According to Brandeis professors, cheat-sheet use, prior knowledge of exam questions, peeking over your neighbors shoulder, un-cited material and unauthorized collaboration occur all over campus in glaring contradiction to our officially ingrained motto of "truth even onto its innermost parts." According to a recent article from the New York Times, these are on the rise in many universities around the country. The trend is blamed on a dulled sense of academic integrity and a weaker approach both to prevention and punishment. The article cites a 2001-2002 survey conducted by Duke University's Center for Academic Integrity. It reported that 27 percent of students admitted to frequently falsifying laboratory data, 41 percent to frequent plagiarism, 30 percent to cheating during exams and 60 percent to unauthorized collaboration.

The most recent cheating phenomenon, however, is cutting and pasting from the Internet, which according to the survey, rose 31 percent over the past two years. Students who participated in this study, however, said they felt that their punishments for doing this would not be severe.

The response of institutions like Cornell University, Duke University, Colgate University and the University of Virginia has been to rework their standards of academic integrity, particularly in the form of an honor code.

Honor codes, as adapted by Duke, will eliminate heavy proctoring of exams, but in turn will require students to report any observed instances of cheating under threat of punishment. And, according to Dean of Student Development and Judicial Education Lori Tenser the standard punishment in an honor code is suspension.
As there is no upward trend in cheating and no consensus on the merits of an honor code, Tenser said Brandeis is not planning to implement one. Rather, the University refers both the students and the faculty of each department to Section 5 of the Rights and Responsibilities Handbook, which defines both cheating and student responsibilities, but leaves it up to instructors to clarify and uphold their individual policies.

Professor Craig Blocker (PHYS) notes that while the department considers "any misrepresentation of a student's work, (such as copying from others, using an unauthorized cheat sheet or obtaining questions before hand), to be academic dishonesty . a professor can make exceptions to any of these, including allowing 'cheat' sheets, open- note exams and collaboration on assignments."

According to Professor Jerry Samet (PHIL), collaboration on assignments has been a particularly difficult violation to detect and punish, especially on assignments such as problem sets, which don't express the student's "individual voice." Blocker explains that "although the policy on collaboration on assignments is up to each instructor, in general, the Physics department encourages it, but still expects students to do the work . and write up their own solutions."

While unauthorized collaboration is difficult to confirm, a general consensus of many Brandeis professors is that Internet-aided plagiarism has been the more problematic scenario in recent years. According to Professor Paul Jankowski (HIST), "the Internet has indeed made cheating easier, and probably more tempting as well."

Tenser said she agrees that "the Internet certainly facilitates access to information," and attributes the consequential plagiarism to bad time management and impulsiveness. "If you are in a panicked mode at 3 a.m. you were sitting with only your own brain . and used to have to make something up," Tenser said, "but now you have around-the-clock access to information." Despite the accessibility, the Internet "hasn't necessarily increased the number of (plagiarism) instances," Tenser said, "but the nature of them has changed."

Director of University Writing, Professor John Brereton, agrees with Tenser that "students are tempted to plagiarize because they are desperate or hurried or worried over a grade," and suggests "breaking big projects into manageable parts with distinct deadlines, and close work with students in establishing a working thesis approach."

But the novelty of Internet plagiarism has called for more innovative methods of prevention: the use of search engines. While Brandeis does not use high tech detection equipment, Tenser said that engines like www.turnitin.com and www.google.com are "remarkably effective."

Using Google, Samet was able to confirm a suspicion that a students paper was too sophisticated for her style. By typing in the first paragraph of her work he found that it was an article published by a friend of his. So, while the internet has made cheating easier, Professors like Brereton and Jankowski said that detection is getting easier as well.

Because detection depends upon the initiative of the individual professors, and therefore is pursued with different fervor, Samet suggests that Brandeis hire a "detective" to investigate suspicions of plagiarism. He explains an instance may go unnoticed simply because "a faculty (member) doesn't want to spend the weekend in a library following a suspicion."

Tenser's feeling however, is that (a detective) would be an "unsavory position." "We would prefer to focus our efforts heavily on education, prevention and training, as opposed to detection and punishment." she added, "We try to provide assistance to faculty members to investigate. We do provided training for new faculty every year."

In addition to staff and faculty, students themselves say they are often distressed by the violations of their peers. Because of their own effort, Samet agrees, "students are offended that cheating is allowed to go on or is overlooked."

"Cheating delegitamizes independent work and frustrates those students who maintain high standards of achivement," Dodie Goldstein '05 said.
Other students said they aren't as concerned. "Some people think it's a good way to beat the system," Agneizska Bluztjan '05 said. "It's just somebody else being smarter than I am."

Professors like Blocker feel, in turn, that students ought to be more active in prevention by being responsible for getting clarification from the instructor when in doubt about an unclear exam or essay policy. Although an honor code would place the burden of detection predominantly on the students, it is not being adopted.
According to a September article from ASEE Prism, an engineering magazine, a study by McCabe and Pavela found that in the presence of an honor code, the percentage of students cheating on at least one test decreased from 45 to 33 percent and serious cheating declined from 68 to 58 percent. Despite these statistics, Tenser said she is not convinced that cheating at colleges and universities has increased. "We've had this conversation several times in the last couple of years, and there are experts in the field who suggest that an honor code is essential to maintaining academic integrity."

But, according to Tenser, two components of the honor code make the system problematic. For one, "the likelihood that students will report one another is very slim," Tenser said. In addition, suspension being the predominant penalty may discourage students who don't want to be the cause of such severe measures. Tenser also said she worries that in an honor code setting, suspension is too rigidly applied. "Our system is more flexible," Tenser said. "Under current policy, if you copy a 40 page paper, you might be suspended, but if you copy three sentences you probably won't."
Coordinator of the University Studies Program Mitsue Frey said she doubts the effectiveness of student intervention. But while Frey said she does not support the honor code for first year students, she would suggest it in an upper level course.

Samet said he is uncertain about the honor code but would "like the case for it to be stronger than the case against it." In the absence of convincing evidence, however, both he and other Brandeis Professors expressed satisfaction with the current preventative measures. For exams this includes heavy proctoring, division into smaller classes, assigned seating and photocopying of test papers before their return. For essays, Brereton said that edification about plagiarism, instruction of correct research methods and deadline schedules are key.

Likewise, Professors say they suggest the wide range of available penalties under the current system is also functional. According to Blocker, "the most common penalties for most cheating would be a zero on an exam or assignment up to a failure in the course. Since our instances of identifiable cheating are low, I hope this means the policies and penalties are effective." But, he also admitts that "it could mean that we are not very efficient in spotting violations."

Samet said he recalls a recent case in which two students worked together on a take home exam and after being apprehended, faced an F on the assignment. The students, however, called for a judicial hearing, during which they argued that Brandeis' policy stifles student collaboration. The judicial committee disagreed, but instead of re-affirming Samet's suggested penalty, ruled failure in the class and academic probation.

Both professors and staff seemed to agree that while cheating may have changed in nature (via the Internet) reported instances have not gone up. Based on observation and the lack of the upward trend that many colleges have lately detected, Tenser said "we do a better job then we used to." She added, however, "Can we do more? I'm sure we can.