Confessions of An Academic Criminal

Given all the time I spent in my career ferreting out suspected plagiarism, this article, entitled The Shadow Scholar, was of particular interest. Although the author seeks to justify his unethical behaviour by indicting the education system, it is still worth reading.

The Perennial Problem of Student Cheating

One of the many reasons I am happy to be retired is that I no longer have to spend time tracking down sources in cases of suspected cheating. In my time, it happened periodically, and, as I used to tell my students, I was a pitbull when it came to academic dishonesty. If I suspected it, I would spend however long it took to track it down.

As my career was winding down, academic dishonesty was becoming just another of the many issues that had become 'political', in the sense that administration would have liked to wish the problem away, as parental anger over a student getting zero for cheating often caused them headaches.

A recent story from the Toronto Star is well worth reading, as it examines the problems being confronted at the university level, where cheating seems to have become widespread and relatively sophisticated. I am reproducing the story below:

Student cheaters have plenty of tricks up their sleeves
September 11, 2010

LOUISE BROWN
EDUCATION REPORTER

One panic-stricken student bought an essay for a course, only to leave the credit card bill among the pages when she handed it in.

Another student in an economics exam attracted a bit too much attention by whispering questions up his sleeve, where a forbidden cellphone taped to his arm was transmitting answers from a friend off-site.

Then there were the cheating lovers – literally; two female students unaware they were dating the same sly male classmate who sweet-talked both into writing tests and papers under his name. When love turned sour and the two University of Toronto undergrads discovered the scam, not only did they turn on their ex – they turned him in.

“In the end he faced 67 different charges of academic misconduct and was expelled,” recalled Professor Edith Hillan, the U of T’s vice-provost of faculty and academic life. “It was one of the more egregious examples of academic misconduct we’ve seen.”
As classes start Monday, Canada’s largest university is stepping up its campaign against cheating.

Dramatic displays of dishonesty are on the rise at the U of T, where the highest academic court – which hears only the most severe cases – received 38 new complaints in 2008-9, up from 21 the year before. The surge may partly reflect a larger trend cited recently in the report “Liars, Fraudsters and Cheats” by the Canadian Council on Learning, which found nearly three in four students in this country say they have cheated at least once, thanks to the cut-and-paste wizardry of the web and the trend to file-sharing almost everything.

But the U of T also is becoming more proactive against those who play dirty.
Leading the charge against cheating is the university’s leafy Mississauga campus, where a new full-time honesty watchdog began three summers ago to give instructors in all 15 departments a compulsory crash course in how to discourage, detect and deal with everything from plagiarism to paying for papers.

In the three years since academic affairs officer Lucy Gaspini began the training, campus charges have more than doubled to 388 in 2009-10 from 182 in 2006-7.

“It’s partly because instructors are being more vigilant, but I’m afraid it’s also because students are feeling more pressure to do really, really well now that almost everyone seems to go on to university and there’s real competition to get an edge,” said Gaspini. “We see cases of cheating even in fourth year because they’re battling to get into grad school.”

Often students who are caught tell Gaspini they just forgot to cite their sources; it was midnight, three essays were due and there was the Internet at their fingertips. Some plead too many deadlines and not enough time, the pressure of part-time jobs and financial worries. Others believed shortcuts were the only way to ensure a particular mark they needed.

“If they’d just invest the time doing the work and studying that they do on all these other tactics, they’d be fine,” said Gaspini. She met this fall for the first time with international students to talk about the perils of plagiarism, warning against such popular tricks as using a Morse code-style system of pen clicks to share answers on a multiple-choice test.

“We have a case now where students clicked their pens a certain number of times to indicate the question number, and then clicked again to indicate whether the answer was a, b, c or d,” said Gaspini. “Even if you’re the one giving the answer, you’re providing unauthorized aid to someone else and you’re guilty of academic dishonesty.”
Mississauga’s student council joined the awareness campaign last week by producing student tipsheets about cheating which it tucked into Frosh kits, and plans its first plagiarism workshop for students this fall.

“A lot more grey areas are coming up now. When I sold a text book last year I made a little extra money by throwing in my course notes but what if the person who bought them used them the wrong way?” wondered Grayce Yuen, the student union’s vice-president of university affairs and a co-author of the pamphlet. “I’d be more cautious next time.”

Yet it’s not all grey, stressed Gaspini in a recent workshop for some 10 instructors from the historical studies department. She warned about such tricks as printing notes on the inside of a water-bottle label, or the rim of a ball cap, or even between a student’s fingers.

“One instructor photocopied a student’s hand as evidence of crib notes before they could be washed off,” said Gaspini. Others have been rumoured to jot notes on parts of their bodies too intimate for an instructor to check.

Professor Sarianna Metso recalled marking one essay which footnoted a scholar she knew personally – saying something that simply didn’t sound like him.

