Academic Dishonesty Advice

[fcbfredo12]

Hello everyone I am a sophomore in college. I cheated on a calculus 3 exam and was caught. I confessed to doing it to the professor but nonetheless I was reported to the chairman of the math department. I am truly sorry for what I did and I wake up every day feeling so upset and distraught about my actions.  I have some questions to ask and I hope people can give me some advice.

1.  Should i write an appeal letter? If so, how should I structure it?

2. How can I move forward for this? I cheated because I was stressed out and was fearful and very scared of failing the exam. These are not excuses for cheating however and I have taken steps to deal with stress, fear and anxiety.

3. How badly will this affect my graduate school ambitions? I am seeking to further my education and go on to grad school to become an occupational therapist. Is my future career over? I don't want to do anything but become an occupational therapist, or even a physical therapist?

  Once again any advice is appreciated.

[fuzzylogician]

Confessing doesn't absolve you, and the professor did the right thing. At every institution I've taught at, faculty are required to report these incidents and they don't get any discretion. It's out of their hands as soon as it happens, and is handled by a disciplinary officer whose job it is to deal with these cases. 

I assume this just happened? If it's a first offense, it shouldn't be too bad. You can read about what happens next online, I'm sure your school has that information available. From my experience it would involve some procedure with a Dean of Students or equivalent person in charge of academic dishonesty for undergraduates. The evidence for the offense will be anything written that shows cheating and your professor's testimony that you admitted it to him. You will get a chance to defend yourself, but in this case since it's pretty open and shut, best you can do is admit it, take responsibility, and not make excuses. Again, if it's a first offense, the punishment will probably not be too severe -- I assume you'll fail the class and may have to retake it, and you'll be put on probation so if anything like this happens again, the results will be much more serious. There might be a written report sitting in some file, or there might be a warning that is removed after some period if you maintain good behavior. These are things you could and should ask about, when you are contacted for the next step in the process. 

Some schools have a free law clinic where law students volunteer to help student like you out (or the student union might offer such a service). You can seek that out, to have representation in the proceedings. Also note that it might take several weeks, or even longer. This time of year there will be many similar cases for the disciplinary officer to deal with. That can cause a lot of emotional stress, so be sure to take care of yourself. Once the procedure is over, one thing you'll want to figure out is who is informed, and if it's anyone whose opinion you care about, you might want to schedule a meeting with them to clarify what happened. For your questions:

1. What would you appeal? You admit to the facts, and it sounds like the procedure is just starting. Again, seek representation from someone who's more experienced and can take you through the process, but I doubt that will involve an appeal. 

2. Learn to manage your time and your anxiety. Learn to spread out your studies throughout the semester and to get help if you feel like you're falling behind -- reach out to the TA or instructor, and get private tutoring if possible. Cheating should never be an option. 

3. It's hard to know. The most important advice right now is this: (a) take responsibility, and (b) don't lie. If there is a question about academic honesty on an application, answer it truthfully and explain what happened. You don't need to volunteer the information if it wasn't asked, but almost 100% of people who get in trouble because of cheating do so not because of a one-time offense but because they lied about it. So, don't do that. Work to make sure it's completely out of character for you; maintain honest behavior from here on out, and be able to discuss both why it happened and how you grew and moved past it if it ever comes up. This shouldn't be the end of your dreams, but make sure you take it seriously and fix whatever caused you to do this in the first place. 

[TakeruK]

I second everything fuzzylogician advised. You can't really appeal the "verdict" that you cheated because 1) you did actually cheat and 2) you admitted to doing it. As advised above, your best path forward is to continue to be honest, accept the consequences and take steps to learn from this mistake. If you feel that the eventual punishment/consequences is not fair, then perhaps an appeal at that point would be warranted. 

The norms for punishment of this type varies a lot from school to school. At my school, for undergrads, if you cheated on an exam or a homework set, the usual steps are: 1) it gets reported to a University-wide committee to determine whether you are guilty of a violation, 2) steps are taken to correct the unfair advantage you gained by cheating---for example if you cheated on the exam, the points earned in that exam won't count towards your final grade, and 3) steps are taken to protect the community from your actions---so you might have to do something to demonstrate you learned. At my school, because of the stress levels similar to what you describe, the punishment for cheating is very rarely failing the course---you just get a zero on whatever sections you cheated on. However, this consequence is typical because most people will be honest about their mistake and actually take steps to remedy it. If you don't take responsibility for your actions and try to blame it on your stress, and not your own decisions, the punishment is generally more severe. That said, this policy at my school is very different than the policies at most places!

