Crime and Punishment: Columbia Students Unsure How Cheating on Final Exam Is Cheating
Q: One of the instructors of a required freshman seminar gives out the exact content of the coursewide final exam in advance. A "study guide" rapidly spreads to hundreds of students, who use it to ace the exam -- except for the one question subbed out at the last minute. This is:
A) Cheating
B) Cheating
C) Cheating
D) Cheating
E) Not Cheating
Welcome to Columbia University, where students are circling (E). Or they are on Bwog, at least, where we should admit upfront we're getting 90 percent of our information on this four-alarm Ivy cheating scandal. (Spec has some more details and confirmations here.) Let's back up and let Dr. Deborah Martinsen, a dean of the Core Curriculum, explain:
There has been an unfortunate breach in Lit Hum final exam security.
Notes identifying the quotations and sketching out the essay questions circulated among students prior to the exam. (We have one copy of these notes.)
THE TELL-TALE SIGN: Crime and Punishment - the students did not know of the last-minute quotation substitution.
SO, if any of your students identified the passage from Crime and Punishment as occuring in the Epilogue, chances are they had access to these notes. If the student correctly identified all of the other passages, chances are even greater. If they identified the exact Canto in Dante, they are very high indeed.
... WE WILL REQUIRE THAT ALL INSTRUCTORS SUBMIT ALL BLUE BOOKS TO THE CORE OFFICE.
It is, to quote another email from department chair Patricia Grieve, a "complicated situation." Namely, the situation that hundreds of students may have cheated on the single-most important exam at Columbia College. But in the raging id of the Bwog comments section, the few students pointing that out are being shouted down by students who blame the professor, Martinsen, the course itself -- basically, anyone and anything but themselves.
Posted by sophomore: I think it's more wrong of the professor to put her students in such a situation: on one hand, they might have realized (but we can't be sure of that) that they had an unfair advantage, but on the other hand, what were they supposed to do? Speak up and get their teacher in trouble right before a final?
Martinsen, get your fucking act together. Blame the PROF not the students. Understand the precedent you're setting here. If you put the blame on the students and not on the professor, you have created a system where the teachers can now "trick" students into cheating.
Posted by obviously: just to get it straight, i don't view any of this as cheating on behalf of the students.Posted by fy who never saw it: NO WAY. NONE OF THIS IS CHEATING.
Posted by lit hum bullshit: this is such bullshit. just because some teacher is incompetent and gives out the answers doesn't mean that the rest of us should suffer.
That's selective, of course, but go read the desperate screeds (there are a few particularly nasty ones) and see if you come up with a different take. In closing, we'll turn the mike over to one last commenter.
Posted by word: For those of you who want to deny it, let me clarify for you: IT WAS CHEATING.
45 Comments | 
| 
Print This Post
Read more: Columbia, gawker
Email – 
Search
About
Follow us on Twitter
Report a bug
Archives
RSS Feed
May 8th, 2007 at 11:27 am
What better way to spend finals week. Just so that everyone here at Ivygate doesn’t get the completely wrong view: your teacher tells you something. You (a) jealously guard it from your friends, (b) compare notes on what various teachers said would be on the exam.
I don’t know where I stand yet, but I think it’s important to think of it from that angle too.
May 8th, 2007 at 11:34 am
come on nick and chris. you honestly don’t believe that lit hum is the “single-most important exam at Columbia College.” do you? maybe cc could get that title, but lit hum? the fact that people even considered cheating on lit hum, which is cake if you just showed up to classes, never mind actually read the materials, is a testament only to the depth of their ignorance.
May 8th, 2007 at 11:53 am
just at Bwog: I agree, and I was thinking the same thing. If a professor tells me something, I consider it fair game not only to study, but to share. If I go to office hours and a professor gives me extra help, I have every right to share that information with my peers. Likewise, if I’m taking a class which is taught by several professors and has a common final, I will ALWAYS look into how other professors are teaching the material to make sure I have a handle on everything. How can a professor share information with students and then not expect the students to use it?
