| |
Wandering Eyes — Part 4
 It
would be easier not to know.
For Cathy Middlecamp PhD'76, MS'89, a distinguished
faculty associate in the chemistry department, those halcyon days
of ignorance ended when she overhauled her Chemistry 108 course
to include more writing assignments. Soon thereafter, she found
herself questioning her students' work. There was one paper
in particular — a book review from a student who just oozed
enthusiasm about the insights he'd gained by reading it. “This
made no sense,” says Middlecamp, “because the book was
incredibly boring.” She grabbed her personal copy and found
its conclusion copied word-for-word into the paper, with no attribution.
A few semesters later, a teaching assistant who suspected a handful
of students of plagiarizing sent around an e-mail to all 180 students
in the course, asking anyone who may have forgotten to cite sources
to come reclaim their paper and make the changes. It seemed like
an innocent way to deal with an isolated, and perhaps inadvertent,
problem. But then came seventy responses, most from students who
wanted to revise their papers.
“This is not why I entered the teaching profession,”
Middlecamp says. “I don't want to be the cop in my classroom.”
Ironically, the same technology that makes cheating easier has
allowed Middlecamp to catch more of its perpetrators. She reads
papers at her desk, with a Google search engine open on her computer
screen. Sometimes it takes only minutes to find that paragraphs
have been heisted from Internet sources. For the past three years,
Middlecamp has snared two to four students per semester in the net
of this rudimentary detective work. She knows there are others.
“I only catch the dumb ones,” she says. (One student
who didn't get away with his deceit had lifted entire paragraphs
from a textbook written by Middlecamp herself.)
As punishment, those students usually have their grades docked.
But they also get a conversation with Middlecamp, who says she would
rather explore why students cheat than dwell on how they're
penalized. “Plagiarism raises more questions in my mind than
it answers,” she says. “I'm much more interested
in trying to figure out what's going on with my students than
I am in the sanctions.”
Although professors say they sense cheating is on the rise, most
are at a loss to explain why. Technology obviously enables it. So,
too, may a general malaise of societal ethics, where fact-fudging
accountants, drug-doping athletes, truth-dodging politicians, and
plagiarizing journalists and book authors set less-than-inspiring
examples. Students are traditionally great rationalists, and, in
a world where cheaters seem to flourish more often than perish,
some of their rationalizations can seem almost rational.
Yet the students who get caught defy simple categorization. Some
are defiant, but many are complicit. Some seem to be habitual offenders,
while others insist they've made a one-time-only misstep.
Many are struggling students, trying for an edge. But many others
are at the top of their class, and determined to stay there. “I
look at their GPAs and think, ‘Why do you need to cheat?'
” says Lori Berquam, associate dean of students, who coordinates
academic misconduct cases. The answer, she learns, is often fear.
“A lot of students come here used to getting good grades,
and when they don't, that's when they feel that they
must resort to something else,” says Micaela O'Neil,
a sophomore.
“You're so scared of not doing what you want to do
because of one class,” adds junior Heather Lilla.
None of the students who agreed to talk about cheating for this
story says that he or she has cheated. Yet all have seen it happen.
Most of it, they say, falls not into the class of coldly premeditated
deception, but stems from momentary desperation. Students fall behind
on assignments, and then make Faustian bargains to their computer
screens in the middle of the night. They cut corners — by
cutting and pasting — because that's the deal that allows
them to get some sleep.
“I don't think anyone is proud of cheating,”
says Chris Miller, a junior biology major. “People realize
that there is no honor in it. I've been tempted to cheat before,
and I think most people have. It comes at three in the morning,
when I don't have time to do this, and I know that tomorrow
morning I can just get these answers from someone else.”
Still, Miller and other students say they are frustrated by the
complacent attitude many of their peers — and even some of
their instructors — take toward academic dishonesty. “I
don't think cheaters are particularly scorned here, certainly
not the cheaters [for whom] it's an occasional thing,”
says Miller. “I think that's pretty accepted.”
Few students resist cheating out of fear that they'll be
caught or severely punished. From their perspective, that hardly
ever happens.
1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6
On Wisconsin Home
Page
|
|
Wandering Eyes
- The Dean of Students Office publishes Student
Conduct and Disciplinary Rules outlining the rights and responsibilities
for student conduct at UW-Madison.
- University of Virginia professor Louis Bloomfield accused 122
students of copying the work of others in one of the highest-profile
cheating
scandals in modern academia.
- West Point is legendary for its code of honor. Learn about the
objectives and procedures of the West
Point Honor System.
Fall 2003 Features
Alumni News
Regulars
|
