<p>"But no one can get away with saying they did not understand the rules."</p>
<p>Do you read the entirety of all EULAs on all of the hardware and software products and websites that you use or own and agree to, explicitly or implicitly by using them?</p>
<p>People cheat in everything. Why should academia be different?</p>
<p>I am a college freshman this year, and came from a school where there was a bit of a cheating problem. This was a rather high-performing high school, and as another poster suggested, many students tried to justify their cheating by claiming they needed to cheat to get into a good college, to impress their parents, etc. However, do not for one moment think that they did not know it was wrong. </p>
<p>For those of you who are suggesting that high school students do not realize that cheating is wrong, or that they did not "agree" to follow the rules, you are insulting their intelligence. All of my peers, even the ones who chose to cheat, knew absolutely that it was wrong. They simply made excuses to try to justify it. If students didn't think cheating was wrong, why would they hide it? Why would they sneak out notes during tests, or secretly exchange answers? If they had any doubt that it was wrong, wouldn't they be a little less discreet about it?</p>
<p>Cheating is a culture, at least in school. So many people cheated at my school, that students justified that it was ok. Some students decided it was "ok" to copy answers on homework, but not ok to copy answers on tests. Others thought it was "ok" to share test answers in between periods, but thought it wasn't ok to share answers during tests. As someone else noted, it's a culture of believing that the rules are for others, not for yourself. The reason that there are rules is so that everybody follows them, but at my school the culture was such that people felt it was ok to define cheating in their own loose terms.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the cheating culture discourages people from turning in cheaters. Of course students should turn in a peer for cheating, but when so many people are cheating and getting away with it, it presents two main hurdles. First, if a student turns in another student for cheating, it almost seems unfair, because there were many other students who were cheating as well, and who didn't get turned in. Secondly, since the cheating culture is so accepted, students who turn in fellow cheaters are viewed as traitors or snitches. I'm not condoning the fact that honest students don't turn cheaters in, but it becomes easier for honest students to focus on their work and not worry about others.</p>
<p>Wrong. I and most other students are aware cheating is considered wrong by others, but there are plenty of us who genuinely feel no guilt over it.</p>
<p>Thank you, Psychotikid. I agree with you completely.</p>
<p>i agree with psycho too i am an HS junior and its pretty much the same here at my school</p>