As part of these changes, the council will eliminate its Category I elections. This means no elections will be held in the fall.
New members will continue to participate in the August “boot camp” before classes to prepare for expectations and procedures, helping ensure smoother transitions within the council.
As the Honor Council implements structural changes to manage cases and adapt to evolving pressures, increasing the number of students, tracking case data and consolidating the election process improves continuity from one year to the next.
“We were trying to codify things so that people in the […] future can keep track of it, because it’s only a year long position, so stuff can get lost in translation,” Woodward said.