The recent furor about cheating at West Point raises some fundamental questions about enforcing a code of behavior on college students. While there is room for argument about whether the particular West Point honor code is too strict or was arbitrarily enforced, no one challenges the desirability of maintaining some kind of standards that proscribe cheating.
Few colleges have so strict an honor code as West Point, but not many colleges are neutral about cheating on examinations. Sanctions of various sorts are invoked to prohibit such morally offensive conduct.
It is an anomaly, therefore, that in other areas most colleges today profess a position of moral neutrality.
Some concerned alumni of one of the well-known eastern colleges have just published a booklet called “Sex on Campus” which examines the consequences of the prevalent position of moral neutrality. The college shall be nameless here because its Pontius Pilate attitude is typical.
The booklet cites a recent poll of students showing that 28 percent of undergraduates believe it is “all right” to carry on two or more intimate sexual affairs at one time. Another 12 percent are uncertain whether such behavior is right or wrong. A shaky majority of only 59 percent still feels that sexual relationships should be exclusive.
No report was given on what percent believe that sexual relationships should be reserved for after marriage; that may be an irrelevancy on today’s campuses.
Although college regulations and state laws prohibit cohabitation, many unmarried undergraduate couples share a dormitory room. In response to inquiry, a college official said, “I don’t think we’d want to do anything about it unless someone complained.” The college imposes no sanctions for fornication, adultery, promiscuity, cohabitation, homosexuality, abortion, or venereal disease.
The attitude of the college administration and of the college counseling service is that a student’s sex life is entirely his or her own concern, and the college cannot and should not serve in loco parentis.
In practice, however, this amounts to a position not only that each student may determine his or her own behavior, but also that whatever the student does must he right for him or her. If the student chooses promiscuity or homosexuality, then that is right for him or her.
This is not neutrality but an undermining of Judeo-Christian ethics. The Ten Commandments are an objective moral code, not subjective or situational.
Some argue that the college authorities should keep their hands off because sex is a private matter involving consenting adults who are not interfering with the rights of others. Just to cite one type of interference with the rights of others, many students are evicted from their own rooms by a roommate who wants to enjoy a private tryst.
Moral codes represent the best efforts of a society to regulate itself in a decent and orderly way. A society is held together by the sharing of an ethical system. If the best and the brightest refuse to respect any objective standards of morality, then our nation will decline as rapidly as has Washington, D.C. where abortions and illegitimate births now outnumber legitimate babies.
