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Vol. 82No. 77
Monday, December 19, 1933
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
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By Kcxia Eodcrberg
Just a3 no one would lop off their head to relieve
an earache, no one should rely on cheating to pass a
course rather than studying.
Dolores Simpson-Kirkland, assistant to the dean
of students, said cheating is not a cure to an
academic headache. She said the punishment for
plagiarizing, using crib notes, or stealing tests can be
severe depending on how a professor decides to deal
with the problem.
Simpson-Kirkland said some students plagiarize
by not using direct quotes, getting someone else to
write their papers or buying papers from other stu
dents. Some students seek test help from crib notes
or formulas punched into their calculator's memory
bank, or those in larger classes sometimes have oth
ers take their tests for them, she said.
In response to these types of cheating, professors
can fail the student for the exam, fail them in the
course, or take them to the Judicial Board. The
Judicial Board can suspend cheaters for a semester
to a year, or expel them from the university.
Simpson-Kirkland said suspension or expulsion
can be costly. She said students usually aren't able
to get tuition and money spent on books and mate
rials back. The student may also have to delay his or
her career.
Although the punishment may seem harsh,
Simpson-Kirkland said she feels letting students
pass without learning the given material is a crime
against society and against honest students.
Simpson-Kirkland said students passed out of a
class because they've cheated may have to cheat to
complete the following course levels. She said this
could ultimately result in ill-trained professionals.
Simpson-Kirkland said the honest student suffers
from cheating because they may know more than
the cheater, and yet get lower grades. -
Although honest students suffer, many are reluc
tant to turn in their cheating peers. One business
student said he might warn the professor to watch a
student's test methods if the cheating is blatant, but
it would depend on the person and the situation.
One professor in the Business College felt he'd
"been burnt" when someone stole a test earlier this
semester. He said the students from the 250-member
class said they would report the individual, but they
never did.
"There's no honor code at this university, and if
you want to cheat, go ahead." he said. "I was essen
tially told that nothing can be done about cheating
and that I should drop it."
The professor said he issued another test and
results from that indicated that there had been
some cheating.
One of his students, David Halger, a junior in
accounting, said almost everyone went down 8 per
cent on the second exam. Because of this, the pro
fessor decided students whose semester work
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matches the grade on the first test would receive the
first test grade.
Other professors develop test methods that cut
down on cheating opportunities. Professor Richard
Boohar said he gives his life science exams open
book, open notebook and designs questions to test
knowledge of the material. He said he does this
because the life science vocabulary requires knowl
edge of a foreign language.
"Students can understand, but freeze up on a
term during the exam," Boohar said. "On the exam
questions, just the definition wont help much."
Peter Bleed, associate professor and chairman of
anthropology, said he sometimes gives test ques
tions to students in advance and sometimes requires
group preparation. He said students aren't tested
on all the questions he initially gives them, so they
have to have a general knowledge of all the material.
Not much cheating has been done in the Modern
Language Department, said its chairman Ralph
Illustration by Chris Medley
Albanese.
"Maybe we're just not on top of it," he said, "or
maybe it's harder to cheat in language because we
grade on oral participation, compositions and essays,
and don't have true and false or multiple choice
tests."
John Lynch, another professor in life sciences,
said he solved the cheating problem by issuing two
exams and alternating them between students. He
said it's amazing that people will copy even when
they know this procedure.
"I suppose if you're drowning youH try anything,"
he said.
Lynch said a few years ago, some students told
him a student used an exam to prepare for the test.
Although the student got a 100 percent on that
exam, Lynch said he couldn't really prove the stu
dent had done it.
"Academic dishonesty is something I'd rather not
Continued on Paze 10
No easy answers to cheating problem
Analysis by Chuck Jcoda
Students cheat. Everybody knows
they do, and everybody knows why.
They cheat because of pressures to get
grades, to get job interviews (let alone
the job itself), and to get into graduate
and professional schools.
Ask 20 students, and most of them
will tell you the above or some version
thereof. But such a survey contains
clues to a more complex answer.
An anonymous, not necessarily rep
resentative, but random survey of stu
dent perspectives on student cheating
yielded general agreement on the major
promise that pressure to get grades
was the main reason people cheat.
But, there were several differing points
of view.
Some students were not sure there
was such a thing as student cheating.
They had never heard or seen a stu
dent cheat, nor ever heard one admit
to having cheated or even planning to
cheat.
Yet there are cases.
Three years ago 12 students in Chem
istry 109 admitted to paying other
students to take their final It is a
freshman level course, but required for
sophomore pre-medicine students.
The most competitive case involved
a graduate student at another univer
sity who reportedly shredded the only
copy of a required book on library
reserve to keep others in his class from
using it.
One student was not ashamed to
admit that he cheats "for sport." He
admits that he could do well in class
"the easy way buying the book, stud
ying, writing your own papers but
. where's the challenge? It takes the
supremely clever student to meet the
challenge without doing the work."
One student claimed he cheated out
of a sense of community, "to get a
perspective on what my fellow stu
dents are thinking and to learn more
it's a learning device. I do it to learn
more about human nature. It's more
for communication than competition."
For a more complete perspective, it
is necessary to go to the other side in
the cheating drama: the teachers.
Richard Dienstbier, a UNL psychol
ogy professor, described the mental
' learning aspects.
"When people face moral decisions,
like cheating, they try it out mentally,"
he said. "The ones who have learned
moral lessons in childhood, experience
guilt and anticipation anxiety. People
who cheat are not likely to have much
self control."
Dienstbier said cheating has gotten
worse because the penalties have eased
considerably.
"Twenty years ago, someone caught
cheating would have gotten thrown
out of school Current UNL College of
Arts and Sciences policy is that the
student ought to flunk at least what he
or she has been cheating on.
"This is sometimes not really a pun
ishment, since the student may have
only decided to cheat because he was
going to flunk anyway," he said.
Some fraternities and sororities are
said to have collections of old tests and
papers its members have used in pre
vious semesters. These collections or
"data banks," are sometimes used by
students to prepare for exams.
Dienstbier said such resources can be
helpful, but they should be available to
all
"If they (old exams) are available to
some students, the instructor should
have them on the door of his office," he
said.
Tony Santmire, chair of the UNL
educational psychology department,
said cheating students can be divided
into three groups.
The fust group may have difficulty
putting what's in the book into his or
her own words.
The second group is committed to
receiving a degree, as opposed to get
ting an education, and the third group
turns to cheating because of academic
pressure, he said.
Circumstances can make a crucial
difference in penalties for cheating she
said.
"If a student has been doing well in
class prior to cheating if the cheat
ing has been extra-extraordinary I
win be more sympathetic," she said.
Santmire described a case where
three students handed in identical
copies of a term paper purchased from
a research service.
"It was a very sophisticated paper
way beyond anyone in that course."
Santmire said she failed those three
students.
