With righteous glee I busted five cheaters yesterday: one pair and a group of three who had copied an assignment. They were easy to bust because of plagiarized misspellings, content errors, and misunderstandings of the directions.
I wore my power boots to work, called the students out of the room before class started, and handed them copies of their homework with the penalties:
- 0 points for the assignment;
- loss of the "extra credit privilege" (my stroke of syllabus genius this semester);
- dismissal from the class period for two consecutive days, meaning they'll miss a quiz; and
- referral to the campus discipline office.
They all admitted cheating, quietly retrieved their books, and left.
I refrained from dancing.
This is the maximum penalty possible under state law, which says that we cannot flunk a student from a class on the basis of cheating.
Here's where I shake my head in wonder: the assignment was optional and worth minimal points. I provided it as practice for a point-heavy but similar final assignment.
What state has a law barring flunking a student for cheating?
ReplyDeleteBesides being a bizarre power grab from educators, hasn't it just elevated cheating to a protected right?
To answer question one: That would give away the game and reveal where Eskarina is. I've already had to warn somebody that they (possibly) gave away their college because I could recognize certain names.
ReplyDeleteTo answer question two: Yes it is, but maybe the child or relative of some big wheel was caught cheating and the powerful person had it changed. Maybe the state doesn't want too many flunked out 19-year-olds flipping burgers for a living.
It's ferdscheisse, but there is a reason. I loathe cheaters because of the damage they do to the college* and the non-cheating students (even though these non-cheaters might be the same drunken gits who pissed in my shower at Northeastern Ghetto Tech.)
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* I'm not talking about such pointless crud as prestige - I'm writing of the constant need to check for student fraud, the damage to academic integrity when academics themselves submit fraudulent research, and administrative fraud. As it stands, you could get a cheater undergrad to stick around to cheat in grad school, and then really cheat as a prof or admin person. I mean usually cheaters get only so far, but what if somebody was almost like a "mole" of cheating? Could that explain Dean Botstein of Bard College?
A&S, if we don't let students cheat, how will they learn to be politicians?
ReplyDeleteI don't understand the whole asking the students to leave as part of the punishment thing. Sure, they miss an assignment, but it's also two days off from class. I've known middle- and high-school age kids who were suspended or sent home before and were delighted - they hated school, so if they got to leave, it meant that they "won."
ReplyDelete@Streinikov, mind your P's and Q's. It would be spelled "Pferdescheiße" (with that weird ligature), but I believe Schwachsinn is the preferred translation.
ReplyDelete@Elsa, oh, the part about days out of class is brilliant when they miss something that will count for their grade. In Sweden, where I spent a sabbatical, the academic integrity councils tend to meet the week before finals and their punishment is throwing you out of school for 3 or 5 days. You miss some finals, you don't get credit, you don't get your student loan next semester unless you go to summer school and miss all the summer drinking holidays. I think Eskarina's idea is great!
Really? Here's where *I* shake my head in wonder:
ReplyDelete"which says that we cannot flunk a student from a class on the basis of cheating."
Wow.
Well... when I busted someone (a gradflake) for cheating, I had irrefutable evidence. Copy of the student's paper and highlighted copies of the source material where NO effort was made to paraphrase or cite. I was STILL worried that the student would get off the hook because of some technicality. We even had a hearing with the student and I REALLY had to suppress my urge to say "WTF were you thinking?". I almost lost my cool at some of the excuses, though.
ReplyDeleteAs it was, the student got a year of suspension, but (IMNSHO) should have been kicked out.
@Suzy from Square State
ReplyDeleteYes I should have capitalized it and used the Eszett (double s), but I'm not cool enough to find that character set in my computer....they don't teach cursing in high school Deutsch; I came up with the vulgar of Schwachsinn by slapping nouns together. In my defense, they don't use "scharfe S" (another term for Eszett) in Switzerland either.
Speaking of Ps and Qs, you changed the L to an I in my (fake) name; "Streinikov" means nothing, but Strelnikov is a semi-common Russian surname meaning "the hunter" or "the shooter." I took it from "Doctor Zhivago" and not the airborne (VDV) Col. Strelnikov of John Milius' redonkulous "Red Dawn."
@ Eskarina: banned them from extra credit assignments? That's cool. I have a new line to my syllabus. Thank you for the idea and, more importantly, for throwing the book at these thieves.
ReplyDeleteBanning them from extra-credit assignments would be something my chair would call a "fairness issue".
ReplyDelete