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

Student Lounge College Life
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<p>I am a straight A student. And I'll admit that I probably wouldnt be if I didnt study past exams from friends who had previously taken the class. It gives you a much better idea of what the prof wants you to study out of 5 chapters worth of material. </p>

<p>When I get exams back, I make copies to give to friends for later. Frats have files with tests saved from almost every class on campus. Our freshman orientation book stated in the studying tips section "Get old tests from friends who have taken the classes before to help you study".</p>

<p>STUDYING FROM OLD TEST KEYS IS NOT CHEATING.</p>

22

<p>exactly, its simply studying the past questions (read: question/answer style of the teacher) vs. the content.</p>

<p>To study for the SAT, one studies both algebra 2 and how to do multiple choice. This is no different. The student who has studied previous exams will do better on future exams.</p>

23

<p>At my Ds school, a kid stole a test for chem, not sure how, and the teachers were very angry, notes or something were found...so the teachers rewrote the test, it was much harder, and everyone was punished that way because the teachers had no clue how any had seen the test</p>

<p>Alot of kids were called in to defend their grades- answering and explaining parts of the test</p>

<p>Not sure who how many were caught, but checking does effect a whole lot of people</p>

<p>Notcountrygirl, you are really hurting yourself by sharing exams...and when you look at past exams, how many are recycled..I do not blame teachers for not wanting to make whole new tests because there are dishonest student but guess they have to because some have no ethics</p>

<p>As for frats, yeah, test papers, essays, papers...big time cheating...sorities the same, makes one wonder when they brag about their gpas. How honest were they gotten...</p>

24

<p>This whole cheating issue works on both sides. At a private University in my city, there used to be this open office policy where the prof's would leave their door unlocked and a student would take a test. I learned of this when a prof brought it up at a seminar I was attending the prof brought it up like it was no big deal and was shocked that they now have to lock their offices. At some of the small private Universities, a lot of odd things go on in order to make sure the school has good stats. This University was christian Brothers University and they are really, really concerned with keeping their little Us News and World Report University rating blah blah.</p>

<p>I think that any student who saves old course work for a pal is not being mean at all. An old test and old notes and whatnot is a good way to review as long as you do not supplicate that with attending the class and doing your homework. No one can ever stop anyone from saving old coursework for a pal. There is no means by which to stop someone from saving their old work for a pal at all. As long as you are allowing a pal to borrow old course work for the sake of extra practice or review it is no big deal, being unethical with that kind of thing is a big deal.</p>

<p>I think the TA should have been more honest, direct, and blunt with the student. I mean, you are only a TA? Call the student out, let them know the repercussions of their action and move on. Why lie and stuff?</p>

25

<p>"My point is that it is devastating for a student to be wrongfully accused of cheating. "</p>

<p>I totally agree. And sometimes it does happen when a prof doesn't know who is to blame. He or she may penalize both people, where one might be innocent. One of my friends at UCB made a mistake of discussing her homework with another person. But the other person was not very bright and just included all the same statements and ideas. Both students got zeroes for it. My friend felt very hurt by both the other student and professor, but what is the prof to do?</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."</p>

<p>That wasn't what I said in my above post. Let me summarize it: They are not off-limit. However, by obtaining one that wasn't made widely available to entire class you can set yourself up for some >accidental< cheating. Accidental cheating is where you realize the past exam you studied is same or very similar with the one you just took, and so your moral obligation would be to go and tell that to the prof. To avoid this, it is best to contact the prof and ask if it is ok to review past course material that wasn't made widely available to all the other students taking the class.</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>True, this is what we come to cc to do - post and respond to each other's posts.</p>

<p>"I would hope that a teacher would have rock hard evidence of cheating before making these accusations."</p>

<p>The only accusation that can be "rock hard" is when you actually see someone do it with your own eyes. There are many instances when you don't. For example, if you have two very similar exams before you, it can be that the students just happened to use same words and happened to study from same book together or whatever. But you also suspect that one of them cheated, so what are you going to do then? Some profs just let it go. Others turn to a division in campus administration existing precisely to look over such cases. But they might not have "rock hard" evidence where someone have actually seen the student cheating and so you'd have a witness. If you haven't seen it, then you are left with making assumptions.</p>

