During the Honour Council’s “Academic Integrity 101: Winning the Right Way”, Nitya Venkat’s perspective on academic integrity stood out to me. Nitya Venkat is a MHS and Neuroscience major who is also the Vice President of the Undergraduate Honour Council. She highlighted that academic integrity was important to her beyond the scope of college. Nitya is planning to apply for medical school this year. She said when patients trust her with their lives, they can do so knowing she earned her credentials the right way. Patients can trust that she has the necessary knowledge to help them because she did not cheat her way to medical school. The connection of academic integrity to the real world was one that never seem very prominent to me until I attended the Honour Council’s presentation. I had not deeply considered that a student’s choice to cheat might affect more people than just him or herself. For example, that student might be missing knowledge necessary to help a patient.

Another piece of information that I did not know prior to attending the Honour Council’s presentation was that catchy phrases can be plagiarized. For example, the presenter showed us a catchy phrase that had been slightly modified by changing the order of the words and the tenses. I learned that copying a slightly modified catchy phrase without citation is still plagiarism.

The Honour Council’s presentation also offered so information about the history of the Honour Council. It was created in 1900 by students and it is still student-run up to this day. It was inspiring to see Vanderbilt students’ who were not only interested in “Winning the Right Way”, but also so self-motivated to help others “Win the Right Way”.