Would you report cheating?

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lalex said:
Wait you're calling me dumb for snapping during CLASS? He was absent for a week, I already took the quiz.
No, with students all around him he was happily zooming in on pictures of notes he took before class. I got to class early so I know he was taking a quiz because the TA was talking to him, but others around him had no clue.
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Yes, for taking pictures yourself during the quiz to go out of your way to get someone in trouble who likely ****ed it up anyways.
 
I already know he's failing the final. These quizzes and most of the class are just freebies. He didn't need anyone's notes. All he needed to do was read the slides for 30 min before class.
 
Sometimes I wish there was a verification system on these forums, so all you who say not to turn him in can be called out on it when asked in an interview: "you see a fellow med student cheating. What do you do?" and you f**ks answer "Turn that fool in!"

Think, if OP turns in the guy and he gets a slap on the wrist but never cheats again and goes on to matriculate to med school, that's a good thing. But if OP doesn't turn him in and he gets caught cheating on an exam, well **** he's not going to med school.
 
lalex said:
I made him a nervous mess which is punishment enough. It's ridiculous, honestly. It's an ETHICS class full of PREMEDS (it's on medicine).
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OK, this again...well...


It's an Ethics class. Can you say, "irony?"

He should have to take another 4 kinds of Ethics courses. LOL Then he should have to write a well-thoughtout thesis on the evils and problems with cheating using all the strictly required formatting--APA or whatever, and then have it throughly run through Turnitin.

Stop giving so many MC or fill-in quizzes and such. Start making students write their a$$es off and have their writing verified. But that would be more work for the profs/tas, so...
 
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ProspectiveKidd said:
Yes, for taking pictures yourself during the quiz to go out of your way to get someone in trouble who likely ****ed it up anyways.
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Hmmm if you could get in trouble for snapchatting classes, I already would have.
 
jl lin said:
OK, this again...well...


It's an Ethics class. Can you say, "irony?"

He should have to take another 4 kinds of Ethics courses. LOL Then he should have to write a well-thoughtout thesis on the evils and problems with cheating using all the strictly required formatting--APA or whatever, and then have it throughly run through Turnitin.

Stop giving so many MC or fill-in quizzes and such. Start making students write their a$$es off and have their writing verified. But that would be more work for the profs/tas, so...
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It was a short answer quiz and he wrote a lot. But again, it was more simple than MC because it was a one sentence definition followed by explanations that don't even require going to class. Half the time I'm zoned out (I wrote and replied during class) and I got full points.
 
Lost in Translation said:
Sometimes I wish there was a verification system on these forums, so all you who say not to turn him in can be called out on it when asked in an interview: "you see a fellow med student cheating. What do you do?" and you f**ks answer "Turn that fool in!"

Think, if OP turns in the guy and he gets a slap on the wrist but never cheats again and goes on to matriculate to med school, that's a good thing. But if OP doesn't turn him in and he gets caught cheating on an exam, well **** he's not going to med school.
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There is a massive difference between a medical student cheating on an exam relevant to their future and the quality of care that their patients receive than an undergraduate student who is borderline failing a class cheating on a quiz. Is it moral? No, but if he is obvious enough to get caught by OP, if he continues to cheat he will get caught. Let the teachers and TA's handle it.
 
Lost in Translation said:
Sometimes I wish there was a verification system on these forums, so all you who say not to turn him in can be called out on it when asked in an interview: "you see a fellow med student cheating. What do you do?" and you f**ks answer "Turn that fool in!"

Think, if OP turns in the guy and he gets a slap on the wrist but never cheats again and goes on to matriculate to med school, that's a good thing. But if OP doesn't turn him in and he gets caught cheating on an exam, well **** he's not going to med school.
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I wish there was a verification system to check if people here aren't still in the 5th grade.
Oh teacher look at me I'm good... Other students are bad. Ok good for you. Maybe you should add pre-med police to your resume.
 
