s“Didn’t understand it.”

“Stress.”

“Forgetfulness.”

“Too much to do in one night.”

“Laziness.”

In an unscientific Oracle-conducted survey of 225 students investigating their histories with academic dishonesty, students commonly listed these as motives for cheating on schoolwork.

Academic dishonesty is a prevalent phenomenon within GBS. According to Dean Ron Bean, students’ efforts to cheat on an assignment or assessment range from chatting in the hallways about quiz contents, taking pictures of testing materials, glancing over onto someone’s paper and doing “ just about every trick in the book.”

Although 33 percent said they had never academically cheated in their past, 67 percent confessed to cheating on their schoolwork. Of those 67 percent of students, 78 percent admitted to cheating on homework, 53 percent on tests and quizzes, 45 percent on WebAssigns, and 13 percent on essays.

GBS has worked to strengthen the measures and policies to discourage the culture of academic dishonesty that exists within the school, and the Oracle Editorial Board wishes to illuminate certain suggestions that could help with the process.

ADULTS

As students, we have observed that a number of adults believe the difficulties they endured in their years of high school are equivalent to what students in the recent generations experience. Therefore, the Oracle Editorial Board urges teachers to host and initiate conversations with students to better grasp their individual situations; by having students inform adults on the personal struggles students bear throughout their school lives, teachers especially will see how greatly the education system has changed.

Although history teacher Elizabeth Lupfer feels surprised when she discovers news of students cheating, she acknowledges the increase in pressure and a greater emphasis on factors that influence the competition of getting good grades.

“I don’t think that it’s all their fault; I think that society is what’s stressing [the importance of grades],” Lupfer said. “I think it’s more national with all the high stakes testing that the nation has done, with No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, that has really just emphasized and given the wrong impression that tests are so important.”

With the intensity and rigor classes demonstrate, some students believe they are not receiving the help they need, academic or otherwise.  Senior Jane Smith* feels the need to jeopardize her intellectual integrity due to this perception.

“[I’ll resort to academic dishonesty] because school can be very difficult, especially if you have minimal guidance or support from teachers,” Smith said.

One example of the minimal guidance students receive from teachers is the reading of the academic honesty policy to classes at the beginning of the semester. Required by the school administration, this policy is regurgitated at the start of every class and monotonously recited; nevertheless, its impact can actually diminish the significance and complications of academic dishonesty.

Smith said, “I think the recent [emphasis] on the academic policy isn’t effective to stop academic dishonesty because just repeating what it is doesn’t do anything. Students will still do what they want, regardless of the enforcement.”

As a solution to this attitude, Terry Jozwik, Social Studies Department instructional supervisor, offers that adults should put a greater emphasis on honesty. He cites that this responsibility of restraining from academic dishonesty is not only one of which students should be mindful, but also one which adults who guide the students’ education should strongly articulate.

“It’s a matter of how well parents are doing their job [and] how well teachers are doing their job to keeping students honest,” Jozwik said. “I think teachers should continually advise people on the importance of approaching individual assignments honestly… and I think that reminding students that honesty is the best policy is important.”

Dr. Thomas Kucharski, English Department instructional supervisor, also acknowledges the necessity of teachers to encourage the enrichment of students’ educational experience and that the importance of the teacher’s role should not be underestimated in their students’ decisions to cheat.

“I don’t necessarily think it’s up to the students,” Kucharski said. “It’s helpful when the students kind of go out of their way to try to understand why what they’re learning is relevant, but I really think it’s the teacher’s responsibility to make sure that the students understand why they’re learning what they’re learning.”

Therefore, the Oracle Editorial Board only suggests beginning a conversation. Teachers such as science teacher Josh Koo opt to pass out surveys at the beginning of the semester, an effective solution for students to explain their situation or conflicts which might interfere with their schoolwork.

“I can’t treat all of the students the same in terms of homework… if they don’t have those resources,” Koo said. “To be more conscious and be more sensitive to that, I try to give out the survey just to know the kids a little bit more… I have a student right now who told me they don’t have Internet at home… If my homework is all computer-based, then that student’s put at a huge disadvantage… As a teacher, at the end of that, you want to make sure that you’re assessing them in a way that’s fair.”

According to an article on Greater Good from the University of California, Berkeley, it is of great concern that adults should recognize the personal difficulties students face and underscore ways to help them.

“Clearly, our children are in great distress,” the article stressed. “We need to help them. While many kids are meeting the high standards for school success that we hold out for them, many of those same kids are sacrificing their happiness to do this.”

STUDENTS

The Oracle Editorial Board finds it imperative that students recognize academic dishonesty leads to the inevitable and irreversible punishments which accompany it. We understand the pressures of getting into that good school you or your parents want you to go to, or that you also may want a good grade without the added endeavors to finish some assignments, but the consequences of academic dishonesty prove to be much more dire.

Students caught cheating waste away their year-long efforts, according to the GBS Board Policy, by risking the entirety of their semester or overall course grade. Not only will these penalties jeopardize students’ school careers, but will create a harmful ripple effect: the cheating would affect their acceptances into their desired college and, in turn, diminish the possibility in obtaining their dream job. The consequences permanently taint one’s reputation for an unreliable solution that degrades students’ credibilities.

Furthermore, students could also lose privileges such as being selected for honor societies; moreover, academic dishonesty could threaten students’ social relationships due to the incessant questioning for answers or having the general association with someone who cheats.

Despite this, students such as Smith continue to neglect these policies for their desire of freedom from the school’s seemingly domineering environment.

Smith herself has shared science labs with other classmates, worked on her homework as a group and Googled answers to her WebAssigns; however, she doesn’t consider the consequences of academically dishonest behavior negatively and believes cheating to be an unavoidable fate.

“In the real world and in college, you get to do whatever you want, where the stakes are even higher,” Smith said. “If someone is going to cheat, they will, regardless of whether or not their teacher threatens [punishment].”

This is one of many common perceptions students have regarding academic dishonesty: its inevitability. Thus, students lead themselves into giving and receiving answers to assignments. This dangerous notion can not only potentially harm their grade, but according to Bean, prevent teachers from learning of students’ overall potential.

“I think a lot of the kids we catch that are cheating on assignments have the capacity and the capability to do well on the test or the quiz or the paper if they put the effort into it,” Bean said. “I worry about the impact that it has on them academically depending on what the assessment was or what the paper was.”

Failure is an important determinant in understanding your own capabilities. However, if you cheat because you want to get into a good college and obtain a good job, how will you determine and carve out your future if you don’t know what you’re good at?

The Oracle Editorial Board wishes to stress the importance of refusing to offer information about an assessment and refusing to receive it. Also, we wish to remind all students that, instead of cheating, it is normal and acceptable to get a bad grade on a test, essay or whatever schoolwork that may seem difficult at the time. It will not affect the entirety of your semester grade; moreover, it will not cheapen the worth of your intelligence.