For those who think cheating is no big deal....

Student Lounge College Life
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<p>Lots of times, I've seen posters claiming that it's no big deal to cheat or plagarize because "everybody does it."</p>

<p>Here's something to give such posters pause.</p>

<p>"DURHAM, N.C. — Duke head football coach Ted Roof announced on Wednesday that quarterback Zack Asack has been suspended from the university for violation of school policies and will not be eligible for the 2006 season.</p>

<p>"I am on academic suspension for plagiarism," Asack said. "I made a mistake and am remorseful. I take full responsibility for my actions. I wish the team well and look forward to returning next summer. I love it here at Duke..."</p>

<p><a href="http://www.goduke.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=4200&ATCLID=508783%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.goduke.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=4200&ATCLID=508783&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>It's not like Duke football is good anyway...</p>

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<p>Duke lacrosse is better. Oh, snap!!!!</p>

<p>Just kidding, they're probably innocent anyway.</p>

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<p>Yea, I hear they have some great parties.</p>

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<p>they def are innocent, and yeah, as someone said, Duke Football suspending a kid for plagerism isnt that surprising, they're program isn't good enough to let that stuff slide. If someone on Duke bball gets suspended for cheating, then you have made a good point.</p>

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<p>they should have kicked him out of the school for cheating</p>

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<p>Even small-scale cheating can get very serious. Especially if you're planning to go to grad school. Here's one from personal experience. Last year I TAed a chemistry lab of about 20 students. As usual, before each experiment we'd have a quiz. While everyone's writing in silence, I notice something strange. A guy who's sitting at one of the front desks is staring across the bench at another person’s quiz. He's also wearing a cap, which he never ever did before, and he has a water bottle out positioned directly between him and the girl across. He's staring from right under his cap which is put on very low. I come up and stand by him. He gets nervous, starts stretching. I move away. He begins staring again. When I get quizzes back and compare the two, the first page is written in like totally same sentence structure. Even some of the adjectives are same. The back page is totally different and totally wrong, because she turned hers in before him. So I come up to the guy and ask him what's up with his quiz being so similar to hers. He says he's a good student (true, he always came prepared) that he wouldn't do such stuff, and that he was not staring at her quiz but looking at his water bottle. He says he studied for the stuff. I say, ok I'll read introduction to the experiment. If you mentioned these things here on the quiz, I'll believe you. I read his intro. It sounds very good but when you stop reading and think what is he saying you realize it is total BS. Like he didn't read anything and just made it up using common sense. So I come up to him and say that his intro is BS. He should admit he cheated to me and I'll give him a break. I'll give him zero on quiz and won't go to professor. He vehemently denies the obvious and starts getting aggressive at me(?). I make copies of two quizzes and both intros and go to prof. Prof reads and says this is a very blatant piece of cheating. He talks to the guy. The guy continues to deny it. This whole thing gets transferred to higher levels of school administration. Last thing I heard was that it got to the dean and the guy was threatening to sue the university. He wanted to go to medical school. I think he ruined his own chances of getting into any. All because of some puny quiz. I still cannot believe the entire stupidity of his behavior.</p>

<p>Another type of cheating that is very frequent is leaving your notes open. I don't know what makes students believe they can get away with it. May be they think TAs and profs are blind. But contrary to such conclusion is the fact that none of TAs and profs at my school arrive to work with long white poles and helper dogs. Just making this astute observation would have saved a lot of trouble for many students.</p>

<p>Yet another rampant way of cheating is using last year's or semester's quiz or exam keys. Profs and TAs get lazy and don't make up new material. Or change the old material only subtly. This one, however, is really easy to get around. I usually put more than a minimal amount of information on my keys. This way students with keys never know what they have to include and what is extra. Most often they include that which is extra and get caught very quickly. Everyone who is honestly attending lecture and reading the textbook pretty much writes down the same stuff. Students with keys include extra fluff and so their quizzes stand out as if written with a highlighter. They also usually decide to pig out with their points as their perception is that they're not doing so well in class and so can't afford to lose any points. I include a few extra credit questions on quizzes usually. Those with keys not only fill out the entire quiz correctly but also answer all or most of extra credit material. In result, they suddenly do better than my A students. They demonstrate such a superior understanding of chemistry that becomes immediately suspect because usually TAs know what level of understanding is achievable by honest studying. There was one guy I missed however. He was smart about it and I realized he had keys already at the very end of the class. So I decide to get back at him and keep things fair for everyone else. Time to prep to the final exam. He comes up and asks me how much the final matters. I say, not very much. He did so well in the class and he has nothing to worry about. He goes ahead and scores 28% on it where 60% is the average. Gets a B- for the class. If only he studied from the book and gone to lectures and not memorized my quiz keys all quarter long.</p>

