Academic Cheating and Social Relationships

cghen
Sun, 23 Apr 2006 18:17:14 +0000

Sometime this term, there’s going to be an extensive, anonymous poll on the honor system, which should provide some data.

Until that’s done, no one can credibly give you a lower bound on how much cheating actually occurs, but frankly, just from judging from the attitudes of the people I know, it is not a significant problem.

Of course there are BoC cases, but the vast majority of the cases I’ve seen (as a BoC rep) are either a) misunderstandings of the honor code applied to a specific exam/problem set, or b) cracking under an immense amount of pressure. Rarely have I thought that defendants have planned to cheat far ahead of actually doing it. Of course maybe that’s because people who plan to cheat are better at and get away with it, but I think that’s being a bit overly cynical considering: a) the palpable respect for the honor system most students have, and b) the honor system working so well not-academically which is much more measurable - e.g. I’ve accidentally left valuable things in accessible places only to find them unperturbed days later.