aciel: Cheaters make me sad.

Mohawk-John Woods (

aciel) wrote,
@ 2008-10-28 11:58:00

Current location:	Welch Hall, class I'm TAing
Entry tags:	education, ethics

Cheaters make me sad.
A letter I sent to my students today, because some of them cheated.

Hi everyone,

Please read this carefully, and feel free to email me if you don't understand something. I'm happy to clarify.

I was disappointed to find that some of your answers looked copied from someone with the other test form.

As I'm sure you realize, it's pretty hard to prove someone was cheating. Without proof, I don't want to accuse anyone because I know how much it sucks to be accused of cheating when you didn't do anything wrong. I also know how awful the honor system can be and how long it can take.

Luckily, it's a moot point because almost all of the people concerned failed the exam anyway. Those who didn't fail did pretty badly.

And actually, that makes me sad too. You guys shouldn't have to be doing badly on these exams. I know there's a lot of material and you have no idea what to study, but that's why we have study groups and TAs. Too much to study? Come see me. I can help. I've taken this class a couple of times and I've had to find ways to remember really large amounts of information. (If you think this is hard, try taking the graduate level biochemistry.)

A quick story:

I knew a kid who cheated regularly on all of his tests. He was actually good at it, and got away with it--unlike the people who copied answers on this test. He's an aerospace engineer. That means he designs airplanes. Do you really want to fly in an airplane designed by someone who never learned how to design airplanes?

The moral:
Don't cheat. People could get hurt badly in plane crashes (or in the case of biochemistry, you might accidentally create a zombie virus).

As for the people we think are cheating, we will be watching you. I strongly suggest you study next time.

Sincerely,
John
Your friendly neighborhood TA

(Post a new comment)

	ario 2008-10-28 05:24 pm UTC (link)
	Cute. You sound way better than the TAs I've had. (Reply to this)

	seeliespright 2008-10-28 05:43 pm UTC (link)
	That was very well put. I'm sorry you have cheating students though. (Reply to this)

peculiar_writer
2008-10-28 06:41 pm UTC (link)

"Do you really want to fly in an airplane designed by someone who never learned how to design airplanes?"

The best reason to not cheat. I know kids in high school who cheated on everything, and some of them ended up going into med school. ::shudder::

I thought your letter was very nicely put. I hope your kids care enough about their own futures and ethics to take you seriously and change their behavior.

(Reply to this)

	annanaka 2008-10-28 07:26 pm UTC (link)
	Wow. Well done. That may be the least emo/obnoxious/annoying/otherwise easily dismissible "dear cheating students" letter I've ever read. Congrats. Hope they shape up. (Reply to this)

	topaz 2008-10-28 08:19 pm UTC (link)
	this is a great letter - it gets your point across without making it seem like the cheaters are beyond redemption. i'm really curious to know if any of them come to you for help after this - if they do, you should tell us :) (Reply to this)

	korolyeva525 2008-10-28 08:30 pm UTC (link)
	Bravo. (Reply to this)

nishmael
2008-10-29 02:13 am UTC (link)

It's pretty baffling when we get cheaters (i.e. plagiarizers) in comp classes, since unless you're plagiarizing an entire paper, it seems like it's more work to weave in copied sections than it would be to just write the damn thing. Nonetheless, it's depressingly common. That sort of cheating's a bit tougher to deal with, too, since no one dies when you plagiarize from wikipedia. :( Is what you're TAing a gen-ed requirement, or is it specific to majors? I'd imagine that would make a huge difference, though I haven't taught anything in the latter group yet, so experientially, I wouldn't know. -_-

(Reply to this)

	cowsandmilk 2008-10-29 02:59 am UTC (link)
	what amazes me is when people cheat on homeworks that don't count for the class I TA. If you don't want to do it, just don't do it and don't turn it in. No purpose in cheating for something that isn't part of your grade. (Reply to this)

	talynnsg 2008-10-30 06:08 am UTC (link)
	My students have been cheating too. What gets me is how blatantly obvious it is most of the time. If they're not going to spend the time doing their own work, can't they at least spend some time hiding the traces of their cheating? (Reply to this) (Thread)

(Anonymous)
2008-10-30 04:09 pm UTC (link)

Being cynical: schools aren't interested in teaching kids not to cheat, they're interested in weeding out the bad ones. Roughly speaking, it works out to be "If you're stupid enough to get caught, you deserve to be punished. If you're competent enough to figure out how not to get caught, then congratulations, you've learned something useful from our school." *sigh*

--Robert Machemer

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Cheaters make me sad too...
(Anonymous)
2008-10-30 04:07 pm UTC (link)

My friend who has TAed at UCLA (paraphrased by me):

"I don't think I could send out something like that. UCLA is super-scared of being sued -- we might be able to say something along those lines with the students, but we'd be strongly discouraged form sending out an email (and even the oral/aural statement would likely be discouraged since it might be seen as potential harassment). Along those same lines, we (TAs) got in trouble if we saw someone cheating and said "I think you're cheating" or even "You're cheating" because doing so might 'fluster' an 'innocent' student who could blame you for their poor grade on the test. For the same reason, if you directly saw someone cheating, UCLA discouraged you from taking their test away because, with only you as a witness, the school would be unable to prove the cheating took place, and THEN the student could say, "I received a worse grade because I wasn't able to finish my test!" Short of catching them with crib notes marked "I'm cheating on this test with these crib notes" and signed with the person's name, there's little we can do. All UCLA's anti-cheating measures are designed to prevent it from happening in the first place as a result because the school is too scared to try to deal with it after the fact."