Also, when you do apply to grad school, the admissions committee isn't going to care whether your punishment was failing the class, failing the exam, or just getting a lower grade. What they will care about is whether you have learned from the mistake and moved on. So fuzzylogician's advice is best: take responsibility and think about how this will look years down the line. The short-term consequences (repeating the class, for example) are going to be small compared to the long term affects.

[cowgirlsdontcry]

I am graduating as an M.A. student this week and teach Rhet/Comp. One of my students submitted a paper through Turnitin and the paper was 56% other work (i.e. plagiarized because it wasn't cited) and even 56% cited is too much and not his work, but that's a grading issue, not plagiarism. I spoke with the student and he claimed it was because they forgot to cite (student is international and English is not great). I had spoken with the Department Head prior to talking to the student and was told it was my call. The student was already on probation and by giving him an F in the class, he would forced to leave the university and lose his student VISA. I told the student this was his single opportunity and he had to completely rewrite the paper. He was also told that if any other papers showed such a large amount of work that was uncited, he would receive an automatic F in the class immediately and be expelled from my classroom. The remainder of his papers were fine--all he needed was to have me tell him that I knew about it. Thank goodness for Turnitin.

[DiscoTech]

5 hours ago, cowgirlsdontcry said:

I am graduating as an M.A. student this week and teach Rhet/Comp. One of my students submitted a paper through Turnitin and the paper was 56% other work (i.e. plagiarized because it wasn't cited) and even 56% cited is too much and not his work, but that's a grading issue, not plagiarism. I spoke with the student and he claimed it was because they forgot to cite (student is international and English is not great). I had spoken with the Department Head prior to talking to the student and was told it was my call. The student was already on probation and by giving him an F in the class, he would forced to leave the university and lose his student VISA. I told the student this was his single opportunity and he had to completely rewrite the paper. He was also told that if any other papers showed such a large amount of work that was uncited, he would receive an automatic F in the class immediately and be expelled from my classroom. The remainder of his papers were fine--all he needed was to have me tell him that I knew about it. Thank goodness for Turnitin.

What was the point of this post?

[cowgirlsdontcry]

1 hour ago, DiscoTech said:

What was the point of this post?

The same as all of the others! Some universities allow instructors to show mercy if it's appropriate and they believe the student can change. I made such a call because a student's life could have been ruined if I had summarily chosen to give him a F without another chance to do the work.

[TakeruK]

8 minutes ago, cowgirlsdontcry said:

The same as all of the others! Some universities allow instructors to show mercy if it's appropriate and they believe the student can change. I made such a call because a student's life could have been ruined if I had summarily chosen to give him a F without another chance to do the work.

I personally like these types of policies better, instead of the "cheaters get an F no matter what, zero-tolerance" attitude. I definitely think that in some cases, the cheater should get a F. However, so-called "zero tolerance" policies tend to make people hesitate to report cheating instances, so it's not really zero-tolerance after all!

I like my school's policy because it is more focussed on undo-ing the cheating and ensuring the student changes rather than just punishment. The punishment part comes from the Dean, not the professor, so it's not like one student can use the "it's the only time I've cheated" excuse in multiple classes (which could happen if instructors keep quiet about cases they resolve themselves). 

It's not perfect though, the main worry I have with my school's system is that since the focus is more on "undoing" and education, some students might choose to game the system by realising that if they don't get caught, nothing will happen and if they do get caught, it's not the end of the world. So the risks are lower. I think this is not a huge problem though and personally, I would prefer a system like this instead of one where students do cheat, get caught, but the system is so harsh that it will just expel students instead helping them learn from mistakes.

[Eigen]

29 minutes ago, cowgirlsdontcry said:

The same as all of the others! Some universities allow instructors to show mercy if it's appropriate and they believe the student can change. I made such a call because a student's life could have been ruined if I had summarily chosen to give him a F without another chance to do the work.

The problem with these policies is that it's class specific and doesn't track cheating across multiple courses. If a student gets "one chance" in every course every semester.... There's a lot of incentive to try to get away with it. 

[cowgirlsdontcry]

16 minutes ago, TakeruK said:

I would prefer a system like this instead of one where students do cheat, get caught, but the system is so harsh that it will just expel students instead helping them learn from mistakes.

Maybe it's just me, but I really feel that part of my job is to help my students learn to be an adult and that means confronting things like cheating and knowing that they can do better. Zero tolerance teaches nothing but intolerance. My student got away with nothing. He still had to completely write a new essay. I did not allow him to even write upon the same subject. The rest of the essays he wrote for the semester, while they had some grammar problems because of his English, they were his work.