May 8th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
I just took the Lit Hum final (without the ’study guide’), and I know that I did pretty well. However, many people that I know who took the test having studied only the information on the guide got 9 out of 10 on the identifications, probably similar to the grade I got on that section. Is this an unfortunate situation? Yes. But do I blame those kids? Not at all. They were provided by a professor with information, and were told that it was fair game. If a professor hints at my class that we should be familiar with a certain section of a certain book, I will be sure to look at that section in my studies, perhaps a little more than I otherwise might have. But I’m sure that students in that class would go and only take a quick look at the aforementioned section. It’s the same situation: the students who got the sheet got an unfair leg up, but it was not their fault, just an unfortunate reality.
That said, I do think that the professor who gave out the information should not only be fired, but fired so publicly and so embarassingly so as to make him or her hardpressed to ever get another job in academia again. What they did was simply inexcusable, knowing the content of a classwide exam for 1000 students, and giving said content to the 15 in their section. This teacher unfairly manipulated the academic process, disgraced the core, and tainted what should have been one of the most significant tests my class will take in our time here. Good riddance to whoever did this, and enjoy your new job at DeVry!
May 8th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
This isn’t a story – it’s a joke. Some foolish young Asst. Professor screwed up, and nothing will come of it. With any amount of critical thinking one would realize that the students are not to blame, as they were literally given the answers to the test by the professor (who wasn’t being secretive about it, or telling them they shouldn’t have this info). Two years ago my professor did the exact same thing this professor did, minus the actual answers. And I know for a fact that he did not even look at the exam for that year. If that professor had been coincidentally correct in what he told us to look at, would that have been cheating? Of course not. To repeat: It is the professor’s fault, and if anyone gets in trouble, it will be her. The students did nothing but trust their instruct not to play some mind-fuck cheater-catching game with them, where they have to mistrust everything the professor says. If they want to give the students and F on mind-fuck cheater-catching game, then by all means, do so. However, you may find that 99% of everyone in the world will fail that test.
But most of the questions on the exam are recycled anyways, so all you really have to do to cheat is ask someone who had Lit Hum the year before. So the class of 2010 are hysterical morons for doing what every single class ever in the history of the core did, only with more histrionics and drama.
Remember Richard Ng? No? Oh that’s right, because he committed suicide right before summer, when the previous year’s shenanigans get forgotten. The hazy fog of summer memory will swallow this stupid crap up, because the only reason anyone is focusing on this is to procrastinate.
But thanks for launching this story into THE BLOGOSPHERE.
May 8th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Wow, IvyGate, you are thick. Are you sure you guys went to Ivy League schools? I’m at one now (not Columbia), and a few times, TA’s at review sessions have “strongly hinted” about what was going to be on the final (sometimes, yes, “going over” every question in order). Of course, the TAs shouldn’t be doing this, but what are the students supposed to do, stick their fingers in their ears?
May 8th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Just to add– before one final, one TA told (I’m sorry, “strongly hinted about”) the exact questions to the students at his review session. The other TA did not give any hints to the students at his session. Clearly the only fair thing to do in this situation, when the information is already out, is to disseminate the info widely and make sure the whole class is on an equal playing field. The obtuseness displayed in this post really astounds me, because I usually find the observations at this blog to be pretty perceptive and accurate.
May 8th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Bullshit. What was done is cheating. If Columbia doesn’t teach that to you in four years, you’ve got a lot more misery ahead of you in life. Co-workers whose work you steal will double-cross you; fellow grad students you cheat off of will turn you in; your fellow traders on the desk will volunteer your name if the SEC comes sniffing around; and, the hospital will sacrifice your sorry ass when a malpractice suit comes up. What comes around goes around; and, 15 years in the workplace have made me realize that being unethical does eventually catch up with you.
