Cheating and Confession

  Next, I had to face copying during exams. Since I used Scantrons, it was easy for one student to look at another’s answers and copy them. How to prevent this? Here I hit on using three versions of the same exam. Even so, there were some who would copy their neighbor’s answers and then write their neighbor’s exam version number on their answer sheet as well. So, I began to have the students write their name on their exam sheet and on their answer sheet, checking if they matched before grading. It was a lot of trouble, but very necessary. One young lady, Hiroko, turned in a Scantron sheet identical to that of Elise, the student sitting next to her. She also had Elise’s exam version written on her Scantron; it did not match her exam sheet.

   “Hiroko, you have the wrong version written on your Scantron, look.”

   “Oh,” she answered airily, “I just got confused about it.” She changed the version.

    “Now look, Hiroko, your answers are identical to Elise’s answers,” I challenged her. “You know cheating isn’t allowed.”

    Hiroko looked indignant, “I wasn’t cheating! I just happened to choose the same answers.”

    “But, you had a different version of the exam.” I was amazed at her denial.

    “So, are you calling me a liar? How can you accuse me of cheating!” Hiroko flounced out of the room.

    Because we had been told at faculty orientation that it was mandatory to report cheating, I sent the evidence to the honor committee. Hiroko was found guilty. We then found that she had been cheating in the lab, as well. Hiroko, who seemed a little slow at realizing when she should stop, had notes penciled on the back of her Scantron during the very next exam.  

    Another student, Maya, informed me, I saw it, and sent the evidence to the honor committee. Their decision was that Hiroko should leave the university. It amazed me that Hiroko still persisted in misbehavior and then followed Maya around, threatening her, until Maya phoned me at my home in tears. It did not take long for me to contact the Dean of Students, a lovely man, who soon made a phone call and put a stop to the nonsense.

This excerpt from Free to Think illustrates one side of the cheating problem at universities in this nation. But, recent work by Kassin and Perillo at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice shows that there is another side, too. Namely, that although the vast majority of students, when accused of cheating, will deny it, over half will confess if told that there is proof that they did it–even if they are innocent and there is no such evidence. Clearly, in our zeal for academic integrity, we need to be careful that we have clear evidence and remember that people, even students, are innocent until proven guilty, as Hiroko was.