“I was surprised, so I pulled my copy of his book off my own shelf and turned to the page cited on the footnote, which didn’t have that passage at all. It turns out all the footnotes were fiction,” she said. “The quotes were just made up off-the-cuff.
“But if you knowingly let an offence pass through your fingers (without discipline), you yourself have committed an academic offence,” she said. “You’re not doing anyone a favour, and the student just thinks they can do it again in another class without penalty.”

Cheating horror stories at U of T

• A tutorial assistant charged three students $1,500 each to slip them the answer sheet when he escorted them to the washroom during the exam. Ruling: suspended for five years.
• A student plagiarized an essay, then forged a doctor’s letter saying he was too sick to hand in a second essay on time. He then plagiarized it and handed it in late, followed by a third plagiarized essay. Ruling: recommended for expulsion.
• After agreeing to write an essay for $120 for a classmate, a student then plagiarized the essay so his customer failed the course. When she tried to get a refund, an ensuing fistfight brought the essay-writer to the attention of the university, which learned he had been selling essays for years. Ruling: suspended for five years.
• One student plagiarized an essay from a website for a course called Philosophy of Language, in the same term as she plagiarized an essay for another course. Essay topic? Artificial Intelligence. Ruling: suspended for three years.
• One student submitted an essay written originally by a professor at Purdue University whose name, sadly, she failed to include on her essay bibliography. Ruling: suspended for two years.

Student Cheating – Parental Reaction – Part 5

In Part 4 of Student Cheating, I discussed how upset I was over the principal's handling of the situation of the dishonest student. What follows is how I dealt with my distress.

After mulling over how to come to terms with having been treated so unprofessionally, I decided to write a letter to the principal, which essentially turned out to be a 1000 word memo assessing her handling of the unhappy parents. The reason I didn’t make an appointment to see her was my tendency to get emotional at times; I really didn’t want my anger to supplant my logic.

Although much of what I wrote is lost to memory now, I do recall acknowledging that while she had the authority to act as she had, I stated that I had never been treated so unprofessionally in my career; I pointed out that in taking the expedient route, she had undermined me professionally, since the students I taught would be well aware of what had transpired. Clearly student respect for my classroom authority would now be in jeopardy.

As well, I said that her actions sent an inappropriate message to the students. The education system is often criticized for not preparing students for ‘the real world.’ I had tried to hold the student accountable for his deception, teaching him that there are consequences for one’s actions; she, unfortunately, had conveyed that consequences can be avoided if enough pressure and influence are brought to bear.

The response to my letter was a lengthy voicemail message stating that she had tried to get the parents to see me, but they were adamant in their goal of having him drop my course. To her credit, she did invite me to make an appointment to see her in her office if I had any further questions, but it was an invitation I declined, my disillusionment with the entire episode profound.

How do I think she should have handled it? I think she should have insisted that the parents see me before going any further; if they refused, I guess it would have been their option to complain to a superintendent, who likely would have acquiesced in their demand. However, the difference would have been that the principal would have at least sent a morale-boosting message that she supported her teachers, although having the problem progress to the superintendent probably would have meant some unpleasantness for her.

But isn’t that why administrators are paid the big bucks?

Student Cheating- Parental Reactions – Part 4

You may wonder why I got so upset over the removal of the student that I wrote about in my last post. While I recognize that the administration always has the final say in the disposition of students, what bothered me so much in this case was not the fact that he was no longer in my class, but the manner of his removal. In failing to insist that the parents first speak to me, as per procedure, in failing to inform me once she took the expedient course, and in overriding the guidance department, she was sending a very powerful message to students: parents have a great deal of power, and if you complain hard enough and loudly enough, you will get your way instead of having to learn from your mistakes.

To the staff, she was essentially saying that our professional judgment and standards were secondary to parental pressure, that when parental push came to shove, parents would be accommodated no matter what. You can well imagine what such aberrant judgment calls can do to staff morale. It affected me a great deal, not because my ego had been bruised, but because the entire process was so lacking in integrity. I literally lost sleep over it, until I realized there was only one way I could achieve catharsis in the matter. That will be the subject of my next post.

Student Cheating- Parental Reactions – Part 3

In my last post I told of the parent who suggested I had a personality conflict with her son due to my insistence on a note explaining his absence on a test. About five days later, said student came to me with his books, telling me he was no longer in my class. How his departure from my class came about is a tale that epitomizes how administrators often act out of expedience rather than principle.

After being informed of the departure, I contacted the guidance head to determine what had happened. Apparently the lad had gone to her, insisting upon being removed from the class. She told him, after hearing the reason, (i.e., that he had simply skipped the class and had had no doctor’s appointment) to ’suck it up” and learn from the experience. She thus refused to authorize his dropping the course. However, the common sense and integrity present in the guidance department seemed to be sadly lacking in the principal’s office.

Apparently, following the guidance visit, the parents went to the principal, insisting that their son be allowed to drop the course. Thus the deed was done. The normal and ethical practice is to insist that the parents first speak to the teacher before any kind of administrative involvement. In this case, not only was that stage eliminated, but to compound matters, I was not even given the courtesy of being informed by the principal. Thus, in the several days that elapsed before the student came to me with the news that he had dropped the course, every day I would ask the students if they knew where ________ was, until one day one of them told me she thought that he had dropped the course. So they knew before I did, and presumably they knew how he had effected his departure.

