This year, Junior year of high school, I saw far too many peers get sucked into the cheating whirlpool. The year was hectic--the homework load was heavy, sports commitments became more intense, and the constant reminders that everything we did would be inscribed on our college applications was no help. I can't count the number of hyperbolic complaints I heard about bad grades: friends saying they'd "never get a job now," or that their parents were "gonna kill" them when they saw a single B on their report card.
On the one hand, I hated that my peers couldn't just be teenagers, relax, and stop thinking about their futures. But on the other hand, I completely understood the stress that went along with the highly competitive atmosphere of a college prep-school, though the stress I felt was self-applied, not parental.
And thus, on one winter morning in 2010, I was faced with a dilemma. A friend of mine was struggling with problems at home and, added to the massive workload we needed to manage, was beginning to sink. In all honesty, I and the rest of the class were barely staying afloat as well, but what could I do when this friend in need asked me for help on a project? I knew how he was feeling, and I couldn't imagine coping with all of his domestic problems on top of the stress. I'll leave my response to his plea for help as a mystery, but I will say this: within the next couple of weeks, I became much more attuned to instances of cheating and realized that these type of infractions, always somewhat of a problem within my class, were becoming much more concentrated as the workload increased. People were open about cheating, they relished in outsmarting their teachers and, slowly, my peers became dependent on cheating--they were addicted. I noticed a plummet in self-confidence in one particularly cheat savvy friend. He no longer believed that he could earn a decent grade on an assignment without cheating, and cheating soon became second nature to him.
On some level, I understood the cheating craze--there was the initial gratification of not having to study, the mid-cheat rush and excitement that comes with breaking any rule, and the reward of receiving a high grade. Aside from the possibility of getting caught, the only downside was guilt, which was significantly subdued by the fact that more than half the kids in the class were cheating as well.
Later in the year, I received a call from a flustered friend; he had just been caught plagiarizing and would receive a zero on an entire project as well as possible suspension. It just so happened that this was the same friend who had asked me for help earlier, and discovered that he had been cheating on about two thirds of his assignments since that day a few months back.
His punishment turned out to be insignificant--he received a zero but no suspension. The minimal consequences did nothing to discourage him from cheating in the future, and instead he began developing more fool-proof ways of deceiving his teachers.
"Just a few more times, I can stop anytime I want," I imagined him telling me.
Looking back at this cheating frenzy, it's apparent that part of the reason for the rampant rule-breaking was a result of the lines blurring between what was or was not really cheating. For example, if I were to copy/paste this sentence into my article: "I suspected that students no longer regarded certain acts as cheating at all, for instance, cutting and pasting a few sentences at a time from the Internet," then I would be plagiarizing, a common type of infraction. Instead, the comment should be introduced by saying that, in a recent article featured in the New York Times chronicling the efforts of various colleges to quell cheating, a business professor at Rutgers said that he suspected "that students no longer regarded certain acts as cheating at all..."
And I completely agree with the professor. So many people were cheating in small ways--copying or e-mailing homework assignments to others--that it was generally forgotten that these acts were a violation. People became nonchalant about sharing test answers with friends who had yet to take the test and copying homework assignments became a shameless activity.
I've already admitted that I understood the great temptation to cheat, but I've always thought that I wanted to be a teacher later in life, and I couldn't bear to think students were interested only in getting a good grade for the sake of getting a good grade, but were not actually interested in the learning aspect of the class. In addition, there was no parental pressure for me to receive high grades, so I suppose there was a lesser force driving me to cheat than for others. But, to return to the NY Times article, there are other reasons (aside from the general pursuit of knowledge) all of the competitive, college-bound high-schoolers should stop cheating.
The title of the article sums up the message I'm trying to relay perfectly: "To Stop Cheats, Colleges Learn Their Trickery." In it, NY Times journalist Trip Gabriel describes the recent college administrations' crackdown on instances of cheating. Specifically highlighted is the University of Central Florida in their relentless monitoring of any deceptive behavior. Gabriel writes that "no gum is allowed during an exam: chewing could disguise a student’s speaking into a hands-free cellphone to an accomplice outside," and "when a proctor sees something suspicious, he records the student’s real-time work at the computer and directs an overhead camera to zoom in, and both sets of images are burned onto a CD for evidence." UCF's approach is obviously pretty radical, but the article continues to cite various other university's methods in stepping-up cheating security.
The overall theme seems to be that technology has made it simple for students to infringe on the rules, and that most professors, not quite as familiar with advanced technology as their pupils, are becoming increasingly less aware of these infringements. Hence the recent crackdown.
So, while scribbling down an equation on your hand for an algebra test may seem to be the practical solution to an overwhelming workload, remember that cheating can be addictive, that even if you don't get caught or severely punished in high school, the consequences of carrying on with the same antics in college could be dire.
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