<p>We have D1 sports, and we are told that athletes must notify us when they will miss class and we have to excuse them.</p>
<p>If someone just misses class, no one should care if they are an athlete or not. But we had things like practice time changed due to other university events, or away games requiring travel. </p>
<p>I think online classes would be a better idea to help athletes keep up their attendance and responsibilities, with proper monitoring of exams.</p>
<p>There’s also the honor code issue. Dartmouth apparently has an honor code, according to another article in The Dartmouth. Under such code, apparently, exams are not to be proctored? (perhaps some Dartmouth alum can explain this)</p>
<p>So a professor new to Dartmouth, and new to the Honor Code, notices cheating on the midterm, observes 250 clickers operating, but fewer than 250 students in class. Reports his findings, and is told those are honor code violations. </p>
<p>There is, then, the question, of whether the honor code works at all? After all, if the students hadn’t been cheating, they wouldn’t have been caught. </p>
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<p>Oberlin’s honor code is structured in such a way that we also had unproctored exams and take-home exams. When in-class exams are given, the Prof leaves the room and we take the exam unproctored. </p>
<p>On each exam or large project, we have to sign a pledge that “I have neither given nor received any assistance for this exam/assignment.”</p>
<p>If someone did cheat and others facilitated their cheating, the cheaters, those facilitating, and even those who saw/knew about it, but didn’t report it would all be considered to be in violation of the honor code and be brought before the judicial board to determine guilt and if guilty, the appropriate sanctions up to and including judicial/academic suspension/expulsion with appropriate notation on their transcripts. </p>
<p>^^If the system works. For it to work, students would have to turn each other in. If they don’t, and cheating obviously occurs, there’s a problem, for in that case, the honor code facilitates and encourages cheating. </p>
<p>The system, in the person of the Provost, betrays a toxic indifference to the issue:</p>
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<p>Aren’t scolding, judging, and fingerwagging exactly what is called for when a clear violation of the honor code has taken place? </p>
<p>Has moral authority been shunted aside, to be replaced by mollycoddling?</p>
<p>“Eighty percent of life is showing up”</p>
<p>–Woody Allen</p>
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<p>One of the key reasons why it works at my college other than campuswide acceptance of the code going back many decades is how failure to disclose cheating one knows about/sees means one risks being found in violation of the honor code as much as those who did the cheating or actively facilitated the same with the possible serious penalties and black marks on one’s transcript. </p>
<p>That and it’s actually very difficult for groups of people to avoid keeping something secret, especially teens/young adults. There’s always someone who will report or let word slip to the admins or those who work with them. There’s also the factor that at an LAC with around 3k students, living down dubious reputations is harder as there’s far less anonymity on such small campuses. </p>
<p>It’s one reason in all the unproctored exams I took at Oberlin, no one would even think of even looking like stealing a glance at someone else’s exam paper. Too much risk of other students reporting it to Prof/admins in order to avoid the risk of they themselves being found in violation of the honor code themselves for knowing about and failing to report the violation. </p>
<p>That and many students like yours truly were of the mind if one really needs to cheat, one was too intellectually dim and should possibly consider forgoing college altogether until he/she is ready. </p>
<p>I have never heard of a single case of someone being thrown out of a college for failing to report someone else’s academic dishonesty, as it should be. I hate cheating, but the idea of demanding that students act as enforcers is almost equally repugnant to me. Personally, I could see turning a totally unrepentant, brazen cheater who openly boasted of, say, purchasing a paper from a website, or brought a textbook to a non-open book exam. But for anything subtler or less severe, my policy was (or, thankfully, would have been, as I can’t recall it ever coming up), “I’m going to pretend I didn’t see/hear that.” </p>
<p>As for the notion of Oberlin as a bastion of exemplary integrity: </p>
<p><a href=“Honor Code violations and the consequences”>http://www.oberlin.edu/stupub/ocreview/2003/12/5/commentary/article4.html</a></p>
<p>It appears that some students did tell the professor there was cheating on the midterm, and he apparently did nothing about it. The whole pretending you are in class when you aren’t thing is nothing, to me. Cheating on an actual exam is another matter.</p>
<p>But really, the basic problem is deliberately creating an easy class for athletes.</p>
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<p>15% is a major part of a grade (Steven Pinker would probably be happy to require so high a value for attendance). I have seen 5% in other places.</p>
<p><<in much="" of="" life,="" attendance="" is="" mandatory.="" try="" getting="" a="" coworker="" to="" fake="" time="" sheets="" for="" you.="" that="" some="" professors="" have="" not="" required="" does="" excuse="" this.="" it’s="" only="" lying,="" and="" persuading="" others="" lie="" on="" your="" behalf="" about="" attendance,="" also="" lying="" participation="" in="" class="" activities.="" the="" scale="" startling;="" if="" 43="" were="" absent,="" means="" up="" buddies="" colluded="" cheating.="">></in></p>
<p>Totally agree! I own a small business and I mostly employ high schoolers and college students. I had an incident a few years ago in which one of my employees came to me in confidence and told me that another employee asked her to fake a time sheet for her. This girl was honest and upstanding and a great worker but she was very nervous about coming to me because she didn’t want to be ratted out. I applauded her for coming to me, and explained that she probably wasn’t the only one asked to do this. I can bet she asked others to fake her time sheet as well. Of course I was correct, and of course I fired the employee (who was shocked that I found this out). I just have to shake my head sometimes at what kids try to get away with. She actually didn’t even realize that this is considered stealing.</p>
<p>@latichever </p>
<p>I almost lost my mouthful of tea!! Good one! Quoting Woody Allen where morality & integrity are being discussed! Absolutely hysterical! </p>
<p>Cheating is cheating, and all the guilty parties need to be punished according to college rules. However, there is a lot about this case which bothers me. First, why is there even a class with 272 students at Dartmouth, which is supposed to be an LAC and teaching-oriented school? Secondly, why is the professor so lazy? He assigned a project such that the class was split into 5 groups, each of which had to complete one essay. That sounds like a bad middle school class with a teacher who hates to grade papers. Third, if the teacher was designing this course with the goal of helping struggling athletes, why on earth would he make attendance count for a percentage of the grade? Surely he must realize that one problem athletes face in keeping up with their academics is that they often need to miss class for team-related reasons! Fourth, given he had teaching experience at Columbia and he admits that there was cheating there too, why set up a system in which cheating was made so easy? Finally, why is the school accepting athletes who are academically too weak to handle the college’s classes? I know the parent of a current athlete there, whose father admitted to me he was having a really rough time because he was not smart enough for Dartmouth and only got in because of his sport.</p>
<p>No one should defend what the students did, but the problem goes beyond them. </p>
<h1>27 shows the Honor code is actively prosecuted at Cobrat’s school. One can reasonably presume that, since the Honor Code is obviously actively enforced there, this code would be something most students who don’t want trouble would take into account in conducting themselves. And would act as a deterrent for many.</h1>
<p>Which is all Cobrat said, I thought. I don’t recall him saying there were never any Honor code violations there. I thought he said that the honor code there served as a deterrent. The fact that it is actively prosecuted, per #27, only reinforces to me the reasonableness of that position. YMMV.</p>