<p>“I am actually surprised at the rather mild comments here…It’s called having character and a backbone.”</p>
<p>Why should I be that upset now? These same folks are only going to steal my money later, in any case. I’ll have plenty of chance to complain.</p>
<p>I’m actually more surprised about the scale of the cheating because I figured Harvard students would be less likely to share info and help their peers in order to maintain a competitive edge. LOL.</p>
<p>If you implicitly trust the judgment of administrators in a subjective situation, then that is your right. They don’t care about fairness. They care about keeping their jobs and looking good to their bosses. Their jobs are to find the “guilty”. If you want your son to be their tool, that’s your decision. Just don’t judge others who are not as compliant.</p>
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<p>I suppose that was intended to be funny? This was an intro-level class. It’s a good bet upwards of half the class were not and never will be Government majors…</p>
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<p>This seems to be suggesting that anyone will cheat if given the chance, or maybe even that it’s OK to cheat if you can do so without getting caught. And that those who are caught should be let off the hook. I find this attitude pretty appalling. Yes, some people will cheat if given the opportunity. They’re called cheaters, and if they succeed at it once, they’ll likely do it again. We aren’t all like that. There’s a reason cheaters are viewed with contempt by the rest of society.</p>
<p>My daughter’s college, a top-10 LAC, gives only self-proctored take-home exams. They have a very strong Honor Code which everyone at the college takes seriously. It’s ratified by the students every Fall, often after hours of earnest debate over student-proposed amendments. Some of the exams are closed-book; that’s on the honor system, too. My daughter does not cheat; in fact, the Honor Code and its prominent place in the school’s culture was one of the things that attracted her to her college in the first place, and the same is true for her friends there. </p>
<p>NYC0205 may be right about the culture of cheating that gets some people into Harvard in the first place, and perhaps the place is just crawling with cheaters, I don’t know. I do know that I am very proud of my daughter’s personal integrity, and the self-respect it gives her, and I’m proud that she chose a school where personal integrity is expected of her and of every student, where students expect it and demand it of each other, and where community norms of honor and integrity are self-enforced by each individual and by the community as a whole. </p>
<p>It is a sad day in our society if we have reached the point where honor and integrity are no longer even respected as norms in an academic community, and cheating is dismissed with the idea that everyone does it if given the opportunity and that it’s the institution’s fault for not having in place better controls.</p>
<p>Expel them all, quickly, end of story. Revoke degrees if necessary. Attending Harvard is a privilege and a highly coveted one at that. To do otherwise is to cheapen your brand and make everyone’s achievements suspect. This was a final exam. </p>
<p>Show no mercy and the behavior stops. Simple as that.</p>
<p>If a college passes out take-home exams, they shouldn’t be surprised when cheating occurs.</p>
<p>However, the students should be punished (in whatever way is typical for cheaters) since they did cheat.</p>
<p>I’ve got to say, though, the fact that 125 students were involved makes me wonder exactly what happened. That doesn’t sound like a case of Student A knows the answer and tells Students B and C. There are sooo many people involved, they can’t possibly have all known each other. Was the info forwarded around in an email or what?</p>
<p>I do wonder if it’s possible that the students all clicked on the first relevant source from Google, thus resulting in a lot of similar answers. (Which could be plagiarism if they didn’t cite properly, but is not the same as cheating in my book.)</p>
<p>“If you don’t come down hard on those for whom it is more likely than not that they cheated, it will just cause more students to cheat in the future.”</p>
<p>That may be the case, but I would not be at all comfortable with a school that expelled students when there was a 51% likelihood that they cheated. Deterrence and fairness both matter. I think guilt should be pretty close to certain before a school metes out its ultimate penalty. Expelling an innocent student is an awful outcome, and that’s going to happen pretty frequently if you just have a “preponderance of the evidence” standard.</p>
<p>Not sure if everyone saw the Crimson story ([Harvard</a> Investigates “Unprecedented” Academic Dishonesty Case | News | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/8/30/academic-dishonesty-ad-board/]Harvard”>Harvard Investigates "Unprecedented" Academic Dishonesty Case | News | The Harvard Crimson))…</p>
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[Quote]
Another student wrote that he or she joined about 15 other students at a teaching fellows office hours on the morning of May 3, just hours before the final take-home exams 5 p.m. deadline.</p>
<p>Almost all of [the students at office hours] had been awake the entire night, and none of us could figure out what an entire question (worth 20% of the grade) was asking, the student wrote. On top of this, one of the questions asked us about a term that had never been defined in any of our readings and had not been properly defined in class, so the TF had to give us a definition to use for the question.</p>
<p>That same student also expressed frustration that Platt had canceled his office hours the morning before the exam was due. In a brief email to the class just after 10 a.m. on May 3, Platt apologized for having to cancel his office hours on short notice that day due to an appointment.
