The Honor Code embodies the ideals and values according to which both academic and social life at Bryn Mawr ought to be conducted. The Honor Code assumes that students are trustworthy, that they will live and work with integrity. This assumption confers a number of privileges upon students. The most tangible of these are unproctored self-scheduled and take-home exams; a less tangible but more far-reaching privilege has to do with an environment of self-governance, mutual trust, and dialogue. Clearly, such privileges carry with them enormous responsibility: to live with integrity, to speak honestly to others even when to do so is not easy, to hear what others are saying when that, too, is not easy.
The Honor Board has the primary responsibility for ensuring that all Bryn Mawr students are educated about their responsibilities as members of a community governed according to an honor code. Alleged violations of the code are handled by the Honor Board. While the Board is run by students, the deans participate in this process in a variety of ways: the Dean of the Undergraduate College is an ex officio member of the Academic Honor Board; a student who is brought before the Academic Honor Board is accompanied by her dean; and finally, both students and faculty members will sometimes talk with deans about the implications of the Honor Code for the conduct of academic and social life at the College.
Because of the Honor Code's centrality to campus life, it is each student's responsibility to familiarize herself with its basic provisions, to consult it whenever she is uncertain, and to bring her questions to the members of the Honor Board.