Cheating, when caught, can be met with severe punishment.
Senior Sarah* dealt with the repercussions of plagiarism during her sophomore year. She says, “I used some of my friend’s old work in one of my essays. It came up as 25 percent similarity on turnitin.com. My teacher gave me a zero on the assignment which brought my grade down to an “F” for most of the semester. My mom was scared I wouldn’t pass the class, but I got [my English grade] up to a “C” in the end.”
In addition to her teacher giving her a zero, Sarah faced further consequences from the administration. She adds, “I had a pretty harsh talk with the dean, but I think my punishment was pretty fair [overall], although I don’t know how much more I would have been able to take. I think they saw that I was still a sophomore and that I had good grades, so they didn’t put me on the academic dishonesty list.”
However, not all cheating happens in the core academic classes. Senior John* says, “In culinary arts class last semester, the lasagna I baked was too hard so I used someone else’s lasagna as my own, and my partner decided to tell the teacher. The teacher gave me a zero on the final, and apparently she tried to flunk me out of the class but she wasn’t able to.[The teacher] also said that she told the dean to put my name on the academic dishonesty list. I’ve heard that your colleges get informed if you’re on the list, and I was scared of getting rescinded, but none of my colleges ever contacted me.”
In terms of the consequences he faced, John believes there should be more knowledge of the rules, and punishments should be more consistent. He says, “Some teachers will let you off with a warning for cheating, and others will put you on the list for minor [academic dishonesty]. I don’t think it’s fair that students should be punished for the teacher they had that year.”
CHEAT CODES
Math and computer science teacher Kris Reiss also dealt with academic dishonesty in his Intro to Computer Science class earlier this year. In this case, the student was placed on the academic dishonesty list.
He says, “I had an incident where a student directly copy and pasted code from a website instead of doing the work himself. He was given fair warning about my policies at the beginning of the year, and he still cheated. I ended up putting him on the academic dishonesty list. Tests are supposed to be an evaluation of your knowledge, and if you’re blatantly cheating, you’re not learning anything and you’re showing no respect for the class. Most teachers are totally willing to help students out, and if you’re struggling, you’re welcome to go ask for help, but the solution is not to resort to plagiarism. Plagiarism is usually the worst offense to teachers.”
According to Reiss, a spot on the academic dishonesty list has serious consequences.
He says, “If I know a student has cheated in my class or any other class at Aragon, I would never write them a letter of recommendation. Writing a letter for them is signing off on their character and their integrity, and their cheating goes against major principles.”
Reiss continues, “It’s important to prevent the behavior early on because once you get to college, cheating has serious consequences. A lot of the time, even if you somehow manage to get the questions to a test ahead of time, it doesn’t do you any good if you don’t thoroughly understand the subject matter. I think that even if a student is able to get by cheating in high school, their dishonest behavior eventually catches up with them in life.”
Over the years, teachers at Aragon have addressed the issue of academic dishonesty in a variety of ways.
English teacher Tiffany Wang says, “Recently, I had an incident where a student got into my computer and changed his grade. By accessing that computer, he had access to confidential information like other students’ health information and grades so it was a security risk. I had the student removed from my class, and his teachers were informed of the behavior because it turned out that he had had similar incidents in the past that I was unaware of.”
Wang addressed the academic dishonesty in a way that also addressed the root cause of the issue. She says, “In this situation, there was no fair way to punish the student through his grades. Instead, we had a meeting with his parents and the dean to address the source of the issue. Instead of focusing on punishment, I try to target the morality behind the incident of [academic dishonesty] and break it before it becomes a habit.”
Oftentimes, teachers attempt to address academic dishonesty by understanding its causes.
Wang says, “Students might cheat because of laziness or bad time management. Also, a big cause of cheating is the pressure students face. This pressure might come from their peers comparing grades with them. They could [also] feel pressure from their parents. A lot of students here have very successful parents that might push them to get a higher letter grade even if the grade doesn’t reflect the student’s actual abilities.”
English teacher Jenny Wei adds, “In a way, yes, teachers and school as an institution might be very responsible for killing your love of learning. On the other hand … [there] are choices that you can make and choices that we as a school are able to adjust if you’re really struggling, but you have to ask for that help.”
Despite the variety of definitions teachers have of what constitutes academic dishonesty and the spectrum of consequences they present in their syllabuses, many seem to agree that the issue of academic dishonesty must be addressed at the high school level in order to prevent bad habits from forming.
While several students have dealt with the consequences of cheating, others have observed instances of their fellow classmates being academically dishonest, often not knowing what to do or whether to report them.
Senior Taylor* says, “I had an incident where I was supposed to be [peer-correcting] my partner’s test, and she took my test and started copying down my essay answers. Later, while I was correcting her test, she kept asking me to change her answers to the right ones. I changed a few of her answers, but she kept asking me. She was really persistent, even when I told her I was uncomfortable helping her cheat. She kept begging me to fix her answers, [telling] me that she had a bad grade in the class … I was really scared the teacher would look over and I would get caught up in her cheating too.”
Some students feel that there are levels to academic dishonesty and that certain types of cheating aren’t as bad as others. Taylor adds, “I was okay with helping [my partner] bring her grade up a bit, and I fixed a few of her answers, but I felt so uncomfortable when she kept asking me to change more parts of her test. She made it seem like it wasn’t a big deal.”
Senior Max McKevitt adds, “Cheating is really common, especially copying homework. People are casual about it. People cheat because they’re lazy and it’s easier to ask your friend for pictures of the work than do it yourself. But at the same time, I think cheating is more common at other schools. I’ve heard that at San Mateo 30 people could have pictures of a test and no one would get caught. People seem to be more honest at Aragon. ”
Freshman Beata Gold says, “For me, school isn’t stressful at all yet because we’re just freshmen … I can see how cheating could get more serious the older you get, though. There’s a lot more pressure on juniors and seniors to get good grades on top of working on their college resumes, and they might cheat because they have so much on their hands already.”
