Wrongful Accusation for cheating

Student Lounge College Life
1

So I am new to the whole college confidential world and this just happened to me recently so i didn’t know where to turn. Long story short im currently taking a calculus 3 class at my college. I have been struggling all class to keep pace with the class but i was slipping in grades. We had our second test on a Wednesday. During the test, the kid who sits next to me (he gets 80+ grades on all his assignments) moved his paper to the next page as i moved my body too. Im not sure what exactly i did but my professor was in the row behind me helping someone and made the comment “dont look at his paper”. When i turned around my professor was looking right at me, then i motioned that i didnt and mouthed that i was sorry and i wasnt looking. For the rest of the test i looked either at my paper or the wall next to me with the fear that she would catch me for cheating. I handed the test in and that was it.

After receiving our test back on friday my professor waited till the end and called me up and asked me to reproduce one of the graphs on our test. I reproduced the graph. Then my professor asked me to show the limits. I reproduced the limits with one of them wrong but to be honest i knew how to do it i was so scared that my professor thought i was cheating that i drew blanks, my hand was shaking during this whole thing. Then after i guess showing him/her i knew how to do the problem she shows me two other problems on the paper that were in her words “like the other students”. The first one was a miss calculation on my behalf and a wrongful placing of a number. The second was i ran out of time and forgot to go back and do the problem in which i literally just wrote lines on a graph and labeled them. I told her i struggled with the test and that i didnt know what he or she wanted me to say. Then my professor told me that he/she was going to report this and then kept saying “i can no longer speak to you about this” to me.

Reason why im freaking out about this. I have one cheating issue on my record. I went for help with an engineering final project for a coding class. this is at an official college tutor lab we have for engineering students. The tutor who was helping me was showing me ways to do go about my code that would make it easier to read and run faster. Turns out they were feeding me a code from google. My professor copied my code into google and they nabbed me for cheating. I was going to fight my innocence but they gave me essentially a plea deal. I had to re take the course with the same professor and prove i could pass the course. I passed the course and received an A for the project in which i “cheated” on. Ive already visited to my dean of students to get help from them and they said i have to wait for an official written email saying i’m being charged before i can go further. Has anyone else dealt with something like this? Additional info is the professor plays favorites, and i got a 35 on the test and the kid that i “cheated” off of got an 85. Also im a good student and have never been in trouble with the university before other than the other cheating incident and have not given this professor any reason not to believe me

2

People like to screw other people in life, unfortunately. Just say to the dean what you said here. You have to stand firm to your beliefs (whether you did cheated or not) no matter what.

3

If this is for a college related incident, I would suggest taking a look at StackExchange Academia. They may be more helpful over there. Here’s a similar question to what you have asked: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30539/i-was-caught-cheating-on-an-exam-how-can-i-minimize-the-damage

4

Thanks, I talked to my roommates who has sat in on the honor boards at our school where kids go when fighting a cheating issue. They said that based on the evidence of my professor “telling me to stop” and “not being able to recreate my work when pressure is on me” is not enough to warrant cheating, especially if my answer is lower than the kid who i supposedly cheated off. While those 3 answers match up somewhat to the other students test, our professor also gave us a review problem that was almost identical to the problem on the test except for one of the limits was changed. e.

5

I’m so sorry you’re experiencing this. Fully document this incident in writing. It should be as formal and factual as possible. You can use what you wrote above as a basis, but formalize the wording and make it more legible by using paragraphs or bullet points.

Whomever will be judging you should read your documentation first before starting to cross question you so that they better understand your case. Also document the previous incident in a similar manner in case it comes up again.