<p>so the conclusions are that:
1. Don’t cheat in the obvious ways. That’s very stupid. You never know when your TA or prof is having a bad hair day and readying to unleash wrath on you for keeping your notes open a few extra minutes of the exam.
2. If you really feel like you have to do it to pass the class, don’t do it if you want to get into grad or professional school. You’ll **** up your future pretty badly.
3. If you’re not aiming for any grad school or if you are very smart and very cautious, get creative with your cheating. All the usual ways have already been exploited and discovered. Therefore you cannot succeed with cheating in the usual ways.
4. If a TA or a prof accuses you of cheating and you did, admit it. They might give you a break. TAs and profs won’t make such a serious accusation unless they have good grounds for believing that you did it. I have yet to hear of a student who has been accused of cheating wrongfully, yet there are plenty of kids who try to deny it at all costs only making everyone else be even more angry with them.</p>

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<p>I was so going to make a Duke joke.</p>

<p>I'm glad people beat me to it.</p>

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<p>When did anyone make a post condoning cheating? Every post I've seen on CC has been totally against it--you have some huge threads where people are debating turning cheaters in to the administration.</p>

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<p>I took a kid's math final for him last year. Teacher knew and didn't really care, thats why she sent him to take it in the study hall ... so he'd pass and graduate.</p>

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<p>kihyle I don't understand your exam keys example. Studying old tests if available should not be cheating. Knowing everything about a subject and writing it all down (for the most points) seems like what you are supposed to do. I just don't get what you mean. If a kid knows alot more than the rest of the class why is this cheating? Really...what are you talking about?</p>

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<p>Johnny,
I've seen plenty of posts on CC condoning cheating and plagiarizing. While many CC people are against those things, there is a solid core of CC members who think that cheating is fine because "Everybody does it," "that's the only way to get a good grade."</p>

<p>There also are posts in which people think it's OK to lie on college apps, particularly about ECs, because that may boost one's chances to get into one's dream school. There's one such post featured on one of the boards now.</p>

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<p>If the professor or TA did not make past year exam keys available for the entire class by posting them online or by handing them out, this can mean that perhaps this prof or TA plans to re-use past questions because they don't want to spend time making new ones. They may use entirely same exam (rare, but I've seen this) or just re-use parts of it (more common). Especially this is true with TAs, because all the grading for the 200-300+ people class usually falls on their hands. So they might not want to spend even more time to come up with new quizzes. </p>

<p>In this case, if you obtain past exams/quizzes from your friends while the majority of the class does not, you may end up having an unfair advantage over everyone else. So if you're honest with yourself, you won't obtain that material or better >ask< the prof before you look over it. If the prof was just lazy about posting these past exams, then more power to you.</p>

<p>Of course, no one asks. First students obtain keys. Then when they see that some questions are same or very similar, they are temped to go on. If you continue to obtain material from friends even after realizing it is same, this will definitely make you a cheater. This is how seemingly innocuous behavior at first may make student into a cheater later with an unpleasant incident most likely to follow.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
There was one guy I missed however. He was smart about it and I realized he had keys already at the very end of the class. So I decide to get back at him and keep things fair for everyone else. Time to prep to the final exam. He comes up and asks me how much the final matters. I say, not very much. He did so well in the class and he has nothing to worry about. He goes ahead and scores 28% on it where 60% is the average. Gets a B- for the class. If only he studied from the book and gone to lectures and not memorized my quiz keys all quarter long.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>While I deplore the act of cheating, I'm also quite convinced that by telling your student that the final does not matter much and saying "You're doing so well in the class so you have nothing to worry about," is not the most ethical thing a TA could do. Perhaps there may have been a better way? I know it might have seemed like a fun thing to do but I'm not sure if a prof would approve of such behavior. </p>

<p>Obviously, the student is quite stupid as well not to study for the final exam. I'm pretty sure someone in their right mind would not think that getting a 28% on a final would yield a good grade.</p>

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<p>kihyle...okay..maybe I just don't know what you mean by a key. Seems to me if my friend took the class, has his exam in hand, (handed back in class, not stolen or anything) and offers to share it with me so I could have an idea what this classes tests looked like I'd jump on it. I would not consider this cheating because the prof handed it back and shouldn't be giving out the same exam for the next four years. Some tutoring centers even keep old exams on hand for students to work with.
Anyway, I just got the weirdest feeling reading your post that you are very skeptical that students can do extremely great work on their own maybe even over and above others. Then you flag them for cheating. There can be nothing more devastating to a student than to be wrongly labled a cheater....so I'd want whoever is determining that someone cheated to be d..n sure and not just flag them because they had extra long answers and knew a crapload more than the other students. D..n scary stuff.</p>

<p>Oh yeah... and I comletely agree that your telling that student the final didn't matter was BS and very unprofessional.</p>

