The University is founded on a “culture of honesty.”

But how thoroughly does this rule apply?

It certainly applies to and is expected of employees hired by the University before 2007.

Such employees are presumed to have been honest about their criminal records when applying for the positions they received.

So honest, in fact, that a background check was never required of them.

And after hire, employees are expected to be honest enough to self-report any crime they commit.

But when rules  — especially loose ones like this — aren’t enforced, and when trust is placed in the hands of those at risk of losing a job, violations are bound to arise.

In 2008, the College of Education hired tenured professor Cecil Fore III.

Only later did the University discover he had previously been jailed for multiple counts of sodomy and sexual abuse toward children.

The “culture of honesty” relied on Fore III to come forward with his past. He didn’t.

Not only was this situation a grave embarrassment to the University community, but it also damaged the trusting rapport students had built with an educator.

A presumption paired with inaction put students at risk.

Students learned from a man convicted of criminal offenses because the University trusted him enough to know better.

As students, we are taught that what we do at the University follows us out of Athens and into the future.

We are expected to follow a code of conduct and to know that we will be published if we do otherwise.

Neither the lesson nor the implications of violating the rules should be any different for the people who teach us.

— Melissa Buckman is the opinions editor of The Red & Black