Steve Bull knew cheating when he saw it. The chemistry teachingassistant watched as a student looked at other exams, turning herpages simultaneously with other students.
Bull said he was surprised to see this episode of academicdishonesty at Northwestern. But he was even more shocked at thelack of administrative action in response to the complaint he filedabout the incident.
Administrators let the case go because of insufficient evidence,citing the fact that it was Bull’s word against the student’s.
“It disgusts me,” Bull said. “(NU is) supposed to be one of thebest schools. If I were a student, I would use the system (andcheat). Why not? Nothing is going to happen to you.”
Bull, who wrote an April 29 letter to The Daily expressing hisdispleasure, is not alone in his frustrations. Administrators andfaculty have learned they must strike a balance between treatingstudents fairly and punishing offenders.
Administrators said it’s difficult to nail down the amount ofcheating that happens at NU because there is no centralizedreporting system, and many cases go undetected. Associate Provostfor Undergraduate Education Steve Fisher, who reviews studentappeals in cheating cases, estimated that each year about about 100cases are reported — a figure administrators say is neitherparticularly high nor low compared to other institutions.
“I don’t think it’s a rampant crime spree,” said Craig Bina,associate dean of undergraduate studies for the Weinberg College ofArts and Sciences.
Even so, Bina said cheating has been on the rise in recent yearsdespite efforts to educate students and faculty about academicintegrity.
“Of course it’s serious,” he said. “Having one case is serious.We like to think our students would not do things like this — it’sserious because it’s disappointing.”
But academic dishonesty is more than disappointing, a group ofadministrators, faculty and students say. It cheats students out ofreal learning and even hurts the grades of honest students bydistorting grade distributions, as cheaters can displace studentswho should have been at the top of the curve.
The burden of proof
There are several types of academic dishonesty, but many casesinvolve either plagiarism or cheating in the classroom.
Proving guilt in a plagiarism case is a relativelystraightforward process because the instructor can present thestudent’s paper and the plagiarized source, leaving littleambiguity about whether the cheating occurred.
The classroom is far more complicated, faculty members said.Although a professor or a TA might believe a student is looking atanother’s paper, the student might be stretching, looking at awatch or glancing at other papers to see how far along otherstudents are on the test.
“There are cases that are pushover easy,” Fisher said. “If theyboth have the same bizarre wrong answer and the proctor saw themlooking, that kind of case might be more easily resolved as a caseof cheating.”
Bina said doubts arise when cases are based on observations,which amount to perception.
“I’ve received cases in which two proctors observing the samebehavior reported significantly different observations,” Bina said.”I’ve also received cases in which an observer was initiallyconvinced that a student was cheating but, upon learning of thestudent’s explanation for unusual behavior, suddenly saw thealternative possibility.”
Their hands are tied
Although 86 percent of the cases referred to Bina’s office –which handles the bulk of cheating cases on campus — resulted infindings of academic dishonesty last year, the figure might distortthe number of students who have been caught cheating. Manyprofessors know they will not have enough evidence to provein-class cheating episodes and don’t bother taking the case to thedean.
Faculty members aren’t allowed to carry out their ownpunishments such as failing the students for the test or kickingthem out of the class. Instead, professors are turning to their ownpreventative measures to reduce cheating.
Slavic Prof. Irwin Weil said students were voicing concernsabout cheating in his USSR and successor states class, so hedecided to distribute multiple formats of the test and havestudents sit in every other seat.
“I think we have to rely first of all on students’ consciences,”Weil said. “One can trust their consciences to a very great degree.However I realize you can’t do that completely — professors haveto be aware of the problem.
“If you deal with in in a straightforward and open way, you getthe support of the students.”
Supply-side solutions
Weil’s prevention strategies illustrate that instructors alsohave an obligation to uphold academic integrity.
“If you have a lot of cheating, it’s partly the fault of thefaculty,” said classics Prof. Dan Garrison, who also heads NU’sfaculty general counsel educational affairs committee. “A lot ofprofessors don’t monitor their own exams and they give the sameexams year in and year out.”
To prevent copies of tests from getting around, some professorsrequire students to return exam questions after a test. But facultymembers agreed one of the best ways to reduce academic dishonestyis to give tests in larger classrooms.
Often exams are given in rooms where students are jammedshoulder to shoulder, making it harder to avoid someone else’spaper than to look at it. Professors have been reluctant toschedule tests for evening hours, when larger lecture halls areavailable, but faculty and administrators agreed this could be aviable solution.
Students also can play an important part in deterrencestrategies by taking responsibility for policing themselves.
“We don’t care about the students who cheat — they’re reallyjust hurting themselves,” said chemistry Prof. Franz Geiger. “Whatwe worry about is that these people make it harder for the vastmajority of honest students to get the grade they deserve.
“It really should not be the professors that are outraged butthe fellow students, because they are the ones being cheatedon.”
But according to Prajwal Ciryam, Associated Student Government’sacademic vice president, cheating doesn’t seem to be a primaryconcern for students.
“I’m not sure if students feel that’s a pressing problem on ourcampus,” he said. “Students have been really worried about a few ofthe other issues and I believe if they felt cheating was rampantthey’d be concerned about it, because it really screws overeveryone.”
Instituting Honor
One of the most controversial, but potentially most effective,solutions to combat cheating would be to institute auniversity-wide honor code. Although students sign an academicintegrity contract for their respective schools when they enroll atNU, the message is not often repeated.
Many universities have honor codes that come attached to everyexam and paper. Students have to sign for their integrity on eachoccasion, leaving the message fresh in their minds.
“I think that might actually be useful,” Bina said, “because alot of the dishonesty cases I see seem to result from last minutepanic. If they had to put a sticker on the paper, maybe they’d stopand think.”
Although some might be skeptical about the effectiveness ofhonor codes, studies indicate they can have significant impact.According to nationwide surveys conducted by the Center forAcademic Integrity, serious cheating on tests at schools with honorcodes is typically one-third to one-half of the amount of cheatingat schools without codes.
But honor codes are more than just papers to sign. Many codesrequire students to turn each other in, an aspect someadministrators and faculty said they are wary of.
“I’ve lived in Soviet societies and seen what happened whenstudents have a duty to report on each other — that creates a verycorrupt reality,” Weil said. “There was always a threat of oneperson telling on another and where private vendettas could becarried out that way.”
Although administrators said they aren’t averse to some aspec
tsof an honor code, students will have to show demand for it. ButCiryam said such a project is not on his priority list, andaccording to Katie Lovejoy, a member of the Weinberg CollegeStudent Advisory Board, academic dishonesty and honor codes havenot been discussed in that forum either.
Lovejoy, a Weinberg senior, said she thinks cheating is a matterof honor, not honor codes.
“I know schools that have honor codes, such as the University ofVirginia — they’re very proud of their code but there’s cheatingthere as well,” Lovejoy said. “I don’t think having an honor codehelps. People’s morals are what they are, and signing a piece ofpaper doesn’t change that.”
University Provost Lawrence Dumas also said an honor codewouldn’t solve all NU’s academic dishonesty problems — studentshave to develop their own internal sense of academic ethics.
“An honor code is not a silver bullet,” Dumas said in a May 7interview. “We want to have our students be honest and ethicalstudents. I think it’s important to have an ongoing dialogue oncampus about academic values and honesty. Whether you have a codeor not, you still need that dialogue.”