The truly disgusting part is that so many Columbia students don’t get it. Don’t tell me how it is; I went to an Ivy League school too. But we knew what cheating was and knew not to do it because we’d seen it punished. And boo to Columbia for not following through. Cheating on a final exam? HELLO!? That’s expulsion — and maybe even delisting. It’s that or reinforce that cheating is OK and send those students out into the world with “Columbia” all over their names.
And as for the students determining ‘fairness’: It’s not fair to the students who didn’t participate. Don’t you think profs and TAs are smart enough to correct for differences between sections and teaching styles? SOP. You’re interfering with that actively hurt the students in the less-well-taught sections who chose to be ethical. So I say: You’re a numbnuts, Brentmeister; you could probably justify anything to yourself. That’s not an ethos.
May 8th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
And sorry for not correcting my “You’re” to “Your”. Maybe if I’d cribbed off of someone else’s post, I would have gotten that right — and regurgitated *their* mistakes instead.
So glad I’m not a Columbia alum. The Ivy League needs to be like English Premier League soccer. Then we could sub Johns Hopkins into the Ivy League and relegate Columbia.
May 8th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
so you’re saying that the students should have kept the information to themselves and used it to their own advantage? i don’t understand “former TA.”
the professor fucked up and the students aren’t just going to “forget” the answers they were given. what would you have expected them to do? please, enlighten me.
May 8th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Seriously “former TA,” get off your high horse and stop lecturing us about what our jobs on Wall St. and in a hospital will be like. It’s happening at Bwog too that some people think that they have some sort of monopoly on information about the “real world.” You don’t, so shut up about it.
I hate cheating, I hate cheaters, but the question is whether or not this is cheating. You don’t give anything resembling an argument in either direction. You just sound so angry that you’re already recommending different kinds of punishment for these people.
Take a drink of water, a few deep breaths, and lose the inferiority complex about Johns Hopkins. It’s a fine school, and you’ll get a good education.
May 8th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
I’m a TA at Columbia (thankfully nowhere near Lit Hum, obviously) and went to an Ivy undergrad too (so yes, I understand, you’re all under a lot of stress, etc. etc.), and I agree with IvyGate: this is cheating. Since it is so widespread, and I find it hard to believe that Columbia would expel, essentially, an entire class, and because I understand that these students were incentivized to share the answers because they had been given by a professor, I see what the naysayers are getting at. But it’s still cheating. The students in this professor’s class, knowing that they had a leg up that was clearly unfair, chose to disseminate the information. But if it was really so blatant that they had access to the the exact content of the exam, then the correct decision would have been to report the information to the core curriculum office. Earlier this year, also at Columbia, a professor gave an exam that was the same as the previous year’s, which many people had seen (not knowing he was going to do this). So they told him, during the exam. That was the appropriate response. Helping others to cheat is not.
May 8th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
1) You don’t spread the info, shrae it, or build your answers together unless that’s expressly OK.
2) If you find yourself in a moral quandry like this… that’s a sign that you should talk to the professor.
3) And if you didn’t have the balls to go to the prof, that’s fine. It is *exceedingly* clear when you grade exams if something like this has happened. Statistically, you see one section scoring something like four standard deviations above the other; or, you see a known top student lagging students who’ve done ho-hum work all term.
The professor may have ‘fucked up’; but, not being forthright about that is also a fuck up. Spend a little less time pointing that finger at others and more time looking inward.
Now, if this all seems ridiculous: it isn’t. I’ve seen this happen. And it’s very easy to fix: the offending TA is told to concoct a new exam question that the professor must approve. And then the TA gets to grade that question in addition to other work.
But cheating on an exam is never OK or “grey”. I had one student who thought so once. He used prohibited materials during a test and refused to surrender them or his exam. For that, he was expelled.
May 8th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
???: I’m not at Johns Hopkins, never have been, and won’t be. But it’s always been a solid school IMHO. For Johns Hopkins, I could have easily substituted Caltech, Stanford, Chicago, or MIT.
