The cheating issue

Shelby Tankersley

            Last Monday when I walked into my Spanish 114 class, my normally enthusiastic professor had a melancholy expression on her face.

            She stood in front of our class and told us someone from another class had cheated on their last exam. This was the first time in all of her years of teaching she had this happen.

            Needless to say I was shocked. For one, this is Spanish, not Calculus. Our exams aren’t that hard, and this student was in a 114 class. Second, our professor is a great teacher and a genuinely nice lady, and I know I can say that the vast majority of the class doesn’t want to make her life harder than it needs to be.

            But there we were, none the less. She told us that this student would probably be expelled, she was going to be more watchful during our exams and that there was a chance our final exam would be a large, proctored exam.

            This whole thing got me thinking about the effect one person can have. One student changed the semester for not just my professor, but every last one of her students.

            Time Magazine did a study for their Answers Issue this year on cheating in higher education. They found that 82 percent of recent college alumni admitted to cheating in some way while they were in college.

The Boston Globe cited another study from 2012 that reported 75 percent. That’s a seven percent increase in just three years. That same study reported that cheating in college has had a steady growth rate since it first became a problem in the 1960s.

So, are classes just too hard, or are we getting more dishonest?

            That’s hard to answer. We have advanced courses here that are made for the educated mind, and therefore, should be difficult. We also have classes like Spanish 114 and Writing 150 which are largely a review of what we should have learned in high school.

            And that’s just it: We’re not in high school anymore. We’re adults.

            When we took our next exam this past Friday in my Spanish class, my teacher had to enforce some rules. She walked around the room, made sure everyone was faced toward the front of the room and watched us a little closer than she normally did. There was an extra tension that wasn’t there before.

            She had told me earlier in the week that she wasn’t at all looking forward to doing this. She said that we have a class full of adults and because of that she wants to trust us. My professor was genuinely regretful that she was now expected to act as if she didn’t trust us anymore.

            Here’s my point: It’s not worth it. It isn’t worth it in Spanish 114 and it isn’t worth it in Engineering 400. We all know that we could be expelled if we’re caught cheating, and the repercussions of that will echo in the classes of our professors and peers.

            Here’s to the 18 percent who graduated without cheating in college this past year.