accused of cheating

QuantMech
Sun, 09 May 2010 08:19:46 +0000

smom123, I’d normally advise your son not to turn in the student who sent him the text messages. As a faculty member, I’ve worked for our version of the honor code to include a statement by the students that they will not cheat, but not to include a statement that they will turn in anyone they suspect of cheating. (We’re not West Point, obviously.) However, I think your son is in a very delicate situation right now. Although there is no “formal” record that he cheated, a WF in a psychology course would raise a question about that, for anyone seeing the university transcript. If it were calculus, physics, or chemistry, one would conclude that he just wasn’t up to the challenge of the work–or that he could do it, but didn’t realize the level of effort required at the beginning and got too far behind. PSY is different in that regard.

So I think your son is more or less stuck turning the other student in.