Who Cheats, and What Constitutes Cheating in the College World?

Putting aside the very hairy area of cheating in relationships, I’m wondering about academic cheating. Before college, I attended a very small, liberal all-girls school where everyone knew everyone else and we were all trained to be as “honorable” as could be. We all had to re-sign an extensive honor code each year, and there were serious penalties for violating it.

I remember in my senior year of high school, one girl was found to have plagiarized part of a paper from the internet. Not only was she suspended; she had to deliver a speech in front of the entire class, explaining why plagiarism was wrong.

Princeton has been particularly aggressive on the cheating front in the same way. We have honor code meetings, have to write a page on matriculation illustrating our understanding of it, and get regular updates from the honor committee. All the same, when I arrived there I discovered whole new layers of gray areas.

In problem set classes, for example, there are plenty of people who like to work in study groups. That’s all well and good, except when “study groups” turn into “let’s just copy the answers off each other.” I thought that kind of behavior was only in the occasional math class, but I was surprised to learn that it’s much more prevalent in college. When all that matters for your future career is that good grade in an Orgo class, it can be extremely tempting just to write down the process and answer of your friends, whether you understand it or not, and worry about the final exam later.

I’m not taking a holier-than-thou position on this, either. I’m just lucky I’m not tempted in my classes. As an English major, I don’t have much opportunity to enter the grey area of cheating short of blatant plagiarism, which offends my sensibilities as a writer. I’m curious how fellow students feel about the study group phenomenon, however. When the chips are down in a really tough class with a really tough grader, would you copy the answer of a friend on a problem set?

I have friends who specifically take the classes of people they know just so they can hit them up for answers on a regular basis. I find it disturbing, but I also acknowledge that not every college class is going to reach the ideal of “I just take it to learn!” Some classes are a grind and are meant to be endured rather than enjoyed. But how far will today’s college student go to endure them?

Last year I was on the receiving end of some of the grey area-cheating. I took a class with a friend that was heavy on the paperwriting. I was accustomed to this, but my friend wasn’t. He took to sending me drafts the night before the deadline, pleading for revision help. On a couple of occasions, I gave revision suggestions. Then I told myself that enough was enough, and I wouldn’t do it anymore. I don’t think giving revision help is cheating at all; it’s not giving any direct answers, and at Princeton you can get revision help from the teachers right up until the day the paper is due. But it still made me cautious about how much help to offer.

Nowadays, with the ease of the internet, it seems like the grey area of cheating or plagiarism has expanded hugely, and the good ole-fashioned honor code is struggling to keep up.

Where do you draw the line?

[Photo courtesy of reviewjournal.com]