ExComm cases could be just ‘the tip of the iceberg’
Poll, administrators say cheating on papers, exams infrequent, but outside experts skeptical
Yale students are smart. But are they so smart they do not need to cheat?
Many University administrators say they think the answer is yes.
A recent survey by the News of 327 current sophomores, juniors and seniors found that only 3 percent admitted to having committed plagiarism and only 5 percent said they had cheated on an exam while at Yale. But 42 percent said they had witnessed another student cheating at Yale.
While many students interviewed said they think cheating on smaller assignments — problem sets or ungraded reading responses, for example — is fairly...
Of course there is a lot of cheating at Yale.
It seems naive at best to think that intelligence is a factor in cheating. In my eleven years teaching an undergraduate course, I was very pressured on numerous occasions by students obsessed with their GPA, students who would "do anything." I was also fairly certain but unable to prove on several occasions that work was being turned in that was not the student's own, and not every example of plagiarism can be detected in a simple Google search, especially if, say, the work was that of a roommate or frat mate produced for a different section in a different term.
You might ask what happens when a professor brings a student before ExComm. Typically, the committee ends up blaming the professor for the student's cheating. The theory seems to be that if it is in any way possible to cheat, then the professor is at fault, not the student.
Given this bizarre theory, few professors bring cheating to ExComm. It's a waste of time, and humiliating for the professor.
This is bad! It means either cheaters get away with it, or professors find "private" ways to punish those who cheat. Personally, I would rather just give the cheater a bad grade if it saves me listening to some weirdo explaining that student misconduct is my fault.
Dear Professor Deresiewicz (and my pardon if I have mistaken your identity):
The great part about Yale is that most students aren't like this. Most are intellectually engaging, thoughtful in their originality, and excited by their fellow peers and their professors. This is a simply a fact. I have had the pleasure of experiencing it both in seminars circles and outside, in "much bigger circles."
Certainly, there are some who cheat. And you are abosolutely correct in supposing that intelligence, if anything, is probably postively correlated with cheating. More intelligent, more stress to do better, perhaps less need, maybe it balances out. Anyway, we agree. Some cheat.
Their loss. And fail them on the assignment, for whatever that's worth, ignoring their "do anything" pressure.
But I, for one, will live my life without so much as a second-thought to those second-rate plagiarists. Yes, even though their cheating should theoretically be much more damaging to another student, who in some sense "competes," than with a professor who is already distiniguished.
You seem to have taken away much bitterness based on a few intellectual non-entities who should be inconsequential. When Camus wrote that their is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn, I think he intended that the scorn be directed at something less trivial.
It is unproductive to exploit our frustration at the failures and conceited attitudes of a few — those who think they deserve the grades, those who will cheat for grades — and lose sight of the much larger body that is the Yale community.
i say we just put the cheaters in the stocks. rotten tomatoes have lost their value since they went out of use. so much more efficient than ExComm ...
I agree with the "current student". The majority of students at Yale do not cheat. The majority embrace the intellectual challenges posed by courses here. Because of the close knitted community that exists, we study together, we work together, and we help each other out, but this is not cheating. When we work together, we don't pass around the answers to a problem set, we try to figure them out together and it's a great joy and satisfaction reaching a solution with the input of the whole group.
This is why I personally feel offended when teachers at Yale treat students with distrust, assuming we cheat. This is why I get offended when teachers make students go through annoying procedures to prevent cheating, because Yale is not a place where this happens normally. And if it does, it is very rare.
Professors, don't judge the whole student community by the mistakes or transgressions of a minority of Yale students.
-'“Students who come here are so smart, they simply don’t need to cheat,” said John Rogers...'
-“No one comes here as a cheater.”
Perhaps these statements are taken out of context, but the former has weird implications for those who are not "so smart," and the latter seems rather broad and likely untrue.