The Florida Tech Computer Science Honor Code 



We believe that everyone has a right to work in an environment where people treat one another honestly and fairly. Because academic dishonesty can threaten this environment we will pursue abuses of the policies outlined below aggressively.

Code Plagiarism.

Computer science is a discipline where it is difficult to draw a precise line between acceptable and unacceptable collaboration. One the one hand we want to encourage you to try out other peoples code; code reuse is an area of active research within computer science. One the other hand you will learn to write code only if you do it yourself. You are not learning and have crossed the line of acceptable behavior if you do not understand the solution you have submitted. We have the right to ask students to explain the code they submit. If you have ``reused'' someone else's code to an extent that you feel a need to change variable names or slightly rearrange the order of statements, then you have also violated the honor code. Give credit to someone else's ideas with a citation rather than turning in their work as your own.

Social Responsibility.

Many people use our machines: students, faculty, staff, and outside visitors. Our machines affect other machines on and off campus and the users of these machines. It is not hard to abuse others by mailing ``spam,'' ``flaming'' to newsgroups, being a ``cracker,'' displaying digital pornography, bogging down the CPU with processes, or hogging the printer. We expect your use of computer resources will be based on the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Poor social responsibility because you are new is one thing, but malicious practices are another matter and will not be tolerated.

Right to Privacy.

You are encouraged store electronic property on computers provided for your use by Computer Science, and you have a privacy right to this information and privacy. Others also have a right of privacy to the property they store on our computers. You should not search other's file systems, read their mail, scan or remove their files, try to crack their password, login as someone else, intercept other's network traffic, install viruses, or otherwise violate the right to privacy of others. We will not intentionally abuse your right to privacy. However, to administer our machines we may need to do things you should not, for example, we may need to try to crack your password to verify that it is secure, or kill your processes, or remove your files, or otherwise invade your privacy when we suspect you are an abuser of our systems.

Disclaimers.

The Florida Tech Policy on Responsible Use of Information Technology, The Florida Tech Catalog, and the Student Handbook have additional guidelines on campus standards, behavior, discipline, complaint resolution, etc. The Computer Science Honor Code does not replace or supersede these polices. Faculty teaching computer science courses may establish other honor criteria for their classes.

As our machines are part of a larger international network, we assume certain responsibilities as a member of a growing electronic community. Exercising this responsibility my require us to search for suspected abusers of our or others computers. If you suspect that someone has violated your rights as a user of our machines, inform the systems administrator; do not attempt to track them down yourself.



Florida Tech Computer Science

William D. Shoaff
Comments to author:wds@cs.fit.edu

All contents copyright ©, William D. Shoaff
Revised: Thu Mar 5 10:14:40 EST 1998