Dartmouth college has suspended 64 students in what appears an unprecedented action over cheating. What makes the action even more unnerving is that the cheating occurred in an ethics class. Most students have been suspended for a term. Professor Randall Balmer said that he was tipped off when he received more answers to this questions than students in the class.

The class of on sports ethics and involved hand-held electronic clickers which are used to answer questions during college classes. The belief is that some students passed their clickers onto their classmates who answered the questions on their behalf. Initially, 43 of the 280 students were confronted but another 21 came forward after details of the investigation were made public.

The course is designed for athletes and 7 in 10 of the students on the course are members of the various college teams.

Balmer said that the Honor Code is no longer working as it once did because “honour no longer is something that has a lot of resonance in society, and I suppose in some ways it’s not surprising that students would want to trade the nebulous notion of honour with what they perceive as some sort of advantage in professional advancement.”

Notably, however, the violation of honor was not valued at a failing grade. Balmer only dropped the students one grade for cheating.