Interpreting the Law

I found this statement of academic integrity in a study guide for one my classes. I think this statement is intended to prevent one person from e-mailing the study guide to everyone in the class, but regardless the language is way too broad: “Distributing this information in any form…in any way…is a violation of academic integrity and the student code of conduct.” This means that if I physically give the unmodified study guide to a friend in the same class who had the ability to print it for himself, that’d be cheating. And that’s ridiculous.

This makes me think of two philosophies that exist for interpreting the laws: (1) that they should be followed to the letter with no exceptions or wiggle room and (2) that the laws are meant to represent general concepts and there can be extenuating circumstances where they shouldn’t apply. (Obviously I think the study guide falls into the second interpretation.) 

Now, there are good and bad componenents about each of these interpretations. For (1), it is very clear and obvious what constitutes the law, which I think makes applying and understanding it easier. The bad thing is that it might penalize people who share an unmodified study guide even though his friend had the ability to print it for himself. For (2), the good is that it wouldn’t penalize that person, but the bad is that it can be time-consuming to decide things on a case-by-case basis and it could also be difficult to “draw the line” in terms of where the extenuating circumstances lie. Still I lean towards the second one because laws are written without the full understanding of how they might play out in the real world. If my teacher saw me hand a printed study guide to a friend, I doubt she’d even think of it as cheating.

I thought about all of this because my friend actually e-mailed me a study guide she filled out and shared it with me. I didn’t think twice of this until I realized that this was technically cheating. But it doesn’t feel like it…I mean, we could have just as easily met up in-person and read our thoughts and research for each question. If we were called into the office of student academic integrity, I’d make a good case for us.