[end quote]</p>
<p>The gathering in the TF’s office appears to be in direct violation of the professor’s specific rule that "students may not discuss the exam with othersthis includes resident tutors, writing centers, etc.</p>
<p>^^^Thank you for posting the relevant facts of the events. I doubt there was a huge conspiracy as suggested by the non-Harvard posters. It seems the poorly written exam question confounded some students into seeking clarification from a TF, and by discussing the question, or being among the group, broke the rule.</p>
<p>Of course there may have also been the not-uncommon sharing of possible answers by club members or teammates. Certain groups are notorious for having old exams, study guides and other questionable resources on their private premises.</p>
<p>"The gathering in the TF’s office appears to be in direct violation of the professor’s specific rule that "students may not discuss the exam with othersthis includes resident tutors, writing centers, etc.</p>
<p>That is not accurate. Unlike resident or writing center tutors, the TF is affiliated with a specific course. Going to the TF is the equivalent of going to the professor - in fact, it is the most logical thing for a student in this position to do. It is quite common for students in a large course to interact exclusively with their TF and never meet the professor outside of lectures. </p>
<p>I hope the actual cheaters are dealt with harshly, but I suspect their number will prove to be much fewer than 125 students - or, at least, the college will be able to prove their case in far fewer than 125 instances. I would also guess that the apparent ambiguity on the question did lead to some improper collaboration - I can see a generally honest student asking a classmate for clarification on a question, and the conversation taking a borderline dishonest turn without much ill intent. Of course, the students shouldn’t have gotten into such dicey territory in the first place, and there should be some penalty, but I don’t know that expulsion or even suspension is necessary.</p>
<p>Whatever one thinks of the wisdom of giving a take-home exam - especially an open book/open note/open internet one - that doesn’t justify cheating. Proving cheating on such a test, however, will be much harder, since it is highly likely that a lot of students would have at least somewhat similar answers just by virtue of having access to the same materials. It is also not outside the realm of possibility that students had prepared for the exam together, which could produce significant similarities in the notes they were working from - and consequently in their exam answers - without violating the terms of the exam.</p>
<p>If there are examples of more blatant collaboration, as I assume there are, those students should be given a severe penalty. I’m just not prepared to assume that all 125 of these students cheated without more evidence than the public is ever likely to get access to.</p>
<p>Students at Harvard often collaborate by having study groups before exams. I wonder if there were study groups before the exam was handed out, which would lead to some similar answers, if the study guide was quoted by all. Now this would be groups of 10 students, so I don’t know how it would stretch to 125. The addition of the issue of an unclear question is interesting. Sometimes, students feel that such a question, especially with no way to clarify, is a kind of injustice and then join together in a sort of rebellion. Not sure I could see this happening at Harvard though.</p>
<p>I think that we should all wait to see what really happened before joining any particular bandwagon.</p>
<p>Agree with all of ICargirl’s post. </p>
<p>Going to a TF for clarification is standard operating procedure on problem sets and papers that don’t allow collaboration, including final ones. This is an unusual circumstance because during an “in-class” exam, typically neither the instructor nor the TF is present (only proctors), and you can’t leave the room, so you are stuck with whatever ambiguity is on the sheet. But I don’t see that much difference between a take-home final exam and a final paper when it comes to the appropriateness of talking to the TF.</p>
<p>If they were indeed the best and the brightest why did they feel the need to cheat? Obviously, they were not the best and the brightest and should be expelled to give room to worthy applicants who can truly be ethical future leaders of the world. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, in the real world, powerful cronies in Wall Street and Washington protect each other from criminal convictions. They will do the same to protect their fraudlings to ensure that their wealth and power remains intact for future generations of the family. Out of the 125 being investigated, the ones who are penalized are the ones with weak connections, the others go scot free tanning in Fiji for a few months or perhaps just a D in the course. Actually, there were probably more than 125 students involved but these were the real smart Harvard kids who knew how to fly under the radar and not get caught. Fortunately, out of the 250, a few of them did embrace veritas et integritas signaling hope that there will be future guard dogs of white collar crimes.</p>
