“When a teacher has reason to believe cheating or plagiarism has occurred, the following steps will be taken…”
This familiar sentence is written in bold on page seven of the Seaholm High School student handbook. This brings up the question, what is the line between an academic misconduct and an honest mistake?
In an age where technology is reaching unprecedented levels of sophistication, the tools that high school students use in the classroom create a much broader line between cheating and research. The days of paraphrasing from hard copy book sources seem far in the past in the computer age.
“It adds a whole new dimension to doing assignments the right way,” said senior Matt Sienkiewicz.
“You have to spend a long time making sure that the work is your own.”
Copyright laws become a second-hand reference point when they aren’t staring students in the face, in many cases.
It becomes easier to “borrow” assumed common knowledge when it appears off of a website found on Google than when all of the information appears within the first few pages of any reference book that could be found in the library.
A recent incident sparked an uproar involving academic misconducts and the involvement of the students in question. Renee Moore, Environmental Science teacher, threatened several students with academic misconducts for allegedly plagiarizing information in a group project.
This action came as a complete surprise to the offending students.
“It never even crossed my mind that I could get an academic misconduct for what I did,” said senior Andy Rowland, a student in Ms. Moore’s second hour class.
Rowland’s offense was not citing his sources in a pamphlet about environmentally friendly energy. He obtained the information from a simple Google search.
“I was completely shocked; I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. We weren’t really warned ahead of time that citing sources would be such a big deal,” said Rowland.
When questioned Ms. Moore refused to comment on the specific incident, saying it was a private matter between her, the students, and Mrs. Boyer.
“I was just following district policy, whether I agree with it or not,” said Moore.
The week after the academic misconducts were handed down assistant principal Deb Boyer spoke to the class.
“Right this instant, learn that work you turn in must be your own,” said Boyer.
“This is simply a warning not to do it again. We’re not reporting this to any colleges. We’d rather that you learn this lesson now. Taking information from another source word for word is not acceptable.”
Students were relieved to hear that they weren’t actually going to be getting academic misconducts, but this was a closer call than any of them wanted to have.
“I’m really glad and happy,” said senior Jess Miller. “It would have sucked if I got one because of my college and my parents and my grades.”
For students who have gotten an academic misconduct in the past, the consequences have far outweighed the rewards of cheating.
Junior Ben Eveslage recounts his experience involving cheating.
“I got caught twice for cheating. I thought it would be easy.”
Eveslage isn’t allowed to be involved in the National Honor Society and he had many consequences as a result of actively cheating, including failed assignments and detention. He regrets doing what he did, and understands why what he did was cheating.
“I felt really bad. I can’t afford to get a third one either, so I would never cheat again,” said Eveslage. This shows how being a member of the more innocent side of the spectrum of cheating, or the people that don’t know that they are cheating, can be a potentially future altering category to fall under.
Colleges take students’ high school conduct records under extreme consideration when deciding whether an applicant should be admitted or turned away. An academic misconduct can be a strong deterrent to any student’s application, no matter how dazzling the resume or how high the grade point average.
