The honor code at my institution is straight-forward. It states, "We, the Smeal College of Business community, aspire to the highest ethical standards and will hold each other accountable to them. We will not engage in any action that is improper or that creates the appearance of impropriety in our academic lives, and we intend to hold to this standard in our future careers."

In addition, when students turn in exams or papers or homework, they must sign the academic integrity pledge. This pledge says, "I (Student Name), affirm that I have neither given, received, nor witnessed unauthorized aid on this deliverable and have completed this work honestly and according to the professor's guidelines."

When I was the Faculty Director of the MBA program at Smeal and we were discussing honor codes, the class president asked me why the faculty and the administrators did not have such a code of conduct and did not have to sign pledges about their behavior. In private a class officer explained that some administrators had lied to him and to some of his classmates. I didn't know whether the assertions were correct, but I thought the student had a point. Why don't universities impose honor codes on faculty and administrators?

We worry about students' plagiarizing the work of another when submitting a paper, but faculty and administrators have been known to plagiarize. What penalty exists for such errant behavior? What are the standards of the community? And why isn't there an honor code to spell this out?

Rightly we express indignation at a student's cheating on a test, but do universities feel the same when somebody in the academy cheats on his or her research? What I have seen and heard is that universities typically try to hush these cheating episodes, fearing embarrassment from the public community. In such cases, there is no penalty for research fraud. Where are the standards of the academic community? Why isn't there an honor code to spell this out?

Universities typically don't want their students to steal. Do they feel the same when faculty or administrators steal the ideas of others? I am aware of or have heard of a number of instances in which a faculty member steals the research idea of a colleague or a doctoral student. Usually little or nothing is done. If discovered, universities tend to sweep the dust under the proverbial rug. Where are the standards of the academic community? Why isn't there an honor code to spell this out?

Faculty often obtain positions of power vis-à-vis students; senior faculty obtain positions of power over junior faculty; and administrators obtain power over faculty. What happens when the faculty member or the administrator abuses the power relationship? What are the standards of the academic community? Why isn't there an honor code to spell this out?

Telling the truth is sometimes inscribed in an honor code. What happens when faculty members or administrators lie within the university community or our greater society? Do we want our faculty and administrators to tell the truth? What are the standards of the academic community? Why isn't there an honor code to spell this out?

Universities typically do not have an honor code for faculty members and for administrators for a variety of reasons. Perhaps we are above such strictures; after all, our duty is to teach the students how to live -- we don't have to model such behavior. Perhaps we feel we don't need a code of conduct -- we just keep our eyes closed to any reference to unethical actions by our colleagues, not to mention our observing such behavior. Perhaps we are just hypocrites.

This essay reflects the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of The Pennsylvania State University.