Back to me:

And that all sucks. Were you one of my students the year I caught five kids cheating on the final exam (and on which I strongly suspect there were more cheaters -- those were just all the ones I caught)? Were you aware of how that was resolved, discipline-wise, by the school? It was a very depressing end to my second year at that school, although it did make my imminent departure that much more eagerly anticipated.

--Robert Machemer

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: Cheaters make me sad too... aciel 2008-10-30 04:14 pm UTC (link)
	No, or if I was there, I don't remember it. What happened? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Cheaters make me sad too...
(Anonymous)
2008-10-30 09:23 pm UTC (link)

I'm pretty sure at least one of the cheaters was in your class (Algebra II Trig Honors, right?), but most were in Algebra II Trig (or whatever the name of the class was that was one notch below yours). Some aspects of the story are becoming fuzzy with time (this is more than eight years ago now), but here's more or less what happened.

I caught four or five kids cheating with crib sheets. (Two of the cheaters' names have stayed with me. I can't remember who the other two/three were without consulting a yearbook or maybe my old grading sheets or something -- not worth it. It's possible that at least one of the kids I caught wasn't one of mine, though the two whose names I remember definitely were).

My understanding (likely supported by the head of my department, given my kindly memories of her, though possibly not) was that the caught kids would receive 0s on the exams and would be suspended from the school. I'm about 90% certain that this was the established, understood policy of the math department and of the school. (Honor Policy was important, after all!) When I heard whispers (from the cheaters) that more kids had cheated but had not been caught, I offered to tear up the old tests for all my students and give everyone completely new ones, the idea being to give all the innocent kids a chance to demonstrate that they did not deserve to have me or anyone else question their integrity, and all the uncaught cheaters a chance to fail. (Of course, a retest was never going to happen, and I have no problem with its not happening, but my doubts about the rest of my supposedly "good" students tarnished a lot of memories for me. I would have happily done the extra work just to get rid of my suspicions).

Anyway, the administration (my memory is that I talked to the Head, but it could well have been one or another of her assistants -- oi, my memory is bad sometimes) had an alternate suggestion of what would be an appropriate response. The administration's suggestion: the cheaters would all get 50s and they would be put on probation, but not suspended. The reasoning: a 0 would hurt their grades too much, and a suspension would go on their transcript while a probation would not.

My memory is that neither I nor the head of the department thought this was appropriate at all. For one thing, there was no guarantee that they would have received a 50 had they not cheated -- I think I pointed out that I had had kids who did not earn 50s on the same exams. (The school said, "Ok, give the cheaters the same as whatever your lowest grade was.") And to not suspend them? For cheating? On a FINAL?!! To say the least, neither the head of the department (as I recall) nor I had a problem with the suspensions going on their transcripts. It was kinda the point, we thought.

Sadly, this was not a fight we would win. No suspensions. The kids got some non-0 grade, probably equal to whatever the lowest grade a (possibly honest) kid earned. And I left the school with a very bitter taste in my mouth.

One of the two students whose name I still remember apologized profusely later, said she was ashamed, said she didn't need to cheat (and I think she was right -- she was bright and had been doing well), but said she'd gotten nervous about the test and so had made the crib sheet just in case she panicked and forgot something during the test. For what little it was worth, I believed her.

The other of the two students whose name I still remember was... never mind, I won't write that. But he was considerably less apologetic, I'll say that, and I was far from sorry to hear that he eventually got kicked out of the school (for a completely unrelated transgression -- though again, it's possible I misremember).

Schools like that have things completely ass-backwards. Far better to stick to your guns and kick kids out if necessary -- you want students to learn that there are consequences to actions, you want them to learn that their parents can't save them if they actually screw up, and you want the outside world to see that integrity is important and that it's not to be bought or threatened. These are far more useful lessons for students than anything they'll learn in a classroom.

--Robert Machemer

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	Re: Cheaters make me sad too... hippiepixie 2008-10-31 01:39 am UTC (link)
	Was this the thing with the calculators? I want dirt on this! (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Cheaters make me sad too...
(Anonymous)
2008-10-31 07:41 am UTC (link)

Did I supply enough dirt?

Here's a better story (one that is not my own).

