Picture this. Hundreds of exam booklets, rows and rows of hunched scribblers, and they are all scrawling madly, left to right. Invigilators patrol the meticulously aligned aisles. Uniformity, calm and control settle upon the room. But suddenly, something unusual happens. There is a booming voice from the second aisle, near the back. “Section A, part II, a. The correct response is three,” it says. Panic and pandemonium ensue. How can this be happening? Proctors and invigilators descend upon the offender. The “voice” is wrestled from the hall, an arm jack-knifed behind his back, but the insolent roll call of correct responses continues.
This is one of many daydreams that I have regularly. It comes to me every time I sit down to write an exam or see an exam being written. What would profs and invigilators do if someone cheated and cheated big? If someone suddenly broke with the clandestine decorum that usually enshrouds the sacred rite called cheating? Just what would they do? And for a large part of my university career, I had absolutely no idea.
Of course, now I know what they might do. Not much. I also now know that when, in my daydreams, I was asking myself “what would they do,” I should have been asking “what can they do?” I know this (and must revise my daydreaming) because cheating at the university level has been in the news quite a lot recently. And we’ve learned a heck of a lot about the solution to the cheating problem. There isn’t one.
Most recently, 47 business students at Simon Fraser University were caught plagiarizing on an economics assignment. The dean of arts, Roger Blackman, commented that the number was unprecedented. I’d call that cheating “big.” But what’s surprising is the fact that the suspected cheaters only received failing grades in the class. That’s nothing for them to complain about, I guess, but I’m kind of miffed. I would have expected an expulsion or a suspension, at least.
The University of Toronto has taken a much harder line in the past. Year-long suspensions were doled out when U of T law students were caught doctoring their marks on Bay St. job applications. And keep in mind, these weren’t even academic infringements. U of T was handing out punishment for “cheating” an outside institution. Although still fairly lenient, considering—many that were accused of cheating were not punished this severely—these penalties were more in line with what I would expect. I mean, these people did something really, really bad (that many of their classmates didn’t), right?
Now, I don't mean to sound unforgiving here. I know the old adage, "cheaters are only cheating themselves." But cheaters really aren't just cheating themselves. Cheaters are also hurting the majority of honest students out there. They are hurting them in very direct ways like (perhaps) lowering their class standing or even, if marking is done on a curve, lowering their mark. But, more importantly, they are hurting them in a large, indirect way—they are tarnishing our image as students. The effects are clear, anyway, but the appropriate response is a bit tougher.
Members of the McGill University community have taken the brave and philosophical step of speaking out against plagiarism detection systems like web site Turnitin.com (reported in the McGill Daily). The fear at McGill is undermining academic integrity by creating a university environment that seems policed.
As McGill’s dean of students, Bruce Shore, puts it, “Turnitin.com says everyone is a suspect, and that’s not what I want to convey. I want to convey an atmosphere of mutual respect.” (Again I am reminded of my daydream lament: not what would they do, but what can they do?)
And, of course, heavy-handed crackdowns can only hurt the fragile balance of trust that makes universities work and serve to further tarnish the reputations of honest and ordinary students. And, given that balance, all that universities can really do is tell cheaters to stop it (under threat of being told to stop it again).
Meanwhile, all the rest of us can do is bear it… and maybe daydream just a little about doing it ourselves.