26

<p>If a document is publicly available and a student studies from it, even if one has to go out of their way to obtain said document, as long as it is obtained legally it shouldn't be a form of cheating. Professors need to realize that their jobs are to teach and test their students. It shouldn't be too hard for a professor in his field to come up with a few new quesitons every once in a while: that's what they get paid for, not just to sit in their labs and feel important. </p>

<p>You can't hand out a test to 300 people and say "DON'T STUDY FROM IT!" because believe me, out of your 300 new students at least 100 (that's AT LEAST!!!) 100 studied from the old tests but you only caught a few that studied them really well. Believe me students aren't stupid in a class of 300 most people will at least have an idea of what resources are available to them. So don't punish people. </p>

<p>Alternatively professors who want to reuse their tests should ask students to return the tests and not keep them, then you can punish who ever you wish from next year's class.</p>

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<p>kihyle,</p>

<p>At my university the burden is placed on the Prof. to decide whether or not students can use past exams. If they do not explicitly say in the courses ethics statement that you cannot use past material, then anything is fair game, regardless if it is widely distributed or not. The situation you describe does not hold, there is no "accidental" cheating. If you get ahold of some old answer key or past test that the Prof did not publically hand out and only a tiny fraction of the class has it, and the Prof gives the same exam the next year, IT IS THE PROFS FAULT. It is the Profs responsibility to either make up new questions or ban the use of previous material. This argument does in fact hold up in front of the school's ethics board.</p>

<p>Honestly, this is the only policy that makes sense to me. The burden can't be placed on the student in these situations because they did not know ahead of time what questions would be on the test. They are simply studying practice problems. I see no moral obligation for them to confess what they have done.</p>

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<p>Go Duke!!!</p>

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<p>I second that!! Don't be hating on Duke, lol.</p>

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<p>kihyle,</p>

<p>i read your first post on this thread and that makes me scared of TA's for turning people in because of suspicion and then if the person is innocent or not (an innocent person would deny doing it), it still gets forwarded to higher levels of authority. </p>

<p>my friend told me one of his professors turned in 10 people for plagiarism and forwarded the case to the dean. none of the 10 plagiarized. they all were all proven innocent and released. yet that's so scary that the professor can do that to the students.</p>

<p>basically i dont want to get falsely accused cuz it's hard to get out of the mess even if you're innocent!</p>

31

<p>well I'd say that 90% of colleges use plagarism programs to check for that stuff: so that is a very easy thing to catch (programs are very sensitive), yet hard to determine, because plagarism is really not defined strictly. One teacher can see it as borrowing a strong wording for an argument, another can see it as a complete ripoff.</p>

<p>As to cheating, If a professor is smart enough to merit the title he has, he will either take it for granted that students study old tests, or he will not pass back tests. It is that simple. He is just fooling himself otherwise.</p>

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<p>I'm not a college professor, but rather, just a h.s. teacher. I always return all of my students' quizzes and tests for them to keep. I encourage them to use them to help prepare for the final exam and let them know that I will not be using the same papers ever again. Therefore, if they want to let a younger sibling or friend practice with my previous tests, that is absolutely fine. The material to be tested on remains the same year after year, so why not practice with an old test from my class? One still has to learn the material in order to tackle the new test.</p>

<p>I guess I'm feeling like some of you previous posters that if a prof returns a test for keeps, then (s)he should not use that same test again. Many educators are just too lazy to make out new tests.</p>

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<p>When I was a college prof, I did the same thing that meme did: Let my students keep their test papers and share them with whomever they chose. I always made different exams for all of my classes even when I was teaching a couple of sections of the same class.</p>

<p>I don't think it's fair to the honest people to expect students not to share exams or not to tell others what was on exams that will be given to more than one section of a class. There always will be people who'll cheat, so that's why I went out of my way to create new exams.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
I take full responsibility for my actions

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</p>

<p>I am not in anyway condoning his actions, but seeing a college kid be accountable is pretty refreshing.</p>

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<p>"well I'd say that 90% of colleges use plagarism programs to check for that stuff: so that is a very easy thing to catch (programs are very sensitive), yet hard to determine, because plagarism is really not defined strictly. One teacher can see it as borrowing a strong wording for an argument, another can see it as a complete ripoff."</p>