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Lost in Translation said:
Think, if OP turns in the guy and he gets a slap on the wrist but never cheats again and goes on to matriculate to med school, that's a good thing. But if OP doesn't turn him in and he gets caught cheating on an exam, well **** he's not going to med school.
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You're making zero sense here. Earlier you said you wanted him to get turned in, now you want him to get away with it so he can hopefully get caught on something more important?

Bottom line is, you can't cheat your way into becoming a doctor no matter how you view this situation.
 
Lost in Translation said:
Sometimes I wish there was a verification system on these forums, so all you who say not to turn him in can be called out on it when asked in an interview: "you see a fellow med student cheating. What do you do?" and you f**ks answer "Turn that fool in!"
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Don't hate the player, hate the game.
 
ProspectiveKidd said:
Bottom line is, you can't cheat your way into becoming a doctor no matter how you view this situation.
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You'd be surprised. I'm sure there's a non-zero number of med students that have cheated in UG and didn't get caught.
 
Tbh, it's hard to be entirely sure that someone is cheating. I'd probably tell the TA that "there are some people in class who might be cheating using their phones. Can we get more proctors next time?"
 
I've been on SDN long enough that I'm getting lazy, so here's a thoughtful response on this subject from back when I took the time to write out thoughtful responses to the common questions:

In my mind, cheating hurts only the cheater, so reporting them just seems...petty. If they want to pursue behavior which is harmful to themselves, and my actions would only worsen their situation, I'm not getting involved.
If it were a friend, I would speak to them for many reasons - the loss of respect on a personal level, the risk they are putting themselves at, the disrespect they are showing to the prof, and the fact that they are only inhibiting their own education. I would not report them, barring extenuating circumstances where their actions somehow actually affected anyone else.
Either way, I'd likely let the prof know that something was off, mostly so they could prevent it in the future, but also because I trust their judgement - I can't imagine coming out of that conversation without them letting me know whether or not they think this is a problem for anyone aside from the student involved, which I would take into consideration.

Thankfully, this never came up at my school, and I cannot even imagine it being an issue. We frequently had closed-book, self-timed takehomes, and even for in-class exams, the prof usually left the room and went down the hall to their office, telling us to come find them if there were any questions. Not once did I see any student or group of students taking advantage of the prof's absence, and more than once have I taken my closed-note take homes in the presence of others or seen them taking theirs, again always without issue. I think my actual response to seeing a classmate cheat would be stunned disbelief, because frankly, it just didn't happen there.

Of course, now that I've written this, I am beginning to reconsider my initial assessment - I'm now really torn as to whether not reporting this sort of cheating would cause it to become more accepted on my campus, and thus decrease the amount of trust and respect I've repeatedly seen between students and profs. Perhaps I would have reported, just to preserve the environment we had. :shrug: It's all academic now anyway.
 
ElCapone said:
Tbh, it's hard to be entirely sure that someone is cheating. I'd probably tell the TA that "there are some people in class who might be cheating using their phones. Can we get more proctors next time?"
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I have a picture of him copying off his phone, you can even see the notes on his phone.
 
mehc012 said:
[...]In my mind, cheating hurts only the cheater, so reporting them just seems ... If they want to pursue behavior which is harmful to themselves[...]
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I disagree. Depending on the situation, cheating can lower the value of the educational environment, thus affecting everyone involved.
 
What would you do if you knew some people were actively trying to steal the professor's flash drive or break into her office to get the final? I told the professor to be very careful with her things... and i went and talked to that group of people, but i feel like they're going to try again. What would you do?
 
LACMA said:
What would you do if you knew some people were actively trying to steal the professor's flash drive or break into her office to get the final? I told the professor to be very careful with her things... and i went and talked to that group of people, but i feel like they're going to try again. What would you do?
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Stealing is entirely different.
 
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It's not an analogy.
 
