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Walking the Walk

Mar 24, 2009
Students

In a recent post, I discussed my frustration with cheating at academic institutions. Surprisingly, the very next week, I discovered a student cheating on a midterm exam. Talk about bad timing on this student’s part. I can’t get into details of the situation, but I wanted to mention that I had the option of just giving the student a failing grade and leaving it at that. I chose to not only do that, but also to follow through with a formal complaint, accusing the student of violating SCSU’s Student Code of Conduct. So far, it has required me to write a detailed explanation of the events surrounding the incident of cheating. I’m not sure how far the process will go, or what decision will be made. I know that if a student disputes a charge, it goes to a formal judicial board hearing, and I would have to spend a few hours of my day going through that. I can’t imagine the student disputing the charge, since this time I had solid evidence. But I wonder what punishment will befall the student if they just plead guilty and beg for mercy. Will someone in Student Affairs decide that a failing grade is punishment enough? Will the student be suspended? If the student does not like that option, will they pursue a judicial board hearing and hope the sentence imposed by the board is better than the one already offered? I’ll keep you posted and provide more details in the future when I can.

I’m making a stand here on principle. If the problem is that students cheat and professors do nothing about it because it’s a difficult process, then the solution is for professors to bite the bullet and do what’s right, not what’s convenient. So I’m doing what’s right — to protect the integrity of the university, and to protect all of my students who don’t cheat. If I were an honest student who didn’t cheat, that’s what I would want to be done.

5 Comments
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5 Comments

  1. Ali McGinty  •  Mar 24, 2009 @8:15 pm

    I agree Dave. I admire you for taking the time to go through the process. If cheating was permitted it would defeat the purpose of attending classes to learn.

  2. Zach  •  Mar 24, 2009 @8:30 pm

    I will agree Dave but only if you have the solid evidence, because if not it will get more difficult. I have been on the other side of being accused myself, its probably the only time that I have ever been ok of a poor grade because the professor was threatening to take actions but I pointed out why would I cheat and some how get a worse grade than the other person.

  3. ProfSwitzer  •  Mar 24, 2009 @8:45 pm

    I’ve got the evidence, Zach. Once this whole thing works itself out, I’ll give details. But there’s nothing circumstantial about this one…

  4. Ben Blomgren  •  Mar 24, 2009 @11:41 pm

    I couldn’t help but wonder if the student felt that cheating was more beneficial than studying. It is somewhat like a speeding ticket in a sense that if you constantly speed you obviously face the risk of receiving a speeding ticket. If you save yourself enough time each day by running red lights, speeding, or what have you… then eventually you will come out ahead. The $130 ticket is not enough to compensate for the amount of time (considered at the individual’s wage rate) you have saved…which might be in to the hundreds of hours by the time a cop catches you. He likely saved hundreds of hours of studying by cheating so he thought that if he were caught and he failed one class then he would come out ahead because professors will not take most cases to judicial. Looks like he had imperfect knowledge! Just sharing my thoughts…

  5. ProfSwitzer  •  Mar 24, 2009 @11:53 pm

    I definitely understand that argument, Ben. And I would argue that’s why just giving the student an F in the class is not enough, especially if a student is already doing poorly in the class — not much of a punishment to give someone an F when they would probably get a D anyway, and if they can cheat and get a B, why not give it a shot? I’m not sure if expulsion is appropriate (probably a bit harsh) but perhaps suspension from school for a semester might make one think twice about cheating.

    When the expected value of cheating is positive, students will cheat. Our job is to make the expected value of cheating negative, by either increasing the probability a student will be caught when they cheat, or by increasing the punishment when they do get caught.

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