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The cost of cheating
Instructors and students interpret MHCC’s code of conduct
The Advocate
With final exams approaching, instructors, staff members
and students are looking ahead and reflecting on two occasional but inevitable deeds – cheating and plagiarism.
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“I wouldn’t do it, no way,’ said Bradley Best, Associated Student Government President-elect. “But we’d be lying to ourselves if we said it doesn’t exist.”
Best said he has seen people cheating in physical education classes when students don’t clock out in the weight room until after they have already changed back into street clothes.
The punishment is up to the instructor and dean, said Best. He believes the punishment should be somewhat severe and possibly go onto your transcript. Many instructors on campus believe cheating should not be tolerated in any shape or form.
“Over the years I have developed a low- or no-tolerance approach (toward cheating), which is written in my syllabus,” said chemistry instructor Elizabeth Cohen. “I don’t tolerate cheating.”
In the student code of conduct, which can be found on the MHCC website, it is stated that committing acts of dishonesty including cheating, plagiarism, or other forms of academic dishonesty is a violation of the MHCC Student Code of Conduct. Any student committing a violation will be subject to disciplinary sanctions, including separation from the college.
Dean of Student Success Patricia Martin said, “This does not usually happen,” and the only person that can expel a student is the college president.
Most instructors on campus mention cheating or plagiarism in the syllabus they hand out during the first week of their classes.
Martin said between 10 and 15 students get referred to her each term because of plagiarism or cheating.
Martin said first-time offenders “usually get probation for a term.” This is a social probation, which means that advisers for co-curricular activities get to decide whether a student gets to participate in these activities.
The student also has to write a five-page paper about the history of cheating, the code of conducts at different colleges and the reason the student cheated in the first place.
“This is a real serious offense in higher education,” said Martin, who explained that Ivy League schools and military academies have codes of conduct which state students would be expelled with a first offense.
For a second offense, Martin said students have to take an ethics class on their own expense as well as probation for a year.
With a third offense, a student would be suspended for a year and would be made to seek counseling.
The faculty at MHCC can make a decision as well, and do not have to turn the student in to a dean.
Cohen said, “I will fail a student in the class if they are caught cheating, and then pass their name on to the dean of students.”
In math and science, cheating during a test can be spotted easily, but for literature classes where there may not be in-class exams and the students are graded on essays, plagiarism becomes something the instructors have to deal with.
English Instructor Celia Carlson said plagiarism is “primarily a matter of people downloading sources from the Internet.” Carlson said most students who plagiarize do this at the end of the term because they have bad time management skills during the quarter.
Testing Services Coordinator Mika Roberts said there is about one student a term that is caught cheating. Testing Services has a form that is filled out if a student is caught, which has to be signed by the student. This form is then handed to the instructor who gets to decide the fate of the student.
French instructor Eric Tschuy said he has never caught a student cheating on a test.
“They (students) work together as partners on most of my tests, so they do help each other out, but in a permissible way,” Tschuy said. “If I caught one (student) cheating, I would invalidate that test for him or her, which would affect the grade. If the offense was repeated, I would talk to the dean about it.”
In the faculty support portion of the MHCC website, there are some tips for faculty to limit the possibility of cheating.
These include ways such as “relieving pressure by providing multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate mastery of course goals,” “creating a meaningful assessment that is not overly long,” administering assessments in small group sections and creating randomized tests are said to limit the possibility of cheating.
Martin added that spacing people during tests and walking around would also limit the possibility of cheating students.
Criminal justice instructor Chris Gorsek said, “I have not seen anyone directly do it (cheat) in my classes but I have heard rumors about it. I have also seen some attempts after the fact to claim that something on a scantron was mis-graded. However, I keep copies of their scantrons from my exams and when someone tries to slip one by me I have the evidence to stop them in their tracks.”
Even if circumstances lead a student to cheat, the general consensus among instructors is that cheating is not worth the trouble it may cause.
According to GED and Adult Basic Education instructor Paul Box, “If they cheat, they are only cheating themselves.”
The Advocate reserves the right to not publish comments based on their appropriateness.
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