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J Senpai said:
I disagree. Depending on the situation, cheating can lower the value of the educational environment, thus affecting everyone involved.
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To a very slight degree, which I addressed in the last lines of my post.

For the most part, though, their actions are irrelevant to my experience.
 
LACMA said:
This isn't an analogy.
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Sorry, I misread while I was skimming. I thought you were trying to say that not reporting cheating is similar to not reporting stealing. I admittedly didn't read your entire post to catch that the stealing had actually occurred and you were asking for advice.

To answer your question, I would report stealing as that's not a victimless crime.
 
WedgeDawg said:
Not to add fuel to the fire, but...

http://thedartmouth.com/2014/11/12/dozens-of-students-linked-to-cheating-in-religion-class/

OP, whether or not you decide to report is up to you. I will say that in medical school, we are obligated to report instances of cheating or dishonesty if we are aware of them, which is then handled by a student-run honor/ethics committee.
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The midterm he brings up is serious, but clicker questions? Please.

Mandatory attendance is a lazy prof's game, and his students found ways around it. If you want people to attend your class, make it worth their time.

That being said, the better option would have been to drop his crummy class...they knew they were taking a high risk and thus deserve the consequences. It was a poor risk to take. But it's not inherently wrong to miss classes, so it's hardly some horrifying action to attempt to do so with no consequence. It's not wrong, it's just poor judgement given the risk:reward setup (which leads me to question whether many of them understood it would be considered an honor code violation. Again, not an excuse, but it makes more sense if they didn't.)
 
mehc012 said:
The midterm he brings up is serious, but clicker questions? Please.

Mandatory attendance is a lazy prof's game, and his students found ways around it. If you want people to attend your class, make it worth their time.

That being said, the better option would have been to drop his crummy class...they knew they were taking a high risk and thus deserve the consequences. It was a poor risk to take. But it's not inherently wrong to miss classes, so it's hardly some horrifying action to attempt to do so with no consequence.
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I was mostly posting it because it happened in an ethics class as a response to @jl lin's comment.
 
WedgeDawg said:
I was mostly posting it because it happened in an ethics class as a response to @jl lin's comment.
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Ah, I put them on the ignore list a long time ago, so unless I'm specifically looking for their remarks I don't see them. My bad.
 
Affiche said:
Oh, come on. Little Johnny copying off Susan's notes doesn't affect my ability to learn or devalue the education I'm receiving.
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You have 2 people. Person 1 works hard all semester and gets an A. Person 2 watches Bojack Horseman every night all semester, but cheats on each exam and still makes an A. When both people receive the same outcome for radically different inputs, yielding the same institutional benefit at the end, an inequitable system has been established.

I'm not saying this is what's going on with the OP's situation, but it's not out of the question in reality.
 
lalex said:
As I'm typing this there is a dude in my class with no shame cheating using his phone. He took a bunch of pictures off someone else's notes. I actually snapchatted him to a friend so I have the picture.

This quiz is so easy and it makes me sick that he would take such a huge risk to cheat on an easy quiz.

Should I email it to his TA or drop it?

*I'm not taking the quiz, I already took it, he was absent for two days.
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I don't see anything wrong with throwing him under the bus.
 
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Its a tough call cause no one really wants be a snitch (unless your a huge nerd lol) but I hated when I would study my ass off for something while other kids just cheated to get the same grade as me (if not better). A student was cheating on an O chem II test once by looking at his buddies test next to him and afterwards I told the professor (I knew her really well she wrote me an LOR) she may want to split them up next time, thats as far as I went with it. They were split up for the next exam and the kid ended up barely passing the course, I felt like justice was served without anyone getting in serious trouble.
 
J Senpai said:
You have 2 people. Person 1 works hard all semester and gets an A. Person 2 watches Bojack Horseman every night all semester, but cheats on each exam and still makes an A. When both people receive the same outcome for radically different inputs, yielding the same institutional benefit at the end, an inequitable system has been established.