And as for telling you about the real world: Cry me a river. I’m not talking out of my ass nor claiming some monopoly of information. But I’ve sat on a prop trading desk for 15 years, and I’ve seen colleagues with this fuzzy ethics get barred from the industry.
I’m just reminding you that the world outside the quad won’t coddle you.
May 8th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
“You don’t, so shut up about it.”
Columbia kidz sure have a way with werdz, U tell TA to suck it.Yeh!
May 8th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
but the quad is at barnard!
May 8th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Former T.A.: If you’re really in the financial world and you believe that there are no “grey areas” when it comes to questionable financial practices, then you must be the densest person on Wall Street. I hope you aren’t in charge of any of my money. Sure you’ve seen people get in trouble for breaking the law, but there are far more people who are engaged in questionable “grey area” practices who cannot be punished. That’s probably where this Columbia situation is, as far as I can tell. The way around it is to legislate (make rules) in the future prohibiting professors from giving hints, and/or prohiting students from using or sharing hints improperly given to them by the professors. Nothing is ever black and white in the real world, and if you’re 15 years out, then you should know that.
May 8th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
answer me this: if the students in the one class had sworn not to share the information, and they hadn’t, is that cheating? (remember that each professor only grades his/her class, and not against the rest). this is certainly not cheating. so what you’re saying is that the cheating occurred when the information was passed to students in other classes? or did the cheating occur when those students did not admit that they had information on the likely source of the test questions? i don’t see how anyone can make such an easy judgement and call this cheating.
May 8th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
the college should at least have an honor code that is constantly visible, taken seriously, and strictly enforced. I am still amazed that Barnard is the only undergraduate school at Columbia with an honor code. out of curiosity, which ivy league undergraduate schools have an honor code?
May 8th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
seriously, ivygate, how do you hold your cyber-tongue when commenters like brentmeister call you “thick” (who says ‘thick’ anyway) write things like, “are you sure you guys went to ivy league schools?”
assholes take their aggression out in the dumbest places. is it not possible to express an opinion without condescending everyone else in the process?
May 8th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Col guy makes a good point that I’d like to see the “KILL THE CHEATERZ!” crowd answer. From the Spectator story– note particularly the last quote:
‘In her class, the instructor gave students a sheet with the passage analysis excerpts and two of the three essay topics that appeared on the exam. Then the instructor told students several of the quote identifications.
“She told us we should know the Cassandra quote for The Aeneid, Ulysses and Diomedes for Dante…” the student said. “She was less specific for some of the others.”
At the time, she said, students in the class did not realize that they had received unwarranted information.
“I didn’t think it was that big of a deal,” the student said. “In high school, that used to happen, [and] teachers would be like, ‘You should study this one chapter.’”‘
So this is exactly what I thought happened. It would be different if the TA said, “this is what is going to be on the exam!” But TA’s pull this kind of “hint”y “you should know this” stuff all the time at review sessions. Apparently this TA was extremely unsubtle about it and gave away practically the entire test with it. If that’s a problem (and it pretty clearly is in this case), it’s a problem that the course head should have with the TA.
I have not yet been able to discern an argument inside “A former T.A.”’s ranting and name-calling (or IvyGate’s post). But I’d point out, in a similar vein as col guy, that the students with the illicit info are gaining nothing from disseminating the information. If they kept the info to themselves, they would be among the only ones acing the exam. So how is sharing the “hints” they got with their fellow students so immoral? The sharers certainly aren’t benefiting from it.
May 8th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
This type of stuff has been going on since the beginning of time. Mediums change, but everyone has picked up an “old exam” to study from. The key word is STUDY. Study the material, get familiar with the way the professor presents his exams. Don’t just memorize questions and answers… you’ll lose eventually.
Gavin
http://www.universitynotes.net
May 8th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
cc7, I made that comment because they usually seem to have a pretty good understanding of what goes on here at the Ivies, but this post really showed an obtuseness that I did not expect. Seriously though, IvyGate is used to condescension– most of their posts are dripping with it, including this one.