In my next post I’ll explain why I think the process that had taken place was both an affront to me and an attack on my professionalism.

Student Cheating - Parental Reactions- Part 2

One of my more unpleasant experiences with student dishonesty began when I had given a content test on Dickens’ Great Expectations. It was always my practice either not to count the test or give a makeup assignment if an absentee had a legitimate reason for missing a test. One such student told me that he had had a doctor’s appointment, and I simply asked him for a note from home to confirm that. When the note was not forthcoming and I pressed him on it, the student told me how deeply hurt he was that I wouldn’t simply accept his word. Never one to be swayed by such histrionics, I told him to get over his distress and produce the note.

Later, I called his mother to verify the reason for his absence. She asked me to ‘simply accept that ________ was absent for the test.” This non-sequitor really was of no help in my quest for the truth, so I asked her again if her son had had a doctor’s appointment during the test. Rather than replying, it was at this point she suggested that I had some kind of personality conflict with her son, and that he and I should try to resolve our differences. I assured her that such was not the case, and, as I recall, our conversation ended shortly thereafter.

What transpired shortly after really should not have surprised me at all. That will be the subject of my next post.

Students Cheating – Parental Reactions - Part 1

One of the least pleasant tasks faced by teachers is informing parents that their son/daughter has cheated on an assignment. No one likes to be the bearer of such news, but parents need to be informed when such transgressions occur. For the most part, they would accept the news stoically and thank me, but in my last several years of teaching, I noticed a disturbing trend developing. Sometimes parents expected exceptions to be made for their child, usually in the form of a makeup assignment. When I would refuse (my reasoning being that giving makeup assignments essentially meant there would be little disincentive to cheat) my motives would come under scrutiny, the parent wondering why I was being so ‘unfair’ to their child. I found such accusations so profoundly disturbing because they suggested to me that the children had been raised in a moral vacuum, where questions of right and wrong no longer held any meaning. It is one thing to look out for and try to protect your children, but at any cost?

I’ll tell you of some specific instances in future posts.

Student Cheating

I read an article in the paper recently about the state of cheating in schools today. The worst for dishonest practices apparently are business students; a survey showed that 74% indulged in dishonest academic behaviour, followed closely by engineering students. A myriad of devices are now available for high tech cheating, including the Internet, cellphones, Blackberrys, and some of the traditional methods persist as well (writing on hands, bathroom visits, speaking to students who wrote the test earlier, etc.)

In my years as a high school English teacher, very few semesters passed without my apprehending one or two students guilty of the most common form of academic dishonesty, plagiarism; while most of my students were honest and hardworking, the few that weren’t deeply affected me. It was no lie when I would tell my charges that each case of dishonesty I uncovered took a tremendous toll on me emotionally, I think because I always took such acts quite personally, and I was also deeply offended over the disrespect that it showed for the collective, i.e., the rest of the class. For me academic dishonesty usually meant two things: laziness as well as a certain contempt for me, the assumption being that I either wouldn’t detect it or would simply overlook it.

Both were incorrect assumptions. I used to warn the kids that I was something of a pit bull when it came to cheating. Once I suspected it, I wouldn’t let it go. Sometimes I would spend upwards of 2 or more hours trying to ferret out suspected plagiarism in order to uphold academic integrity.

Just as Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, in her seminal work, On Death and Dying, identified 5 stages of grief that dying people experience (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance), I found that there were corresponding levels experienced by those caught in plagiarism:

Denial – the student initially responded with wide-eyed innocence, his/her physiognomy simultaneously displaying both disbelief and deep suspicions about the sanity of her/his accuser.

Anger – the more experienced cheater often had impressive acting talents, frequently expressing indignation, outrage, and/or sorrow that such an unworthy suspicion had taken hold of my mind. It was usually at this point I would ask the student if she/he had a mirror. “A mirror?” they would ask. “Yes,” I would say, “because I want to see if I look as stupid as you obviously think I am.”

Ignorance – when confronted with the proof of the plagiarism, the usual response was to profess ignorance that the action violated academic rules. Usually this was accompanied by a ‘mitigating circumstance defence,’ consisting either of, “I put most of it in my own words,” or, “I was only looking for additional ideas,” or variations thereof. Occasionally I was blamed, as the student feared he/she “couldn’t meet my high standards.”

Bargaining – depending upon the student, this stage could involve angling to be given the opportunity to do a make-up assignment or pleading that the parents not be informed. Unfortunately, these otherwise callow youths failed to realize that bargaining is possible only when both sides have something the other wants.

Remorse/Acceptance – if the student was a first-time offender, he/she would sometimes experience remorse over the transgression, and promise never to do it again. Veterans of the experience would often just shrug their shoulders at this point, probably uncontrite but realizing nothing more could be done to salvage the situation.

In a future post I will discuss how the guilty parties’ parents responded to notification of their progeny’s delinquent behaviour.



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