Harvard University's reputation, in all its glowing Ivy League prestige, has been tarnished by cheating. In August, the university initiated a massive investigation of nearly half the students in an Introduction to Congress course who were accused of unauthorized collaboration on a take-home final examination last May. In early February, Harvard forced about 70 students, more than half of the investigated cases, to withdraw from the university in what a Feb. 1 New York Times article called "its largest cheating scandal in memory." This scandal highlights the fine line between working together and cheating, and prompts questions concerning the clarity of academic integrity policies both at Harvard and at Tufts.
According to Tufts Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman, Harvard, like Tufts, has a strong tradition of maintaining a culture of academic honesty without actually instituting a full honor code. He said that Harvard maintains harsh repercussions for those who transgress.
"They have very strong guidelines for what happens if one is caught in an academic integrity breach," Reitman said. "It's very involved. If you're found responsible ... you leave. Their outcomes are quite harsh, some of the most severe in the industry."
The cheating in Intro to Congress came to light when similarities between exams, such as identical answers and typographical errors, appeared, despite clear instructions on the exam that prohibited collaboration. However, some students claimed that similarities on their exams may have been based on class notes or attending the with the same teaching assistants.
Harvard College's Administrative Board responded to these indications of cheating. According to its website, the Administrative Board holds the authority to handle all disciplinary cases for which there is a governing faculty legislation and for which there is a precedent for interpreting and applying the rules of the college, both of which applied to the situation.
The website also states that Harvard's principle is that, with exceptions in rare cases, students involved in disciplinary cases can ultimately graduate from the university because students can appeal the Board's disciplinary decision after a certain amount of time. If approved, students can be readmitted to the university.
Similarly, students at Tufts can appeal disciplinary decisions, though not if they have withdrawn or taken a leave of absence with disciplinary charges pending.
"If you withdraw with disciplinary charges pending you are not eligible to come back," Tufts Judicial Affairs Officer Veronica Carter said. "They can do that, but not after the disciplinary process. They have to do it before ... They never get the Tufts degree and it stays on their transcript permanently."
At Tufts, unauthorized collaboration on a take-home examination or term paper falls in the Level III Offenses category. A student found responsible for these actions will receive an "F" in the course or a "zero" or "F" on the assignment without the option to resubmit work.
The incident would be permanently noted on the student's transcript, and the student would be suspended or expelled. Other, less severe types of unauthorized collaboration fall in the Level I and Level II Offenses categories.
According to Reitman, more than eight years ago, a number of new faculty members noticed inconsistencies in how other faculty members were addressing breaches in academic integrity.
"Faculty members who were concerned about that brought it to the Dean and asked if it would be appropriate and necessary to make a standard across all the departments," Reitman said. "They decided there should be a standard. They created what you see in the Code of Conduct for Academic Integrity."
At the time, the bylaws for faculty members changed to require them to report any suspicions of academic dishonesty to the Dean of Students and the Judicial Affairs Officer.
"Faculty no longer had the ability to take care of problems," Reitman said. "Our business went through the roof. Some faculty members would bring us all their cases, or their most dramatic cases, or when they could not resolve it to obtain an amicable solution. So at least this created some consistency about students' rights and responsibilities both."
Reitman and Carter are aware that not all faculty members may be reporting suspicions of academic dishonesty. However, Alice and Nathan Gantcher University Professor and former provost Sol Gittleman believes that few instances of cheating occur in his class.
"I don't go to the administration. I handle these things myself," Gittleman said. "[The administration] spends a lot of time trying to get students to understand the policies. Students don't understand the policies. In my class, they do. I don't think there's any doubt in my class."
Gittleman says that he has been giving take-home examinations for about 20 years and has had few instances of dishonesty. He maintains that his policies clarifying collaborating and cheating are clear for students.
"I have no problem clarifying [what collaboration is]. I tell them, here's the rules, don't screw it up ... I'm trying to find out what they know, not what they don't know," Gittleman said. "I don't care how they find out what they need to know, they can look it up, they can use the book, they can do whatever they want as long as they do it themselves."
"[Gittleman] definitely explained [his policies] clearly, and he made me feel like he trusted me fully," freshman MaddyKenler, who is taking Gittleman's Introduction to Yiddish Culture course, said. "I have so much respect for him as a professor, partly because he does trust us so much that I couldn't imagine being dishonest with him."
Other large lecture courses have similarly tried to define what forms of collaboration are appropriate, such as Principles of Economics, taught by Professor George Norman.
"There is a fine line you have to draw between collaborating and cheating. There's a lot of work in my Economics 5 class that students do offline," Norman said. "At the same time the material can be quite challenging, so it's a good idea for students to get together and form study groups. You would hope that they're submitting their own work. There's an incentive to get answers."
Freshman Catherine Caffey, who took Norman's class last semester, said the distinction between cheating and collaboration was not always clear, especially with regards to the problem sets.
"I think that [Norman] expected us to just follow the Tufts policies and didn't really differentiate between what he personally thought was acceptable and what the policy of the department was," Caffey said. "It was unclear whether we were to work with others on it. The numbers were different. If you got help, no one would notice."
With regards to examinations, Norman said that it may be difficult to directly prevent cheating during the Principles of Economics examinations in Cohen Auditorium.
"With the Principles class, there's always a risk. It is a huge class," Norman said. "Can I prevent them looking over each other's shoulders? No I can't . . .[but] I have different versions of the examination so that the chance that you're sitting next to someone with the same examination [is] very low."
Norman said he has had few cases of cheating to report and has advocated care when accusing students of cheating.
"You have got to be careful when you start reacting that you're not destroying the careers of students," Norman said. "I was not surprised [with how Harvard handled the scandal]. You have to do it carefully, you have to gather the evidence, and this was indeed a case of widespread cheating."
Reitman outlined the disciplinary process at Tufts for dealing with accusations of cheating.
"If a student admits to an accusation of a faculty member, there may not be a hearing. It may be resolved by looking up what the particular offense calibrates to ... if they deny the offense, what happens now is that the Judicial Affairs Officer or the Dean forms a panel with someone from our office, somebody from the Tufts Community Union (TCU) and the chair of TCU Judiciary," Reitman said. "[If] it's a unanimous conclusion, then action is taken without a hearing. It can be appealed, the same way as an action taken by a hearing panel would be appealed. You don't give up your right to appeal."
Carter and Reitman expressed concern that not all students are aware of the policies, their rights and their responsibilities when it comes to academic honesty. They said that students most likely only look up these pieces of information when they are involved in a disciplinary case.
"People say nobody knows the policy - that's because it's like a telephone book, you don't read it until you need to look something up," Reitman said.
"If I asked my students if they know the policy, I doubt very much they would say yes," Norman said. "Maybe we should be making it clearer."
