Student Blog: Finding Artistic Integrity Within Academic Integrity

Academic integrity is something that every student has heard about – it's in our Code of Conducts, it’s in our syllabi. But as a student of the arts, I find that maintaining artistic integrity comes hand in hand with academic integrity. 

Academic integrity is all about completing academic work honestly and truthfully. With the rise of artificial intelligence and the increase in its accessibility, many schools have been placing much more emphasis on academic integrity policies than in the past. I know that I’ve definetly noticed an increase in the number of times I’m required to submit assignments through TurnItIn or other sites that can detect A.I. use.  

As a dual degree student pursuing various fields, I can say with certainty that academic integrity remains an important part as students move forward in their academic careers. While in high school, I frequently heard people complaining about not being able to reference SparkNotes or similar sites, their argument being “what should it matter if we use our resources?” In college, however, it’s become clear to me that maintaining academic integrity is so much more than this. It’s the encouragement to develop your own thoughts and ideas as an academic. 

In my theatre courses, I often have to create my own concepts for “imagined theatres,” the concept of which is a theatre piece constructed for the mind and not necessarily the real world. The goal of these is to broaden the students’ understanding of what theatre is and what theatre could be. It’s one of my favorite things I get to do as a theatre student. 

But there’s nothing to jump off from. The whole process is solitary. It’s as if I’m in the circus, walking a tight rope with no safety net. But I’m up in the air, above everything else, and the world is mesmerizing from that viewpoint.  

The work I do studying theatre encourages my own artistic integrity. It encourages me to create with unabashed honesty, with no outside influence. To describe the world as I see it. The ideas are developed solely on my own, and through practice with the process, I’m reaching the point where I’m starting to feel comfortable with that. 

These two practices, academic integrity and artistic integrity, go hand in hand. Both encourage a truthfulness to what is being created, whether it's an analysis of a text for class that you develop with your own ideas or a poem you create with no outside influence. They are both important, and by encouraging one you encourage the other.  

As a fine arts student, finding honesty in art is my favorite thing. Reading a novel and being moved by how a passage speaks to me, or relistening to the same verse in a song over and over again because of how it makes me feel. These pockets of truth were created through the integrity of the artist and the artist’s mind. And as I continue to pursue both art and academia, I hope that by having both academic and artistic integrity now, in the future I’ll make those pockets, too.