Since 1920, the Honor Code has held Stanford students to an elevated standard of academic honesty. But a recent trend of cheating using technology has placed academic dishonesty back in the national spotlight.

A recent article in The New York Times reported a jump in high-tech cheating methods among college students. Students at schools such as UCLA and Pepperdine were caught cheating by, among other things, dictating their notes onto their iPods and listening to the recording during exams.

Faculty and administrators say such high-tech cheating is not pervasive at Stanford.

“It’s really up to the students to let us know if someone is cheating because we’re not there in the room,” said “Introduction to Psychology” teaching assistant Courtney Bonam, a graduate student. “As far as I can tell, [cheating on exams doesn’t seem to be that common.”

According to Bonam, plagiarism is a more common problem than cheating on exams. Many students also said they feel like cheating is not as big of a problem at Stanford as it is at other universities.

“Cheating is not very common here,” said Gwen Luca, a freshman. “There are people who slack off, but they don’t cheat. It isn’t as acceptable as it was in high school.”

Rick Yuen, the judicial officer for the Office of Judicial Affairs, asserted his view that Stanford is on par with other schools in terms of “breaches of academic integrity.” This idea is based on annual student surveys that are conducted across the country, he said.

The Office of Judicial Affairs recommends that faculty tell students to keep all electronic devices in their backpacks during exams to eliminate temptation of high-tech skullduggery, but problems still arise.

Cheating — at least incidences that are reported — is fairly rare at Stanford. According to a recent report by the Judicial Affairs Office, between Jan. 1 and April 3 of this year there were only seven findings of “Giving/ Receiving unpermitted aid.” Many of these transgressions, according to Yuen, occurred during in-class examinations. All were detected and reported by students. But still, these seven cases represent half of the 14 total Honor Code violations and more than one-third of the 18 total cases seen by the Judicial Affairs Office.

“As a part of the Honor Code, students have a responsibility in the exam room to do something [about perceived cheating],” Yuen said.

Discovered cases are processed by the Judicial Affairs Office, students next proceed to face a board of their peers. If a student is found responsible for an Honor Code violation by the board — either by a unanimous 6-0 or near-unanimous 5-1 vote — they are subject to disciplinary action.

A typical sanction for a first-time violation of the Honor Code is a one-quarter suspension and 40 hours of community service. Second violations can receive a one-year suspension and a third violation of the Honor Code can result in expulsion.

Administrators say that the Honor Code aims to foster an environment of mutual trust, rather than deter those bent on cheating.

“The Honor Code doesn’t necessarily prevent people from cheating more,” said Bonam. “There’s the issue of the administration showing that they trust the students to not cheat. You lose that if you have proctors. It’s an issue of what’s more important.”

Many other schools are taking measures such as banning electronic devices from testing rooms, installing monitoring software on students’ computers and increasing proctoring efforts. Similar reforms are unlikely at Stanford.

“It’d be difficult to uniformly disallow phones or computers from the exam room,” Yuen said. “Students should resist temptations to cheat or be perceived to be cheating by keeping all disallowed and unnecessary books, notes and electronics packed away. As for disallowing all electronic items in the exam room, here isn’t a movement afoot to do so.”

However, “The Law School does turn off their wireless Internet during exams,” he added.

In addition, Yuen believes that teaching assistants and faculty members would not be proctoring tests anytime soon under Stanford’s Honor Code policy.

“The Honor Code is here to stay,” he said. “It’s a good policy and a strong framework for us to work in.”