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<p>Nobody who was getting an A in the class had to study for the final because it was very easy. All of my A students could have aced it. I even told all of my A students that they don't have to show up for the final exam review because they already knew quite enough. This student got the same information as all of my A students. The final was worth only 17% of total amount of points, where usually finals are worth 25-60%, a fact I told to everyone else in the class who didn't bother to look it up in the syllabus. I've misinformed him only in that I never acknowledged that I knew he was cheating and not prepared. He got a green light from me as an A student and felt it was ok to not study I guess. I also did not know at that time that it is the final exam that determined the disribution for the entire class, so even though it was only 17%, it did matter a lot for their final grade. This class was introductory organic chem lab and all people taking this introductory course were seniors and juniors. For a junior or a senior, you really had to try very hard to skip lectures and not even open up the textbook to read it to get 28%. This kid wasn't stupid. To the contrary, he was very smart but just super lazy.</p>

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<p>What I don't get is why in the world would the students get their tests back if the teachers are planning to reuse them? In my school it was very simple if the teacher gave back the exam you could bet a million dollars that the same (or similar) questions won't come up again any time soon. If they don't give back the exam then the questions will probably be reused. I think its the teacher's job to make sure the students don't have access to the questions.</p>

<p>By the way I would never try to cheat like that even if I had the questions</p>

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<p>“Seems to me if my friend took the class, has his exam in hand, (handed back in class, not stolen or anything) and offers to share it with me so I could have an idea what this classes tests looked like I'd jump on it. I would not consider this cheating because the prof handed it back and shouldn't be giving out the same exam for the next four years. Some tutoring centers even keep old exams on hand for students to work with.”</p>

<p>OK, if the tutoring center gives it out this means they had explicit approval from the prof. They have contacted the prof prior to receiving the keys and said “hey, we’ll make this available for the entire student body” unlike your friend who is handing you the exam. Nobody cares in the administration that the professor makes his exams same year after year. No one will chide a prof for it if it is discovered. However, if someone finds out you had a key which is like 30% of the current exam, guess who they’ll go after? You. So it is your job to make sure you are not cheating. Prior to taking those keys from a friend, if they haven’t been posted online or given out at tutoring center, you have to contact the prof and ask if it is ok. It is your responsibility to do it.</p>

<p>Also, ConanFan, I get this feeling that if you were caught in this situation, accepting a past exam from a friend, not contacting the prof, and then realizing exams are very similar, that you would justify yourself later and not go to the prof and ask for another exam. You’d tell yourself that it is the prof’s fault because the prof made the exam same or very similar causing you to cheat accidentally. But you will have the moral obligation to go and tell the prof about what happened, right? Accidental or not, it would still be cheating. So to save yourself from this trouble. It takes just a few seconds to send the prof an e-mail and ask if past material that wasn’t made widely available is fair game prior to exam.</p>

<p>“Anyway, I just got the weirdest feeling reading your post that you are very skeptical that students can do extremely great work on their own maybe even over and above others.”</p>

<p>There are very big differences in submitted material between students who are exceptionally bright and those who are cheating and therefore appear bright. Someone else pm’ed me about it and I don’t want to explain it over and over again. I mean if you think about it yourself (imagine you’re a TA) what is the greatest difference between the two groups? Needless to say that everyone I caught admitted to cheating right away, except that one guy in my other post. So with my methods I never accused anyone who was just plain bright. But with that one guy even the prof and other TAs agreed with me on my conclusion.</p>

<p>“Oh yeah... and I comletely agree that your telling that student the final didn't matter was BS and very unprofessional.”</p>

<p>I told him the truth about final. It was only 17% of total points, as was stated in the syllabus. Usually final exams are worth 50% or even more. Everyone was made aware of that. I told him he shouldn’t worry about it as I told all of my A students and therefore treated him no differently. You can accuse a TA of being unprofessional only if this TA treats some students differently based on factors other than academics, such as personal dislike, gender, or race. The fact that I never disclosed to him that I knew he was cheating and most likely not prepared is not any of the above. It was my way of getting back at him without treating him differently from all the other students.</p>

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<p>Let me try this again. </p>

<p>I still don't know what keys are. And, no, I don't cheat.never have, never will.</p>

<p>"They demonstrate such a superior level of understanding of chemistry that becomes immediately suspect because usually TA's know what level of understanding is achieveable by honest studying." Your original statement. </p>

<p>"So I decide to get back at him and keep things fair for everyone else." Again your original statement.</p>

<p>"I have yet to hear of a student that was accused of cheating wrongfully yet their are plenty of kids that try to deny it at all costs only making everyone else be even more angry with them." Your original statement. </p>

<p>These statements that you made in your original post bothered me a great deal and this is what I was responding to.</p>

<p>My point is that it is devastating for a student to be wrongfully accused of cheating. Teachers hold a great deal of power. I would hope that a teacher would have rock hard evidence of cheating before making these accusations.</p>

<p>I now know that even if a teacher handed back 300 exams to a class last year that these exams are off limits as study guides. I bet I am not the only new student that did not know that before now. Thanks for the heads up.</p>

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<p>I didn't know that either. Heck at my school teachers encourage students to study past exams....</p>