<p>You can use google to double check almost anyhting. The neatest program is turnitin.com but if the University does not have that then the prof can use google with no problem.</p>

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<p>"At my university the burden is placed on the Prof. to decide whether or not students can use past exams. If they do not explicitly say in the courses ethics statement that you cannot use past material, then anything is fair game, regardless if it is widely distributed or not."</p>

<p>I very much agree that the burden should be placed on the prof to make up new questions or prohibit the study of old material. If the professors at anyone's school do not do this (such as my school), it is safer to inquire before using any such material. Because who knows how the prof will react or how the administration will treat any cases where it is unclear where the fault lies. If the syllabus doesn't say anything, better avoid getting in such situations and then having to explain yourself.</p>

<p>I do not think i was clear in my other posts. I've always told my students to not touch past quizzes from my sections. When they did it once, ok, perhaps they did not read syllabus for my section in detail. I'd simply talk to them. But some people do it over and over again, that is when I have to start giving out zeroes because talking apparently did not work. But I've also heard of some TAs forcing students to drop from the class instead of simply sufficing with a zero.</p>

<p>" i read your first post on this thread and that makes me scared of TA's for turning people in because of suspicion"</p>

<p>Most TAs are nice people and they will not turn you in because they've gotten up from the wrong leg and your sight upset them in the morning. As I've said before, I haven't heard of a single case where someone was accused and was innocent and everything was forwarded to higher levels. Before any sort of administration is bothered with any cheating case, the student and prof/TA will talk it out. Here you can prove that you're innocent or the prof/TA can prove that you're guilty. At least you get a chance to prove your innocence during this hearing. This is most usually done prior to submitting your case anywhere else, unless the prof/TA is a total *******.</p>

<p>To avoid being accused of plagiarism always write essays using more than 1 book/source. Single cheapest and most accessible book is what everyone else is going to use. And then your essay will sound like all the other ones. I was accused of plagiarism once because the TA did not have the books I used to write my essay. Plus I am a foreigner so probably she did not expect me to write in good English and thought I just copied everything out of the books I used but she didn't have them to read and compare.</p>

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<p>I think that it really does depend the school. Schoolw with honor codes take their Honor code very seriously and will throw you out for infractions of the code. Some of the things that some students list here as harmless, could esentially get you tossed out of school where there are strict honor codes in place.</p>

<p>*"Parkhurst" is one of the scariest verbs in the Dartmouth lexicon. Named for the building in which undergraduate judicial hearings occur, getting "Parkhursted" is a slang term for being suspended or expelled by the College. </p>

<p>David Chattman '08, who recently returned from a three-term suspension, faced sanctions due to violations of the honor principle in a freshman English class last winter.</p>

<p>Chattman opted for a hearing and said the process was very intimidating.</p>

<p>"The trial is pretty daunting and an intimidating experience," he said. "There are three teachers and three students and a dean who, beforehand, come up with questions. You get to have an advisor but they're not really there to help you out, just calm you down."</p>

<p>Sayat Ozyilmaz '08, whom COS placed on probation for violations of the honor principle, said that, throughout the process, many students have a subconscious paranoia about getting "Parkhursted."</p>

<p>"Everyone sees it as this source of enigmatic fear; they don't know anything about the procedure," she said.</p>

<p>Angela Fang '07 expressed concerns about violating the academic honor principle unknowingly.</p>

<p>"I always wonder if I could still be caught on a technicality even though I could be so well-intentioned to credit every possible bit of work to the correct author," she said.</p>

<p>Other students feel that such fears are trivial, claiming that it is not difficult to obey the honor code.</p>

<p>"It is your responsibility to educate yourself about the Standards of Conduct," Kirsten Wong '06, a member of COS said. "I feel that if you are a responsible person, we aren't asking too much of you."</p>

<p>Jared Hyatt '06, who also serves on COS, said that professors can do a lot more to prevent uncertainty about the honor code.</p>

<p>"I think professors should be more explicit explaining what students can and cannot do in collaborating with one another," he said. "I think many cases would be avoided if professors spent an extra ten minutes describing what is acceptable behavior."</p>