May 8th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
The point at which it switches over from study guide to cheating is when, apparently, a large chunk of students identified a quote passage incorrectly because it was switched at the last minute.
The study guide said: “Crime and Punishment–will be from epilogue.”
The exam had a quote from chapter 4. Unfortunately, a large percentage of the students identified it as coming from (big surprise!) the epilogue. These were also, in many cases, the same students who had noted the exact Canto of the Dante quote in their indentification.
It’s not studying when you memorize exactly what the sheet said and regurgitate the exact “guiding” on the test. That’s a cheat sheet.
And poorly done cheating, at that. Writing down the correct chapter number? Come on, guys. You can do better than that.
May 8th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
BREAKING NEWS!! The exam has been declared invalid by the Core Office. Here’s what the Core Curriculum office just sent us students:
***
To All Literature Humanities Students
The following is the statement that the University has released to the
press:
On May 7th it came to the attention of the Literature Humanities faculty
that the results of the final examination for the course may have been
compromised. The exam grades were immediately set aside and an ad hoc committee of senior faculty appointed to review the matter and recommend next steps.
The committee met today and confirmed that the exam had been compromised and that responsibility for this lay with an individual faculty member and not with the students. In these circumstances the committee decided that students in the course will have two options:
1. To have the course grade determined on the basis of all work
completed prior to the final exam;
2. To take a replacement exam.
Patricia E. Grieve
Austin E. Quigley
Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Professor in the Humanities
Dean of Columbia College
Chair, Literature Humanities
May 8th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Well, as far as I’m concerned, that is, or should be, the end of it. In my personal opinion, what was done was not cheating. However, I certainly concede that it was a problem that had to be dealt with. If lots of students had been expelled, I would have been bothered. This seems like a fair way to deal with the problem.
May 8th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
also, what you are forgetting is that students did not know they were handed the answers until the test… And once they saw, many came forward.
May 8th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
These Columbia kids should spend less time with their study guides and more time throwing their water bottles at TI.
May 8th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
Penn ‘09 – the administration is sensitive to a possible PR scandal. So this won’t likely be the end of it.
Somebody claimed life is all shades of gray. I disagree. Some things in life are clearly wrong. People claim “gray” when they lack the clarity of vision to see or the guts (and stamina) to act. And I do mean stamina, because in a situation like this, doing something entails much more work than doing nothing.
I think the TA who gave away answers was wrong and the students who believed they had gotten the questions early were also in the wrong. (Yes, I believe intent matters. But good luck judging intent in this case.)
May 9th, 2007 at 7:30 am
I’ve actually given out answers to my students like this …probably wouldn’t again, though. If the answers spread around to other classes I’d consider it my error of judgment, especially if I had known in advance that the other sections were going to use the same exam. I don’t feel it is cheating on the part of the students since a teacher had already sanctioned it and it seems plausible to extrapolate this where the same exam is being used.
This said, if the students did it with a less than innocent mind, it becomes partly another issue, but it is still not, in my view, quite cheating. It is grounds for cancelling the exam results, however. Apologize for the ambiguity; bite the financial bullet and give a new exam; tear up the old one without trying to determine which students had access to the test beforehand and which didn’t. The prof should also publicly apologize for any slur on the character of the students that has resulted as a consequence of his/her mistake, though not be censured.
This is not a valid incident to pin a representation of “cheating” on.
Frunald Hall
Columbia College 1969
May 9th, 2007 at 11:48 am
cc ‘09–we do have an honor code. i remember having to sign a paper about it at the beginning of this year in (fittingly enough) lit hum.
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/education/honesty
May 9th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Hey, look at me! I have an opinion!
Perhaps it’s idealism, but I question the value of a testing system that can be so easily cheated in the first place. School shouldn’t be about answering a test but rather learning material. I know personally that it means very little to myself what someone makes on their lit hum exam if they don’t actually know anything about the material covered; they are doing a disservice to themselves and no one else. I know that I’m crazy and naive, but I simply can’t understand the motivation for someone to go to school if they aren’t going to increase their knowledge and worldview. I pity the fool. There are much more lucrative things you could be doing, like building a legion of robotic minions. You can’t cheat with something like that.
