Difficult to imagine that people were not using phones to search for stuff while taking an exam. I can understand this being the case 18 years ago. But since the iPhone, how was honor still a thing?
Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent
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Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What on earth could be the objection to proctoring? There is a unique pride in being part of a community built around honor. You see this on the Swiss metro and in small-town vegetable stalls. Unproctored exams force every student to weigh the value of their honor against a better grade. That's a personal moral reckoning that might be worth the entire degree.
That’s just the propaganda they sell during college visits. When I was at Caltech the honor code didn’t inspire any pride, because the only way anyone got through that course load was by “cheating”*. No one had any time for pride (GO BEAVERS!) An honor code is an admission that your curriculum is so sadistic, not even cheating will help. Princeton just isn’t prestigious enough to keep up that charade. * At Caltech th…
Im surprised to hear that. I went to Caltech for my postgrad and never collaborated on an test, and it would have never ocurre me to do so (and no, the professor didn’t have to explicitly say they collaboration was not allowed. It was just the standard honor code).
We all suspected of people that didn’t adhere to the honor code and it was frowned upon, and they could have faced repercussions if anyone had reported them.
Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent
#113A WASP ethical framework cannot survive either the extirpation of WASPs from the student body or the transformation of the education system into a high stakes mandarin style death struggle.
What?
Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent
#114Combined with the increasing acceptance of shoplifting [1] and unprecedented corruption and criminality among our national leaders, it's hard not to read this as a moral page turning on American culture. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/hasan-piker-jia-to...
“But what about the argument that if everyone just starts stealing wantonly,” Spiegelman replies, “Whole Foods will eventually raise the prices?” “Yeah, chaos,” Piker says. “Full chaos. Let’s go.” “I kind of am inclined toward this,” Tolentino adds. “Everyone, try it. See what happens.” Personal shoppers for everyone! Point at what you want or add it on an app. Eventually would take force/fraud/violence to shoplift (…
Isn't that how stores used to work, before store owners decided it'd be cheaper to just let shoppers bring up a basket of goods? You'd go up to the shopkeeper behind the counter with a list, they'd get it all for you?
Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fish rots from the head. It's a sucker's game to aspire to selflessly serve the greater good when the most powerful people in the land are brazenly corrupt pedophiles. In other words: monkey see, monkey do.
Or it is a dilution of the culture through mass media, social media, and immigration from countries with different values.
Everyone has an anecdote of the immigrant they know who's a much better "American" in their values. The same for anecdotes of the people with the least American values being home grown and inbred
Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
> fish rots from the head Does it? Did it? We elected the "brazenly corrupt pedophiles." This question seems complex and important enough to not be resolved with a truism.
Trump was not the beginning of the decline, only the terminal symptom.
Terminal? We don't know if worse is yet to come.
Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent
#117Combined with the increasing acceptance of shoplifting [1] and unprecedented corruption and criminality among our national leaders, it's hard not to read this as a moral page turning on American culture. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/hasan-piker-jia-to...
I've known a lot of people who justify crimes like shoplifting by the fact that these corporations have stolen from them (and not in some abstract way, often literal wage theft) and felt like the social contract was already broken. And it's not like the leaders at the large corporations I've worked at generally seem to care about their employees or customers (I would describe most places I worked at as, at best, amoral. I've heard "well, if we didn't do it some other less ethical company would" too many times).
Edit: not that I'm pro-shoplifting, it's that the article talks about them breaking the "social contract" (though the article is more of a reality show-esque piece as it's a opinions writer beefing with Twitch streamers and doesn't talk to any people actually shoplifting).
Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent
#118I've sat in classes where people at my table genuinely took pictures of the exam while the professor's back was turned (being kind to us and giving us useful information on the board) and uploaded the entire exam to the Gemini app. Cheating is all around disheartening and is now incredibly easy with all the free multi-modal models around. Real active proctoring is needed and devices need to be confiscated during exam…
Have a phones-free classroom. Problem solved.
Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent
#119I was a TA at Princeton ~5 years ago, and I had forgotten about the honor code until reading this. Yes it's true, we did not proctor exams, and students seemed to take pride in it. On every test, you got the names/signatures of those sitting next to you. But also, I had a student who was accused of not putting his pencil down when the test had concluded, and the bureaucratic process to fight the accusation was so crippling that they had to take a semester of leave anyway. So I don't see harm in tearing it down.
Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent
#120Combined with the increasing acceptance of shoplifting [1] and unprecedented corruption and criminality among our national leaders, it's hard not to read this as a moral page turning on American culture. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/hasan-piker-jia-to...
Moral acceptance of petty theft always increases with inequality. When the poor take from the rich, people don't care as much. The poorer the thief and the richer the victim, the less people care. Go far enough, and people view the thief as a Robin Hood-style hero. Given that we're at a point in American history where inequality is quite extreme, I don't think it's fair to compare shoplifting to the corruption of the…
What? It's a moral failure to have an issue with people shoplifting from Walgreens? Do you think they're stealing milk, eggs, and bread?