What is the purpose of Academic Honesty? For respecting the author? For the audience to know where to find more information about your topic? For your grade? All above are kind of correct, but most importantly, it is for yourself.
When you are writing an essay, or making a presentation, and you used other sources that are not created by you, you give credit to the author. This is YOUR responsibility. Just use this assignment as an example, in the presentation, there are images that were used, and they SHOULD be cited. But when you present and go over the bibliography slide, no one really pay attention to it. When you are taking a test, you secretly cheated and no one see it, you are still against the academic honesty policy, but no one know.
Now, for the above situations, is there still a reason to obey the academic honesty?
Yes. This is for yourself, for yourself to be responsible, to be honest with your actions. This will create you a habit of be honest when nobody is asking you to do it, which also make you an independent learner. You can learn from other’s work and reflect it back to your thought, and when you learn and know the Academic Honesty Policy, your work process are transparent. Be honest with yourself.