I'm not saying this is what's going on with the OP's situation, but it's not out of the question in reality.
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That doesn't devalue the effort that Person 1 put in. In other words, Person 1 is still leaving with an A-quality education and it's still only Person 2 who was hurt, having received an A without the A-quality education.
 
Echoing what some others have said, reporting the cheating would be the choice I'd make. It's not about the incident personally affecting your performance or any others. As per your institution, you agree upon a a syllabus with certain rules to follow. If others choose not to follow them, then you're certainly not obligated to report them but there's absolutely no reason that you should feel bad or that you're ruining their early educational career by reporting. Regardless of the stakes, integrity and honesty are included within the core values of medical students and physicians. By reporting, you're upholding these standards and allowing the appropriate authority(the professor) to determine the consequences.
 
Affiche said:
That doesn't devalue the education that Person 1 put in. In other words, Person 1 is still leaving with A-quality education and it's still only Person 2 who was hurt, having received an A without the A-quality education.
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I'm talking about the benefits yielded by the grade. A diploma, a job, recognition. Each person could very well receive the same short term and long term benefits, for dramatically unequal effort and sacrifice. It goes beyond in that abetting cheating behavior through inaction is allowing dishonesty to perpetuate, which can obviously yield some family bad outcomes in many situations. It is much better to hold everyone to the same standard and, if someone cannot maintain such standards, they ought to be removed from the system.
 
J Senpai said:
I'm talking about the benefits yielded by the grade. A diploma, a job, recognition. Each person could very well receive the same short term and long term benefits, for dramatically unequal effort and sacrifice. It goes beyond in that abetting cheating behavior through inaction is allowing dishonesty to perpetuate, which can obviously yield some family bad outcomes in many situations. It is much better to hold everyone to the same standard and, if someone cannot maintain such standards, they ought to be removed from the system.
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The only way the bold is true is if you think the value in education comes from the degree or the grade and not the actual learning.
We'll have to disagree here, because idt it's a student's responsibility to remove his peer from the system.
 
just blackmail the cheater. That way OP doesn't have to feel like a goody-two-shoes/snitch, the cheater suffers/is deterred from future cheating, and OP gets some cash or other benefit. win win win! Plus, bonus win for the irony for all this going down in ethics class
 
The reason I'm still debating if I should turn him in is because he had no freaking shame. It's not like he quickly glanced at his phone, he had it out the entire time. I was able to make sure I had the perfect picture of his phone, his quiz, and his eyes. I'm sure this isn't the first or last time and God forbid he's in one of my classes that actually require thinking cause I'll watch him like a hawk.
 
Affiche said:
The only way the bold is true is if you think the value in education comes from the degree or the grade and not the actual learning.
We'll have to disagree here, because idt it's a student's responsibility to remove his peer from the system.
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There are clear consequences of having the degree. One could have all the knowledge of an undergrad chemistry graduate, but a MS in Chemiatry program won't care if that person doesn't hold a BS in chemistry, first.

It's not the student's responsibility. That's up to the administration. Instead, it's up to students to be aware of their learning environment and bring things to the attention of admins, when appropriate.
 
Imagine my original example.
Person 1 and Person 2 apply to the same MS program. P1 worked hard for his 3.8 while P2 cheated his way to the same GPA, but -- for whatever reason -- the MS program takes cheater P2 over hard working P1. Maybe P2 will cheat his way through the program and come out with a diploma. Maybe he'll fail out because he never learned his fundamentals. Maybe he'll be caught, but the issue is, he took honest P1's well earned spot. I don't think that's fair.

How often does this happen? one might ask. Too often, I'd say. In part because some people condone academic dishonesty.
 
J Senpai said:
Imagine my original example.
Person 1 and Person 2 apply to the same MS program. P1 worked hard for his 3.8 while P2 cheated his way to the same GPA, but -- for whatever reason -- the MS program takes cheater P2 over hard working P1. Maybe P2 will cheat his way through the program and come out with a diploma. Maybe he'll fail out because he never learned his fundamentals. Maybe he'll be caught, but the issue is, he took honest P1's well earned spot. I don't think that's fair.

