Honor Code

When Japanese bad-boy director Takeshi Miike takes up the singing sword of the samurai genre in "13 Assassins," you can be sure that heads will roll. I mean they literally roll. All over the place. Like somebody dropped a bag of bowling balls on a downgrade. At least that's what happens in some of the less violent scenes. Elsewhere the movie is more grisly - as when establishing the credentials of central villain Naritsugu (rock star Goro Inagaki), a rogue 19th-century lord.

On Sunday night, Haverford College students will gather as they have every February for the last 30 years for an hours-long exercise in parliamentary endurance known as plenary. Equal parts raucous town meeting and solemn proceeding, the affair traditionally has been a forum for students to discuss and ratify proposed amendments to the 167-year-old Quaker college's constitution. But since 1983, when a crisis of confidence in Haverford's venerable honor system reached a fever pitch, plenary has become better known as an annual referendum on the school's 13-page honor code, which governs all aspects of academic and social life on the college's grassy Main Line campus.

A survey indicating there may be more cheating at Villanova University than at similar selective schools has prompted some soul-searching by the university and consideration of whether to institute an honor code. Eighty percent of the 99 undergraduate Villanova students who answered the national survey said they had cheated on a test in at least one of the six ways listed in the survey. The total was 63 percent for colleges without an honor code and 42 percent for those with a code.

Kramer and Elaine shared their physics homework. Rhett left a dirty message on Scarlett's answering machine. Madonna was spied using a cheat sheet by The Professor Formerly Known as Prince. And no one is quite sure what happened between Obi-Wan and Yoda. All real cases - the names, of course, changed to protect the innocent (and guilty) - taken from the annals of the Haverford College honor council, the student body charged with investigating and trying transgressions against the school's honor code.

On campuses across the nation, incidents of racial and sexual harassment are on the rise, garnering headlines and causing concern among administrators and students. In recent months, the University of Pennsylvania shut down a white fraternity for engaging in lewdness after the group held a party featuring two black strippers. Three white students at Dartmouth University were found guilty of disorderly conduct and harassment of a black professor. Minority students at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass.

The University of Virginia's code of honor I was very pleased to read your editorial "Code endures" (Inquirer, May 14) regarding the University of Virginia. My son also attended a school with an honor code, the Valley Forge Military Academy and College in Wayne. He graduated from there and has successfully completed his first year in the college. He spent three years in a public high school where "zero tolerance" is an after-the-fact response, while getting over seemed to be the norm.

While I certainly have no room to be self-righteous about matters of personal conduct, I do have this: I have always been made to understand that I must accept responsibility for my actions, both in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of the society into which I was born and have spent most of my life: the American military community. In that community, there is an honor code that states simply: "I will not lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate those who do. " Most of us, from time to time, have failed to live up to that code, but we were required to try. The higher we rose in that society - the more responsibility we earned - the more closely we were expected to adhere to that code.

Character, it is said, is measured by what you do when no one is watching. No matter what letter grades they got on the papers they turned in to popular physics professor Lou Bloomfield, scores of University of Virginia students have flunked a fundamental test of character. Spurred by a student's complaint that many in her class had plagiarized their papers, Mr. Bloomfield ran a computerized check on more than 1,800 student essays. He looked for duplicated strings of the same six words, a red flag for plagiarism.

Forward Brandon Davies expects to play next season for BYU despite missing this year's NCAA Tournament run for violating the university's honor code. Carri Jenkins, a university spokeswoman, said yesterday that Davies voluntarily withdrew from school after completing his winter semester finals, but is working with the dean of students to meet conditions so he can return for the fall semester. Davies' honor code violation involved premarital sex. He acknowledged it when it became known to school officials.

They talked about honor codes, subliminal anti-drug messages, surprise trips to the mall and dream rooms. They talked about how to revive the sense of family and community pride in Upper Dublin and how to keep children there happy and drug-free. Most important, "they talked," said Leonard Ross, chairman of the Select Joint Committee on Teenage Alcohol Abuse. "They talked. " About 45 people met at Sandy Run Middle School cafeteria in Upper Dublin Wednesday night to discuss ways to raise awareness of the problem of teenage alcohol abuse that has touched even this quiet, well-to-do suburb.

When Japanese bad-boy director Takeshi Miike takes up the singing sword of the samurai genre in "13 Assassins," you can be sure that heads will roll. I mean they literally roll. All over the place. Like somebody dropped a bag of bowling balls on a downgrade. At least that's what happens in some of the less violent scenes. Elsewhere the movie is more grisly - as when establishing the credentials of central villain Naritsugu (rock star Goro Inagaki), a rogue 19th-century lord.

