Society compels students to cheat

By David Wonpu

From kindergarten until college, education is our primary social system. Many of our values, ideas and beliefs are inextricably tied to school. Our study-habits, social groups and, ultimately, our grade point averages reflect how we choose to participate in the educational system.

Yet, some would have you believe that grades reflect more than your level of engagement within this particular system. Some say your transcript is a microcosm for the kind of person you are -- that grades mean more than, simply, how you relate to the rigid, classical structure of school.

Employers certainly believe this. Transcripts are usually required along with resumes for any graduate applying for that first job. Santa Clara certainly believes this: it allows only students with a GPA of 3.3 or above to overload more than the standard 19 units per quarter without the permission of the Drahmann Center.

In America, where what matters are the ends and not the means, it is no surprise that so much weight is put on grades.

It is that same obsession with results, however, that reveals several significant cracks in the educational system.

One of the most prevalent is a painful reality for both administrators and faculty: cheating. Cheating is generally understood to be plagiarism or getting help during a test from an external source. Yet, this definition is far too myopic. It does not take into account, perhaps, the single most significant form of cheating: having a network.

If cheating, in its broadest and most abstract form, is any kind of shortcut that allows one to succeed without doing all the work, then getting a little too much help from a friend is nothing else but cheating.

Some study groups are conducted ethically; all of the participants have done the work, and utilize this de facto community to test their understanding with other group members. Study groups are also useful when one has trouble grasping concepts because a classmate can explain things in a way an overpriced textbook cannot.

Then, there are two other methods of structuring study groups that dangerously straddle the line of academic honesty. We'll call them the "piggyback" method and the "compartment" method.

The piggyback method is utilized by the socially powerful. These individuals exploit other students who understand the material and coerce them into, essentially, doing all the work. Common practices include making copies of notes, graded homework or study sheets prepared by the individuals being piggybacked.

A more common practice is the compartment method that generally consists of splitting the material into sections, and dividing them among group members. The members only read and do the homework for, say, one or two chapters, and share the information with the rest of the group. It's an easy, efficient way to study. It also means that any answers outside one's assigned section were formulated by an external source, which is longhand for plagiarism.

There is, perhaps, not a single source more valuable than knowing someone who has previously taken a course that you are currently taking. And, even though professors are aware that people save and distribute old tests and make every effort to nullify this practice, the concepts covered often remain the same. Understanding how professors phrase their questions is, arguably, the single greatest key to success in any class.

These socially-fueled methods prove the system can be cheated. A diligent student devoid of a social life will not necessarily do as well on a test as someone with a lot of friends. This might be unfair, but, as many students would put it, an A is an A, period.

Yet, even if the system can be cheated, the real question is whether or not cheating is wrong.

If cheating is wrong, is it right for employers and administrators to reduce our value to two digits with a decimal between them? Is it right for them to infer that good grades are tantamount to genuine intelligence? Is it really wrong to find shortcuts in a system that only cares about results?

I believe that most faculty members care about us as individuals. They understand that grades aren't everything. But they can't protect us from the truth.

The world is a harsh and an indifferent place. When we step into it, we are, indeed, reduced to numbers.

David Wonpu is a senior English major.