How often does this happen? one might ask. Too often, I'd say. In part because some people condone academic dishonesty.
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Really? Because I don't think this happens lol.
 
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J Senpai said:
You have 2 people. Person 1 works hard all semester and gets an A. Person 2 watches Bojack Horseman every night all semester, but cheats on each exam and still makes an A. When both people receive the same outcome for radically different inputs, yielding the same institutional benefit at the end, an inequitable system has been established.

I'm not saying this is what's going on with the OP's situation, but it's not out of the question in reality.
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Yeah, but Person 1 got what they deserved, and gained more knowledge/skill out of the process. Person 2 put in nothing, learned nothing, probably started a pattern of bad behavior that puts their career at risk constantly, and ultimately had no impact on Person 1's life.

Why should Person 1 feel upset over that? It a) didn't impact them and b) they came out ahead in a comparison.

At the end of the day, you do you. Yeah, some people have an advantage, and will get to where you are with less work. For some, it's money, connections, luck, or whatever. Nobody seems to have an issue with this. For others, it's cheating. And while someone who has no money, connections, or luck and won't cheat may gnash their teeth and be upset about it, at the end of the day they can only handle their own actions and get out what they put into a class. Maybe it's harder for them. So what? That's how life works. It's never an equal playing field. At least for cheating, the person doing it is incurring risk, learning less (which could easily trip them up down the line) and it could all blow up in their faces someday. Life is not fair, and while we should never strive to increase the inequity, an important part of learning to live in the real world is to stop expecting things to be fair.
 
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Affiche said:
Really? Because I don't think this happens lol.
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What Jacob VanWagoner said about how relatively little you need to know to be competent reminded me of a pretty big engineering fraud story that came to light about a year and a half ago in Australia.

The jist of it is this guy met and got to know a civil engineer when he was in South Africa. When he returned to Australia he used that civil engineer's identity and degree to get into a masters program at a university in Sydney. He graduated with a Master of Engineering Science in Highway Engineering and used these 'qualifications' to get jobs in Australia and New Zealand as a project manager, construction manager and a qualified in-house engineer. He even worked for some fairly big name companies. Some of the works that he was involved in haven't collapsed (touch wood) and some of them have collapsed and killed people.

You can read more about it here: How a fraudster engineered his past

This is actually kind of scary. He basically cheated the whole system!
I suppose he must have been in some way competent to be able to get a masters degree and not get caught for such a long time!
Written 16 Jan 2014


I'd think this would be even more realistically pulled off through simple academic dishonesty. Imagine this happening to a much less involved or dramatic degree, as I layed out above. Probably more common and not unheard of.
 
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J Senpai said:
What Jacob VanWagoner said about how relatively little you need to know to be competent reminded me of a pretty big engineering fraud story that came to light about a year and a half ago in Australia.

The jist of it is this guy met and got to know a civil engineer when he was in South Africa. When he returned to Australia he used that civil engineer's identity and degree to get into a masters program at a university in Sydney. He graduated with a Master of Engineering Science in Highway Engineering and used these 'qualifications' to get jobs in Australia and New Zealand as a project manager, construction manager and a qualified in-house engineer. He even worked for some fairly big name companies. Some of the works that he was involved in haven't collapsed (touch wood) and some of them have collapsed and killed people.

You can read more about it here: How a fraudster engineered his past

This is actually kind of scary. He basically cheated the whole system!
I suppose he must have been in some way competent to be able to get a masters degree and not get caught for such a long time!
Written 16 Jan 2014


I'd think this would be even more realistically pulled off through simple academic dishonesty.
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Lmao sorry but I need a little more than an anomaly in an unrelated profession that happened internationally a couple of years ago lol.