A teacher at that same school caught a girl plagiarizing on a paper. He confronted her, she admitted that the work was not her own, and he told the school. The very next day, he was called into "the office" (I wasn't there, and this is years ago, so I'll just be general about the administration's response) where he was confronted by an administrator, the girl, and the girl's mother. The girl's mother threatened to sue the school if the teacher didn't apologize for accusing her daughter of cheating. The teacher's reply, "But she did cheat. I caught her. I know she didn't write that paper. And She even admitted it to me yesterday." The girl pipes up, lying, "No, I didn't. I never said that." The mother: "Now you're calling her a liar?" Zero support from the administrator, whoever it was...

The teacher was forced to write a letter of apology to the student before the matter was considered to be resolved.

*shakes head, sighs*

--Robert Machemer

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Cheaters make me sad too... hippiepixie 2008-11-02 07:18 am UTC (link)
	I think the calculators incident was maybe a chem final, not a math one (oh TI-83s, what can't you do?) These stories would be almost kind of hilarious (in a Catch-22 sort of way) if they weren't, you know, true and therefore maddening and sad. I don't miss high school. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Cheaters make me sad too...
(Anonymous)
2008-11-02 10:46 pm UTC (link)

The crib sheets I found were all tucked inside the backs of their TI-83s (or at least that's how I remember it). I'd be curious to hear who you remember being caught.

The incidents would have been darkly amusing if they were fictional (like in Election or something like that), but in real-life they were horribly depressing. I don't blame you for not missing high school -- I don't especially miss your high school either. (That's not even getting into the discipline issues of the following year -- I wasn't around for them, but I heard vague stories).

--Robert Machemer

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: Cheaters make me sad too...
(Anonymous)
2008-11-03 06:30 pm UTC (link)

I tutored a guy a few years ago who bought a TI-90-something which could solve equations. Quadratic, linear, rational equations... you name it, it could solve the equation. And apparently his calculator was perfectly allowable on the SATs. Which meant that when his SAT score jumped 200 points (partly due to his tutor, partly due to the awesome power of his fully operational death star), ETS (the people who run the SATs) did a full-out investigation of his score. And then when they figured out that he hadn't "cheated," he ended up getting into Tulane (which is quite a bit higher than he had previously thought of aiming.

TI-83s, in and of themselves, are ridiculously powerful (even before you get into all the ways you can cheat by storing formulas and programs in them). Whichever TI-whatever this kid had was so powerful, he didn't need to "cheat." *rolls eyes, sighs*

--Robert Machemer

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: Cheaters make me sad too...

austingoof
2008-11-03 02:52 am UTC (link)

This type of result is not limited to cheating. Before I did my student teaching I was required to spend time at the school I was going to work at. Mostly that is to observe the teachers I was going to teach with, help them out, and observe real teaching. Part of it was having to go around and do things like visit the principle, visit the counselors, visit the librarian, visit special education, and so on. About the time I got around to the counselors, I had been around for awhile. When I got there I got stuck out in the office where I got to listen while a parent lambasted the head of the science department. She was very active with various clubs, and had the made the mistake of telling a student, "I don't have time right now, come back later, and I'll help you then". The kid had told his father "I don't have time for you". Besides the fact that he immediately went to the administration, he absolutely refused to accept that he was not hearing both sides of the story. In fact, he point blank said, "I have heard the only side of the story, I care about". I knew the kid too, which was awkward for both of us. I'm sure he misspoke, and then by the time he realized how out of control things where he was scared to speak up. Hard for a 14 or 15 year old to not feel that way, I think, before anyone speaks up about that. This is probably one of the biggest reasons I gave up on teaching in the public schools.

If it makes you feel better, I have since talked to more than one parent who told me that the in front of their child the teacher is always right.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: Cheaters make me sad too...
(Anonymous)
2008-10-31 02:15 am UTC (link)

It was a very depressing end to my second year at that school, although it did make my imminent departure that much more eagerly anticipated.

The above reads more ambiguously than I intended. I meant that I was more glad to leave the school; whether or not my catching kids cheating made others anticipate my departure with more eagerness is not something on which I could comment, though it wouldn't surprise me now that I think about it.

--Robert Machemer

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Cheaters make me sad too... aciel 2008-10-31 03:27 am UTC (link)
	I got what you meant. Yeah, I think I was pretty oblivious to the whole thing. That is pretty upsetting--can't let the cheaters affect our college admission rates! It doesn't help that I know people who were expelled for much less, either. =/ (Reply to this) (Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2008-11-01 11:38 pm UTC (link)
	I'm pretty sure I posted a couple more comments that haven't appeared yet. Problem with the system or you just haven't gotten around to approving them yet? --Robert Machemer (Reply to this) (Thread)

	aciel 2008-11-01 11:40 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, oops. I'll fix that now. Thanks for the reminder. And you were right, I did get in trouble, though not for any real reason. My boss said, simply, "I would have made the email shorter." (Reply to this) (Parent)

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