Forward Brandon Davies expects to play next season for BYU despite missing this year's NCAA Tournament run for violating the university's honor code. Carri Jenkins, a university spokeswoman, said yesterday that Davies voluntarily withdrew from school after completing his winter semester finals, but is working with the dean of students to meet conditions so he can return for the fall semester. Davies' honor code violation involved premarital sex. He acknowledged it when it became known to school officials.

The New Mexico Lobos hammered third-ranked Brigham Young, 82-64, Wednesday night in Provo, Utah, just two days after the Cougars dismissed starting forward Brandon Davies for a violation of the school's honor code. The game was the first without the 6-foot-9 sophomore, who had started 26 of 29 games and averaged 11.1 points and a team-leading 6.2 rebounds. The Salt Lake City Tribune reported that Davies, from Provo, was dismissed after he admitted to having sexual relations with his girlfriend.

How Moral Revolutions Happen By Kwame Anthony Appiah W.W. Norton. 264 pp. $25.95 Reviewed by Dwight Garner What are the rewards, on this earth, of a well-lived life? John Adams pared the answer down to six words: "the esteem and admiration of others. " For Adams, this was an animal and not an intellectual need. "The desire of the esteem of others is as real a want of nature as hunger; and the neglect and contempt of the world as severe a pain as the gout or stone. " Adams was writing about individuals, not nations.

Their names are Wenlock and Mandeville , and they don't appear to be either cute or lovable, but you are likely to be seeing a lot of them in the next two years. "We want it to be fun," London 2012 organizing committee chairman Sebastian Coe said as the mascots for the London Olympics and Paralympics were unveiled Wednesday. "We want it to try to engage and reconnect young people to sport. " The one-eyed creations are named after small English towns. The mascots - which have neither fur nor gender - are based on a story by children's author Michael Morpurgo . An animated film showed the two changing appearance, imitating athletes such as Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt . FOOTBALL: Former Eagles all-pro Brian Dawkins said the Denver Broncos' collapse last season - they went 2-8 after a 6-0 start - left him angry.

Not so many years ago, "Redbelt" would have been a boxing movie. Certainly, boxing buffs will recognize this story - bruised fighters hewing to some kind of warrior code in a sleazy business where the dirtiest fighting is done by men in suits - the only guys who always get paid. But boxing, as someone says in "Redbelt," is as "dead as Woodrow Wilson. " Mixed Martial Arts has captured the fancy of a new generation, kids who know Kimbo Slice from YouTube but couldn't name the WBC heavyweight champ to save their Wii. MMA is where the money is, and that, says "Redbelt" writer/director David Mamet, means MMA will be subject to the same moral metrics as boxing, to wit: Any time two men fight for money, the fix is in. At least that's how it goes in "Redbelt," a neo-noir, MMA movie featuring Chiwetel Ejiofor as Mike Terry, a jujitsu instructor so absorbed in its concepts of honor that he won't sully the purity of his discipline by fighting in competitions (fight only to prevail, he says, never to merely compete)

A Valley Forge Military Academy cadet has been charged with indecently assaulting three classmates at the all-male prep school in Wayne. The 17-year-old's alleged victims also were juveniles, Deputy Police Superintendent John Rutty of the Radnor Police Department said yesterday. He declined to release their ages. Authorities said a cadet told staff at the academy on Saturday morning that he had been harassed and sexually assaulted by another boy. Staff members called the victim's family and reported the alleged assault to police, authorities said.

Presumably symbolic of a sea change, the "Bring Me Men" sign is coming down at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, where a sexual-assault scandal has unfolded in the last six weeks. The Air Force has acknowledged 56 investigations of sexual assaults on women in the last 10 years, including 20 rapes. Victims say they were ignored, shunned, even disciplined, while their attackers received little punishment. At the conclusion of the initial investigation this week, the Air Force reassigned four top academy officers and announced commonsense procedural changes.

Harrisburg vs. Philly in school budget crisis Thank you for being a much-needed voice for all of us who work with and love the children and families connected with the public schools in the city of Philadelphia (Editorial, June 1). When I heard the disparaging comments from Harrisburg credited to Gov. Ridge and his office, my first reaction was anger. Then I realized that such statements must come from those who have never experienced how hard our students have it - not to mention teachers, principals, staff and the children's families.