<p>The standard sanction for an honor code violation is a four-term suspension, but Thompson stressed that COS sentences individuals on a case-by-case basis and, therefore, fears of lengthy suspensions for minor infractions were misplaced.</p>

<p>"Many students make confusions in citations who did not get a four term suspension because that is not appropriate," Thompson said.</p>

<p>"The sanctions are always deliberated and voted on. We match the sanction to the case. While there may be 'standard' sanctions, they aren't fixed and in stone," Wong assured.</p>

<p>Chattman said that, although he understood the need for strict sanctions, the penalties levied against students are often extreme.</p>

<p>"Honor principle violations are treated as murder here. A lot of these violations involve honest mistakes," he said. "I feel the school treats a plagiarizer the same way as a sex offender; it's kind of ridiculous."*</p>

<p><a href="http://www.thedartmouth.com/article....xt=Parkhursted%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.thedartmouth.com/article....xt=Parkhursted&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>cheating also really ****es off everyone in the class. although if you are selfish enough to cheat, i doubt you will care about others feelings.</p>

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<p>So wait, you were responsible for seriously decreasing the odds of a kid getting into medical school because you were only mostly sure that he was cheating on a QUIZ? You need to make a trip to the Wizard.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
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.

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</p>

<p>Sadly, a large portion of CC posters seem to condone, or are at least apathetic to, cheating. One example I remember vividly is an argument I had with HiImAnAlcoholic in one thread, where many people seemed to care less about cheating:</p>

<p>
[quote]
Snitches suck. People cheat. It shouldnt matter to them.

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</p>

<p>
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So, it's not your business if people are cheating. People should worry about themselves.

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</p>

<p>
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Isn't business all about cheating? </p>

<p>I wouldn't turn the person in, it's against what I stand for. And how do people cheat on job interviews?

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</p>

<p>
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life's not fair. so you cheat.

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</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=159485&highlight=cheating%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=159485&highlight=cheating&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>
[quote]
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.

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</p>

<p>From what kihyle has said, it seems like the TA or professor usually has very strong reasons to believe cheating takes place before a student is accused of cheating, and that in a vast majority of cases, the students who were accused of cheating actually did cheat. There isn't always "rock hard" evidence but sometimes cheating is very obvious.</p>

<p>
[quote]
I guess I'm feeling like some of you previous posters that if a prof returns a test for keeps, then (s)he should not use that same test again. Many educators are just too lazy to make out new tests.

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</p>

<p>Or, don't return the tests if you know you will repeat some of the questions. Seems simple enough to me.</p>

<p>
[quote]
So wait, you were responsible for seriously decreasing the odds of a kid getting into medical school because you were only mostly sure that he was cheating on a QUIZ? You need to make a trip to the Wizard.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Are you kidding? Did you read kihyle's post? The kid was blatantly cheating. Why would he choose that day to wear a cap? To look around? To have such a good quiz grade but such a poor intro? To get aggressive when accused? Now, say this kid didn't get caught. He'll keep on cheating his way to med school, not learning anything in the process. Do you really want someone like that to operate on you? I sure as heck wouldn't.</p>

<p>Not only this, but kihyle tried to give him a break by just giving him a zero. But he kept denying it and got aggressive. Do you honestly think he would make a good doctor? Come on.</p>

<p>I don't know why kihyle keeps getting attacked on what I thought was a very good post on WHY PEOPLE SHOULD NOT CHEAT. The main point is that people should not cheat. Yet people keep focusing on minor details to try to pick his post apart. Why? I really see a few reasons as to why this might happen:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Some posters here simply think cheating is okay, dislike the notion that cheaters are turned in by TAs or caught by professors, so they aim that dislike towards kihyle. It seems like what these posters want is for TAs like kihyle to simply ignore cases of cheating so that the cheater wouldn't suffer consequences. Perhaps these posters cheat themselves from time to time and don't want to get caught, or they have friends who cheat.</p></li>
<li><p>Some posters do not want to see frequent accusations of cheating because they do not want to be falsely accused of cheating. This is more reasonable, but I don't think frequent accusations of cheating are going on, and false accusations are very rare.</p></li>
</ol>