Consistent cheating brings no new action

While the Pachyderm clearly defines academic integrity and what constitutes cheating, there are still students at Tufts who turn in work that is not their own.

To curb academic dishonesty, many schools have honor codes which guide student conduct. Students may sign their names to the code when they enroll, and a printed copy may be posted in every classroom.

But no such honor code exists at Tufts. There is no formal honor council to uphold academic integrity. Students who cheat face disciplinary action from their course professors or the administration.

Approximately 60 cases of academic integrity violations were reported to the Dean of Students Office during the 2000-2001 academic year. This number was considered average in comparison to the 60 to 75 number cases of cheating that are normally reported during an academic year, according to Assistant Dean of Students Veronica Carter.

The number of cases of plagiarism of Internet sources and of other student's work through collaboration has increased, however. Last fall, 12 students in Astronomy 10 were placed on Probation I for not correctly citing Internet sources.

But the actual number of incidents is much greater than the Dean's figures indicate. "There are many faculty members who address incidents of academic dishonesty independently, dealing directly with the students involved," explained Carter.

Political Science Professor James Glaser said that though cheating is not rampant in his department, it is a routine occurrence. "We worry about it a lot," he said. "Even one instance is a problem."

Cheating is particularly prevalent "in courses that students have to take that they don't really like," philosophy professor Hugo Bedau said.

Firm communication of the importance of academic integrity should be a University priority, according to Bedau. "I think it's important that the University administration make it absolutely clear to the students what it will and will not tolerate, and the reasons for it," he said. "That can't be done simply by brow beating or by invasive silence."

Some think that a way of doing that is to institute an honor code. Sophomore Noah Trugman is an avid supporter of honor codes, and has met with Bruce Reitman, the dean of students, and Carter about the issue.

While Trugman said that cheating problems at Tufts might be no worse than at other colleges, he said, "there are a lot of students who have no concept of the issue of honor."

An honor code "looks at more than just academic integrity and cheating violations," Trugman explained. "It can look at relationships and how we treat each other."

But there is still some skepticism about whether an honor code would work at Tufts and survive an introductory period when it would likely be questioned.

"Haverford and Wellesley really do have a difference in the amount of cheating because they have long standing traditions with honor codes," said Reitman. "But other schools that have tried to put it in place sort of suddenly have not had the same kind of result."

Political science professor Richard Eichenberg feels the best honor code for Tufts would be one deeply-ingrained in university life, instead of just written in the rule book. "What I am looking for is a new culture," he said.

Haverford College's dean of student life, Steve Watter, said a long-established honor code can even attract students to a school. But, he said, "you'll need to have a couple of generations of students to have it work the way you want it to work."

Honor code systems can take many forms. Cheating students may be required to take an ethics class or face student-run committees and formal trials. Punishments can range from writing a letter of apology to suspension or expulsion from school.

At the University of Virginia (UVA), an honor panel comprised of students has the authority to permanently expel students who violate the code. The committee's power was intensely scrutinized in 2001 when over 150 students were caught plagiarizing their term papers. After the incident, over 40 students were expelled or decided to leave the university.

The honor code at the University of Virginia is successful in combating cheating, according to UVA student Christopher Smith. Between the small percentage of students who will never cheat and students who will always cheat if given the opportunity, there "lies a very large middle ground of students that are influenced by the culture of the institution they are at," he said. This is the section of the student body an honor code targets and successfully influences, he added.

At Haverford, an anonymous survey was conducted to evaluate the honor code's effectiveness. "There was a low percentage of people who said that they cheated, and there was a very low percentage of people who said that they thought other people were cheating," Danaher said.

Tufts students, however, remain skeptical that an honor code could change the behavior of those who cheat. People know that the University does not tolerate cheating, sophomore Blake Gaither said, so "the University making a statement about morals isn't really going to influence everyone a whole lot."

Junior Nate Guild agreed. "I think it just depends on the individual," he said. "Your own morals and ethics play a big role in it. Either you're a cheater, or you're not."

Students also do not always strictly adhere to the honor code when it comes to reporting when other students cheat.

"An essential element of an honor code is that you sign an agreement saying that you will turn in anyone who you know has cheated, including your friends," said Reitman. "So many honor codes fail due to that essential ingredient."

The evidence at some Universities appears consistent with Reitman's concern.

"I can't remember one honor council case that was student on student," said Shane Danaher, a senior at Haverford College and the former president of the student body. Most cases involve students whose professors brought them before the board.

"You hear a lot of people talking about how they don't like [the honor code]," he said. "But those are the same people who support it, because we get a lot of benefits from it, such as the take home exams."

But assigning take-home exams to students doesn't automatically cause more students to cheat anyway, said Bedau, the philosophy professor. "I can tell from the written work that students turn in where they have or have not understood what they have written and whether they are or are not borrowing it from unacknowledged sources," he said. But cheating could be "much harder to prevent or detect" in math and science courses where there is often only one right answer.

Requiring ethics courses may be one way of curbing academic dishonesty, he said, though none of the current courses may be appropriate for the purposes of an honor code. "The typical ethics course at Tufts and other colleges around the country is not just to browbeat students in to ethical behavior," he said. "It attempts to get students into a position where they can think about ethical principles, their application, their enforcement and their violation."

When Trugman, the sophomore who has met with the deans, brought up the idea of an honor code University President Larry Bacow last year, Bacow told him he would never want to force an honor code on Tufts students. He said the initiative should come from students, and that student impetus was essential for an honor code to be successful.

While Trugman expresses concern over that small percentage of students who will inevitably cheat, he also said that the lessons learned from an honor code can influence students for life. "You don't start cheating at age 40," he said. "It's a pattern that has been built," he said. "Maybe it is optimistic to say its not too late to start teaching a system of values at age 18, 19, 20," he said. "But if you don't start now, when do you start?"