Wandering Eyes — Part 3
 Chapter
14 of the UW System administrative code defines six types
of academic misconduct, ranging from plagiarizing parts or all of
a paper, to giving a friend a test answer, to forging academic documents.
Students who commit or even assist someone else in any of these
transgressions “must be confronted and must accept the consequences
of their actions,” the code states.
It would be hard to find anyone among the faculty or administration
who disagrees. Professors usually put stern warnings about cheating
in course syllabi, and many discuss their expectations openly in
class. The UW Writing Center, a popular resource where students
go for help with term papers and other assignments, offers classes
in the dangers of plagiarism, and its online guide to citing sources
states bluntly that the university “takes very seriously this
act of intellectual burglary, and the penalties are severe.”
Delivering on those promises, however, is more challenging than
making them. In 2001–02, seventy-five students were charged
with acts of academic misconduct, according to the dean of students
— less than two-tenths of 1 percent of the university's
enrollment. Only two students found guilty of cheating were suspended
during that year. Six were put on probation. Five failed the course
in which they cheated, and three more were removed from the course.
By far the most common punishment — which was levied in fifty-two
cases — was to award the student a lower grade on the work
in question.
Some who look at those numbers wonder if they belie the university's
tough talk about cracking down on cheaters. “Why are there
so few instances of cheating that result in serious disciplinary
action?” asks Ralph Cagle JD'74, a professor of legal
ethics. “Is it that cheating isn't really a problem
here, or is it that we don't enforce the rules?”
But other professors say those numbers indicate the difficulty
of enforcing — not disdain for — the rules.
Virginia Sapiro, a professor of political science and associate
vice chancellor for teaching and learning, says faculty put a “high
priority” on fighting academic misconduct. But they lack the
time and support to do it especially well. “We try to find
various ways to prevent it, and to catch and deal with it when it
happens,” she says. “But it is part of a growing pile
of responsibilities that have fallen on faculty since the Internet.”
Proving cheating is labor intensive, and most of the labor rests
with the faculty who suspect it. If a professor believes a student
is cheating, he or she must gather evidence, confront the student,
and then prepare a report detailing findings and sanctions. Depending
on the sanctions, the report may be filed with the dean of students
office, which facilitates the process and offers students an opportunity
to appeal the professor's decision. Appeals are heard either
by an examiner appointed by the dean of students office or a standing
review board. In either case, the burden of proof lies with the
accuser.
“You need the evidence,” says Sapiro. “Often,
professors will find themselves in situations where they suspect
students of having copied something, but that's not going
to be good enough in a judicial process.”
Many faculty say that those proceedings chew up time that they
do not have to give. “Most of us barely have enough time to
do a decent job teaching classes, let alone have the time to prosecute
a single student,” says Gregory Moses, a professor of engineering.
But time is not the only problem. Accusing a student of academic
misconduct inevitably becomes a contentious matter that takes an
emotional toll.
“You take it personally,” says Susan Smith, an associate
professor of nutritional sciences. “It eats away at you.”
When Smith suspected one of her students had plagiarized large
sections of a final paper, she spent a week deliberating whether
to press the issue. Finally, she did, calling the student in for
a private meeting. The student burst into tears, saying she didn't
know she'd done anything wrong. “I had no basis to judge
the veracity of her statement,” she says. “What was
I supposed to do — put her on a lie detector?”
That sense of frustration echoes not just at UW-Madison, but at
universities across the nation. In one survey of faculty attitudes,
Donald McCabe, a Rutgers University professor, found that 55 percent
of professors “would not be willing to devote any real effort
to documenting suspected incidents of student cheating.”
Instead, they seek alternative routes to the formal channels, such
as handling cases privately, focusing on prevention, or even changing
their teaching. Moses has radically de-emphasized homework in computer
science classes, for example, because students frequently copied
each other's answers. Out-of-class assignments are now done
in teams and count less than 20 percent of the grade.
Moses is frustrated by the compromise, which he says probably hurts
students in the long run because they get less exposure to hands-on
problem solving. “But we gave up,” he says. “We
were fighting against an overwhelming force.”
1, 2, 3, 4,
5, 6
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