Edit: also hyperlink is your friend
 
J Senpai said:
I'd think this would be even more realistically pulled off through simple academic dishonesty. Imagine this happening to a much less involved or dramatic degree, as I layer out above. Probably more common and not unheard of.
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As don't mean 'competent' anymore...that's why so much experience is required for jobs. This guy faked both, which is far more dangerous than faking grades alone.
 
Affiche said:
Lmao sorry but I need a little more than an anomaly in an unrelated profession that happened internationally a couple of years ago lol.

Edit: also hyperlink is your friend
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It illustrates my point well. Though annulus, shows that dishonesty can produce a very dramatic outcome -- one which is shown to not be unheard of. Now, take a much less dramatic outcome, such as the MS program, and it's reasonable to think that one could cheat their way into it.

It is a hyperlink. I just wanted to post the link to the thread so you could see where it came from.

mehc012 said:
Yeah, but Person 1 got what they deserved, and gained more knowledge/skill out of the process. Person 2 put in nothing, learned nothing, probably started a pattern of bad behavior that puts their career at risk constantly, and ultimately had no impact on Person 1's life
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It absolutely had an impact on P1's life. He didn't get the spot, despite being the honest worker. Yes, the world is unfair, but why let inequity persist where you could otherwise reduce it?

I don't understand this argument of keeping to oneself. Keeping your head down isn't appropriate for every situation.
 
J Senpai said:
It illustrates my point well. Though annulus, shows that dishonesty can produce a very dramatic outcome -- one which is shown to not be unheard of. Now, take a much less dramatic outcome, such as the MS program, and it's reasonable to think that one could cheat their way into it.

It is a hyperlink. I just wanted to post the link to the thread so you could see where it came from.
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It's slippery slope.
Whoops...that wasn't meant to be the end of my sentence lol I meant to say "hyperlink is your friend for trimming". In other words, why is that entire thing a link?! lol I've just never seen someone send that long of a link before, save Wake Forest :laugh:
 
Affiche said:
It's slippery slope.
Whoops...that wasn't meant to be the end of my sentence lol I meant to say "hyperlink is your friend for trimming". In other words, why is that entire thing a link?! lol I've just never seen someone send that long of a link before, save Wake Forest :laugh:
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It's not a slippery slope. It's more realistic than that, not to mention that I've demonstrated the process that could lead to the supposed consequences. Slippery slopes are absurd, someone cheating their way into a graduate program is not.
 
I think you should probably tell your TA.

It should less about the other guy - missing out on an education and (potentially) ruining his life by cheating - and more about the OP getting into the habit of saying something when he sees unethical behavior. It's easy to think "This isn't a big deal. If someone's life was at stake or someone was actually harmed I would've said something about it." But it's a lot more difficult to actually do that, especially when you're already accustomed to justifying your lack of action.

Do I think that this situation is a big deal? No. But I think it's a good idea for people to get in the habit of speaking up when they see something wrong. That way when something truly egregious happens they know how to handle the situation and they're more comfortable bringing up the situation than they may have been if they'd never had any practice doing so.
 
J Senpai said:
It illustrates my point well. Though annulus, shows that dishonesty can produce a very dramatic outcome -- one which is shown to not be unheard of. Now, take a much less dramatic outcome, such as the MS program, and it's reasonable to think that one could cheat their way into it.

It is a hyperlink. I just wanted to post the link to the thread so you could see where it came from.


It absolutely had an impact on P1's life. He didn't get the spot, despite being the honest worker. Yes, the world is unfair, but why let inequity persist where you could otherwise reduce it?

I don't understand this argument of keeping to oneself. Keeping your head down isn't appropriate for every situation.
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Now you're mixing the examples you're using. I was discussing the one I quoted.
 
mehc012 said:
Now you're mixing the examples you're using. I was discussing the one I quoted.
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Hmm, I don't see where you mean. But I'm done ITT. Gotta make some noms. @Affiche , I think we'll have to agree to disagree on the matter.
 
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