May 9th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Ah, I missed that post above from CC’08…seems the university has already done pretty much what I had in mind. Except I might not have used the wording that the exam “may have been compromised.” Rather I might have tried to be slightly more amusing and written “an ambiguous situation regarding the exam has arisen” and then proposed the same solution. Sensible Quig, sensible!
Now write a paragraph in the “Columbia College Handbook for TA’s” telling the tale of “XXX’s Folly” and warning TA’s never to do anything like this on a shared exam again without clearing it with the department head and everyone else.
Furnald Hall
cc ‘69
P.S.. There was (or so student rumour in the mid 1960’s had it) an admissions officer at the College who decided one year (probably the early 1960s)to admit strictly on SAT scores and nothing else. The cohort so admitted was known as “Dudly’s Folly” and there were vague rumours that this had proven, ah, an extremely bad idea. I never could find out exactly why in any detail. Phrases like “They were all like quicksilver…,” was the most concrete wording I could get out of anyone. Is this a true story, and if so how did they turn out in the end?
I always envied them somehow…
May 9th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Might explain the antics of ‘68
May 9th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
this is very selective ivygate, you mischaracterized a lot here. first off, people who saw the guide saw innumerable different versions of it. almost every lit hum teacher holds some sort of review session before the exam where they talk about themes and sections that are important to review. this teacher obviously got waaaay too specific and gave a significant fraction of the class an unfair advantage, but she did not give them the exact answers to the test.
May 9th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Yeah, I feel as if this is a little unfair. If a student is told something by a teacher, how on earth are they not supposed to know it? This isn’t comparable to insider trading or any other sort of ethical quandary because once a teacher says it it’s public information. The school should do something other than crucify her, though.
May 9th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
I did not get the “study guide,” but it was not made clear on it that these were actual answers to the test- merely that they were critical parts of each book, just as teachers often give tips of major themes or important characters to study. most of the people who are mad are not self righteous cheaters wanting to be rewarded for sharing their ill-gotten gains- they are just people who’s exam grade got cancelled, something irritating. Calling an entire school morally bankrupt because of some assistant professor who hasn’t learned boundaries is a little bit excessive.
May 9th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
to cc ‘10. yes i also vaguely remember signing something at the beginning of the year as well, but that’s the problem. we briefly read it over once, sign it, and then forget about it. a real honor code is signed for ever paper handed in and every test taken. an honor code is only effective as long as its visible and pervades student attitudes towards cheating. perhaps that sounds naive but i think it can be effective and i have visited colleges where it is.
May 10th, 2007 at 12:53 am
you’re making huge generalizations and expecting too much of these kids if you think they are cheating here. i was not in this section and didn’t get this study sheet, but when these kids got the sheet, even if it seemed suspicious, they weren’t going to go to the core office until they had seen the test and been sure that the prof was being way too specific on her study guide. no one would go out of their way to slander a prof unless they were 100 percent sure she was cheating.
and as to the spreading of the cheat sheet, my professor gave me a list of sample ids for the first semester final, none of which were on the exam, but as most kids don’t get sample ids from their profs, i used it when studying with other kids. this is a class-wide exam, of course kids are going to study with their friends when preparing for the exam.
way to blow this incident way out of proportion ivyblog. as if columbia really needs more slandering from people who aren’t in the middle of this…
May 10th, 2007 at 2:42 am
I can’t believe the Ivy League is so full of excuses for poor behavior. Distributing “study guides” that consist of answers to an exam is cheating, no matter how easy or tempting. Are we really the future of America here? No wonder our nation’s upper echelons are rife with corrupt CEOs and lying White House administrators. Since when is “but it was so EASY to break the rules!” been an excuse to do it? Maybe it’s time the Ivy League do away with honor codes and student self-policing, bcs we clearly can’t handle it.
