Reflective Essay: The Honor Council In High School

I remember feeling my stomach do a flip turn as I watched who entered the room. A friend of mine was sitting in front of the Honor Council. At my high school, the Honor Council is an elected group of six students including four faculty advisors, which hears cases of students who have broken the school's honor code: "I pledge on my honor not to lie, cheat, steal, plagiarize, or vandalize." I was elected at the end of my sophomore year to the position and had promised my peers to hear cases with an unbiased ear and to speak for all of them in the panel's discussions. It was not until I was hearing the case of a friend that I knew how difficult that promise was going to be.
As the meeting started, I quickly learned that she was the person who had been stealing money from lockers. The most troubling aspect of the case was that we had been friends since the third grade and had shared a number of special moments; I had never expected her to be the culprit. I remembered her dethroning me as champion in a multiplication game in Lower School and more recently joking about one of the funnier names in our AP US History book, Terrence Powderly. These thoughts echoed as she began her testimony.
She …show more content…
I was extremely disappointed to see a friend leave the school, but I knew that her blatant disregard for the values of the community made her unfit to attend. I was proud that I had assembled the courage to vote for expulsion, especially when my fellow junior on the council abstained from voting. I believe that deciding whether to favor the expulsion of a fellow student and friend was one of the most difficult decisions of my life. It was only after I had seen the school's secretary clean out my friend's locker that I realized how much courage I had mustered to make such an emotional