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Printer-Friendly ModeToo many second chances for cheaters can be detrimental
The Vanguard Vision
September 21, 2009 —
It would seem that there are few novel opinions on the topic of cheating. We can all regurgitate in our sleep the lessons we’ve learned about academic dishonesty.
“When you cheat in school, you’re only cheating yourself.”
The expression sits somewhere in our brains lodged between “Look both ways before you cross the street,” and “Don’t eat yellow snow.”
This being said, we recognize that a 500-word wag of the finger about how you shouldn’t cheat would land our product in the nearest recycling bin.
So we took an alternative approach and examined possible cheating motives and how these affect the rebel’s fate.
Surely, professors realize that no two cheaters are exactly alike. Each makes the decision to cheat based on a different set of circumstances. Thus, professors face ethical decisions with every term paper that turns out to be 68 percent verbatim from War and Peace.
There’s the student who works 20 hours a week, takes a full load of classes, participates in every red pride-oriented event on campus and saves the rain forest on weekends. This student is hooked up to a Red Bull IV by the time midterms roll around. The workaholic may cheat at that tragic point of no return, where it’s do or die, cheat or get carpal tunnel. This person’s method of cheating might be more subtle than downloading a paper from the Internet. Resubmitting a paper the student authored in a previous class might be the way to go, but it’s still cheating, says the Honor Code.
Then there’s the student who might not have a very firm grasp on the ins and outs of citing sources, paraphrasing and quoting as an underclassman.
These topics may be covered in class, but perhaps this student doesn’t really catch on because of a deeply rooted belief that what flew in high school must work at the collegiate level as well. This student might steal the sentences and paragraphs of others in broad daylight, coasting through with warnings but never actually learning the ropes.
And, of course, there’s the sly student who deliberately tries to manipulate the system. This student devotes time crafting diabolical plans to dupe a professor. The goal is to focus as little brain power as possible on churning out a unique thought and instead steal those of others.
These descriptions don’t come close to identifying all types of cheaters or cheating circumstances, but they allow us to see who we empathize with more and who probably makes professors suppress the desire to rip their hair out.
It’s not black and white. There is definitely a degree of subjectivity that enters the equation. But does simply having an Honor Code make us a university that’s tough on cheating if too often students are able to slide through with a slap on the wrist or less?
A TurnItIn.com report for SVSU shows that more than 800 students have submitted papers that are 75 to 100 percent plagiarized, but there aren’t expulsion or suspension stats to strike a balance. Although some of these cases may have been resolved informally, it may be an indication that it’s time to crack down with firmer sanctions.
Each professor’s discretion determines the initial path of recourse or lack thereof for a cheater. We recognize that every incident is different, but to hold a reputation as a university that does not tolerate cheating, we support penalizing cheaters to a fuller extent. Too many second chances may do more harm than good.