A 5 year that cheats. Nice!

Dear Ms. Jackson,
Thank you so much for coming and talking to our class about cheating. In part, your talk has encouraged me to come forward about the cheating and the students that are doing it. As much as I appreciate the fact an academic honesty lecture was given, the effectiveness will be minimal for some of the class. Whereas some of the students, (mostly those who had only done it once or twice, but including a Serial Cheater, Katherine Tallman), showed remorse and swore up and down to themselves they’d stop or never do it again, that was not the case for all.

One of the reasons I like to sit in the back is you see everything and are never unaware of your surroundings. Until recently, I sat all the way in the back in Networking. Unfortunately, this meant that I also saw a lot of not-so-good things. More specifically: I watched my peers cheat all of the time. It is very frustrating to watch it continue on and to go unpunished.

There are two categories of cheaters: those who have only cheated once or twice, and what I refer to as “Serial Cheaters” who cheat on virtually every test and lab. I wish for it to be very clear that there are still non-cheaters left (myself amongst), and that the Serial Cheaters are a much bigger and separate problem from the members of the class who have only cheated once or twice.

The Serial Cheaters employ several methods for cheating. Typically, they Google (in the case of tests, which they know are coming) the answers at home, print them out, and bring the answer sheets to class. They have a variety of sites that they use to find the answers to the CISCO tests, and they talk to each other about which site has the most accurate answers. Sometimes, they have a communal cheat sheet. More than once, I’ve seen paper slip under the table to the cheater who forgot their cheat sheet, the slightest grateful nod to the one who did, in desperate secrecy.

Alternatively, you can see people looking up answers on their phones (usually Smart Phones), hiding it from anyone who is not behind them (and can therefore see them cheating - what else would they be looking up during a test?). If we have a substitute during the test, they Google the answers in class, on the school computers, as they don’t think substitutes can use “Insight”, which allows an instructor/proctor to view the screens of the computers. For labs, they use their phones or laptops to find the answers. In cases where labs or teacher designed quizzes/tests are used and the answers cannot be found on-line directly, the cheating students manually Google the answers, typically on their cell phones. They also occasionally will pass notes to each other in regards to the answer of a question.

Nobody started out a cheater, serial or otherwise, and some still have not cheated. The first to cheat was Dhanush Sureshbabu, followed closely by Patrick Lippert, then Thomas Otte, Jonathan Eramian, Javier Velasquez, Joseph Rice, and Katherine Tallman, joined the ranks of the cheaters. These are who I consider to be serial cheaters, who cheat on almost every lab and/or lab, at the bad end of the academic honesty spectrum. Originally, none of them cheated. Only after a couple tests (online Cisco tests which are exceedingly difficult) which many failed (and loudly declared and bemoaned so) did the cheating start. During the third test, while the rest of us shuffled nervously in our chairs, Dhanush Sureshbabu, had a pre-printed cheat-sheet, smiling as he held it below the table and aced the test.