May 10th, 2007 at 5:04 am
I just read through all the comments and just had to lave my own…
The problem with this situation is that people are making assumptions one way or another about the actual content of the study sheet, what the teacher said, or what the students were thinking. These aspects of the situation just can’t be verified so making assumptions about them just isn’t right.
I do know that study guides are not inherently cheating because we sell them in our bookstores for everything from books to certification tests to the SATs. The only time these resources become cheating is when they are strictly prohibited… otherwise anyone is free to read/study/peruse/ or even quote things like cliffs notes and pinkmonkey.com.
Additionally, I also know that group studying is allowed and encouraged… that it is not cheating to share ideas in OR outside of a class that is considered a discussion class. The aformentioned honor code that is signed at the beginning of the year for all CORE classes states that ___________ will not pass off another person’s (including other students) work as his/her own. It goes into depth about plaigarism and that stuff, but it doesn’t prohibit the use of study guides and or group studying.
Finally, even though I may or may not consider this whole event cheating (I cannot make a decision because to do so would require me to assume too many abstract things) I do agree that something had to be done though and that the decision made was probably the best one possible. I would be pissed if I hadn’t cheated and the final had helped me get a better grade, but when something like this happens something needs to be done to re-level the playing field… and that’s just the way life is.
oh… and I really hate people who just throw out opinions and insults without thinking them through… What is the purpose or reason behind it? Can we not just simply disagree and debate like civilized grown ups and expand our lives and breadth of knowledge and opinion in the process?
Anyways… if you took the time to read this- thanks… It’s nice to be able to share an opinion, and even better when someone takes the time to “listen” :)
May 10th, 2007 at 8:50 am
How could it be cheating if the students didn’t know that it was the exam? And how could they know that it was the exam? I would have figured it was just another study guide until I got the test itself. The fault to me seems to be on the prof.
May 10th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
BALLLLLLLINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN’
it is what it is…I wan’t someone to tell me how what the students did was deviant in anyway, how they dide anything that students do everyday. (Reiew test material with their teachers and study what the teacher tells them to study). So yea I had the thing, I prob woulda done well on it without it, but i didnt cheat. Freedom of Information peoples, as long as its not stolen isnt it fair game?
May 11th, 2007 at 7:32 am
i am a current freshman at columbia and i took the exam, without the “study guide”. the upsetting part here is not students bitching about people having an unfair advantage, but about the core office’s solution, most students did NOT see the sheet and worked really hard and thought they did well, to void the exams just sucks…
ps- i have friends in that section an the PROFESSOR gave them a study guide of “important passages” and ideas for the esaay. my professor gave my class a sample id to do that was not on the exam. and since there are about 50 different sections w/ different teachers, we all compare notes with our friends to help us see how other classes approached the material. AND all the professors have copies of the test!!! this individual professor just made an error in judgement by using the actual test questions as a study guide. the students are NOT to blame.
so all of you who are saying that this is cheating need to check all of your facts! information given to you by a professor is supposed to be legit… how were the students supposed to know it was the actual test questions.
ROAR LION ROAR
May 12th, 2007 at 12:57 am
A wonderful example of why grades are bad for education. How much effort did y’all just waste into trying to determine what falls into the “cheating” box or not? Yeah, that definitely improved the world.
And, by the way, this was so not cheating, in any sense. This was one instructor who obviously misjudged or was inattentive to her colleagues’ opinions concerning the conditions under which the exam should be taken. Perhaps a mistake on her part, but not, I don’t think, a capital one. Certainly far more forgivable than being inattentive to her students’ needs.
And it’s entirely beyond me as to why it would be reasonable to hold the students culpable because they failed to realize that their instructor’s judgment about the norms of the exam was incorrect. If your prof says or strongly implies that certain conduct is OK, why on earth would we expect any student to doubt it.
Damn, am I glad I no longer attend a school with actual grades…grade and cheeating-obsessed teachers are possibly the worst aspects of formal education.