On Academic Integrity

This was produced by Mike Lenox during his service as interim dean of the University of Virginia Darden School of Business in 2026. The materials reflect key themes, moments and messages from that period of School leadership and are preserved here for reference.

As an undergraduate at UVA in the 1990s, I was influenced by an apocryphal story about a student who once placed a couple of quarters in a vending machine for a can of Coke and unexpectedly received two cans. Should they capitalize on their good fortune and take the second can? Should they leave the second can, recognizing that they did not pay for it and to take it would be a form of stealing? If they left it behind, wouldn’t someone else come by and pick it up? More critically, at UVA, would taking the second can of soda violate the University’s vaunted Honor System? More importantly, would taking the second Coke undermine the student’s integrity? The moral dilemma at the heart of this story is one of severity and consequences. Is it that big of a deal to take the second can? The likely consequences are trivial. It is not like this is some egregious affront to another person or the community.

However, I would argue that the triviality of this example makes the case interesting and important. Integrity is about staying true to one’s values even when no one is watching. We demonstrate the value we place on our integrity in those trivial situations. Is your integrity worth 50 cents? Say what you will of the Elizabeth Holmes and Bernie Madoff types of the world, at least they went big in abandoning their integrity. But to place any doubt on your integrity for a can of Coke suggests that you don’t value it very highly. To be clear, none of us is perfect. We tell white lies. We may disagree about where the moral line is. Perhaps, we take the metaphorical “second can of Coke” on occasion. The critical question is: do we aspire to live a life of integrity and to expect and require that others do the same?

I have been thinking about this question a lot, given the rise of artificial intelligence and the strains it places on academic integrity. How can we ensure that a student’s work is their own? How can we know that they aren’t cheating when they have a super intelligence on their smartphone that can answer the question or write the essay? Many in education believe we need to tighten our assessment monitoring. Back in vogue are blue books and proctored exams. Software solutions proliferate, promising to identify AI use. While I recognize that some controls are necessary, I think we are fooling ourselves if we think that the solution to AI-enabled cheating is stricter rules and enforcement. The technology will always outstrip our ability to restrain.

A far better approach, in my humble opinion, is to create the normative conditions where students are dissuaded from sacrificing their integrity for the easy grade, the quick fix. As I frequently remind our students, UVA’s Honor System is a collective promise to uphold a set of values: integrity, honesty, trustworthiness. We endeavor to inspire a Community of Trust. Central to this premise is the notion of collective self-governance. UVA’s Honor System is a promise from one student to another, and from students to the broader community, to uphold a high standard of behavior. The strength of the Honor System derives from inspiring what Lincoln referred to as “the better angels of our nature.” Cheating is an affront to your fellow students, to your professors, to your broader community, and ultimately yourself.

From this collective promise flows a set of empowering related values: servanthood toward your fellow community members, an assumption of honesty and positive intent in all your dealings, and a desire to explore difference and understand competing points of view. One cannot separate academic integrity and, more broadly, personal integrity from the values we strive for as a community. Integrity is the foundation upon which an engaging and inclusive community is built. I fear that we have lost sight of this in our modern society. Too many people have become transactional, pursuing their objectives and dismissing others’ behaviors as irrelevant. Personal integrity stems from collective responsibility and collective responsibility from personal integrity. The engaging and inclusive community that we cultivate at Darden is built on trust and defined by servanthood.

As a young man from a steel town in Pennsylvania, UVA was transformative for who I am, what I believe, and the values I hold dear. As an undergraduate, I served as the Honor chair in my fourth-year. The lessons I learned about personal integrity and our collective responsibilities for inspiring trust and building community inform my actions every day. I have had the great fortune to have been affiliated with several world-class universities. Through these experiences, I have come to passionately believe in the unique position UVA holds as a community that inspires citizen leaders to live lives of integrity. I can attest to what many UVA graduates sense: this is a unique university differentiated from our peers, grounded in a set of defining principles that animate our actions and inspire our hearts.

* Parts of this essay were borrowed from a social media post I made in June 2025.