<p>125 students represented nearly half the class? So it must have had over 200 students. Boy, that’s a BIG class. It apparently is very dependent on the teaching fellow, too. Open book exams? All this smacks of a poorly taught, poorly managed course.</p>
<p>Wow, Harvard students never have ambiguous questions on a final? That pretty much describes about half of the questions on my Chemistry, Physics, and Math finals. I don’t think my professors expect us to ask for clarification during the final, we’re supposed to figure it out. I wonder if that “ambiguous question” was answered correctly by anyone ( who didn’t cheat). I also wonder if finals at Harvard are curved.</p>
<p>Haha, I agree. Take home exams are supposed to be tough, final exams even tougher, and Harvard final take home exams? They’re supposed to be brutal. That doesn’t give students the right to cheat people! </p>
<p>"The gathering in the TF’s office appears to be in direct violation of the professor’s specific rule that "students may not discuss the exam with others—this includes resident tutors, writing centers, etc.” </p>
<p>This is complete speculation and not mentioned in the posted article at all. All the article states is that several exams were suspect and an investigation was launched. The article also included student interviews, who discussed how hard, ambiguous, difficult, frustrating, and unfair that their final take-home exam was for them. Poor babies! </p>
<p>Obviously, we don’t know all the details. But the fact that administrators are this concerned and have taken this action after looking at the exams, interviewing students…etc shows that real cheating probably occured on a mass scale. There is probably not enough evidence to punish all the students involved, but hopefully they get the worst of them.</p>
<p>This is actually hilarious lmao</p>
<p>I find not only the cheating disturbing, but the harsh reaction of Harvard students and alumni to the proposed “moral code” introduced last year and discontinued this year. </p>
<p>At my school (comparable in academics to Harvard), we have an honor code, but it is one that the students introduced as a sign of trust from the faculty (in exchange for signing the honor code, our exams are not proctored). It’s something we take pretty seriously- we are adults, and the university should treat us as such. </p>
<p>We also have a moral code (the Fundamental Standard) that demands we treat others as “is demanded of good citizens.” Blatant violations of this code are handled very seriously by judicial affairs. I view the code in a good light. Do we need a code? Probably not, these are values most of my peers hold to be self-evident regardless. But I am reassured that the faculty and administration explicitly promotes similar values. </p>
<p>And although our student body is kind and welcoming, I have never felt that this has impinged upon intellectual pursuit. If anything, being kind to others creates an environment where everyone, not just the “jerks”, has a chance to succeed.</p>
<p>Well I guess a group within the group may have been suspected of cheating prior to this event.</p>
<p>The Globe addresses the possibility of earlier cheating and remedies:</p>
<p>The number of students under investigation suggests that similar cheating may have occurred in other courses or previous iterations of the course in question. But Harvard officials do not plan to investigate that possibility unless other faculty members to come forward with suspicions of their own, and “we don’t anticipate that,” Harris said.</p>
<p>Why all of this moralizing about Harvard? A bunch of people probably cheated. That cheating was made easier through a final exam that was unproctored. Several people probably cheated in such an obvious way as to merit punishment. The bordeline cases should be dismissed, because it is not the school’s role to screw with someone’s future unless it has overwhelming proof. Our criminal justice system operates the same way. No big deal and move on. The kids will graduate and join everyone else in a dog-eat-dog world where the rules are used by everyone to promote their own interests. </p>
<p>I would say that the school has no business instituting a code of behavior outside of academic dishonesty and physical/emotional bullying. An honor code only creates a tool for settling scores by the more crafty. If nothing else, it creates more fear and anxiety about violating “the code” even among people who have done nothing wrong. Much easier for schools to stick to their competency of research, teaching and stamping elite credentials (last one being by far the most important…). Parents, communities and friends are much better sources of moral guidance than a faceless administration that only knows how to speak in cliches.</p>