Friday, February 7, 1997
By Carol McKay
Daily Bruin Contributor
There are 400 students packed in the lecture hall. Some are
sitting on the floor, and no one is making a conscious effort to
cover his or her Scantron. Elbows brush against elbows. People are
coming in late, the professor seems pretty distracted, and one
begins to wonder how many students cheat at UCLA.
"I don’t like to answer that question," said Mike Wilding,
assistant dean of students. Wilding, who often deals with cases of
academic dishonesty in his job, said that revealing the number of
students caught cheating may have adverse effects on attitudes
towards the subject.
"If the number seems too low, students might think that it’s
easy to avoid getting caught, and might be encouraged to cheat,"
Wilding said. "But if the number seems high, we’ll appear to be
some sort of police state."
Wilding did reveal that "a little over half" of all cases of
student misconduct involve academic dishonesty and that there are
enough cases to keep four deans working busily year-round.
According to professors, enough cheating occurs at UCLA to
warrant surveillance during test-taking, and tricks to catch
cheaters.
"I have two forms of every test, so students can’t copy, and we
have roaming teaching assistants (TAs) keeping an eye on
everything," said Michael Suman, professor of communication
studies. Despite the precautionary measures taken by Suman and his
"roaming" TAs, he is "sure that in a class that big (more than 400
students), some cheating goes on."
However, his primary concern is with plagiarism, not
collaborative test-taking.
"(Plagiarism) is easy to catch, though. If the paper is too
good, or if it’s slightly off-subject, we can tell," Suman
said.
Last quarter, he said, there was an incident in which a student
copied his friend’s term paper from his computer. When a TA noticed
two identical papers, it was obvious what had happened. The case is
still being processed by administrators.
Plagiarism is one of the most common forms of cheating among
UCLA students, according to Wilding. Incidents of a student
attempting to use notes during an exam is also fairly common.
The most frequent cases of academic dishonesty, Wilding said, is
what his office refers to as "re-grading," when a student brings a
test back after having changed some of his or her answers and asks
for a grade adjustment.
"Unfortunately, that happens every quarter," he said. "And it’s
just for a few points on a test."
With advancements in technology have come more elaborate
cheating methods. Research paper services which previously
advertised through fliers or magazines have gone on-line, hoping to
draw wider audiences.
Sites on the Internet such as "Evil House of Cheat" and "School
Sucks" provide either actual essays, ready to be cut-and-pasted or
catalogues of available essay topics. Students can also special
order custom topics, which are available for purchase at much
costlier prices, ranging from $3 to $45 per page.
The services boast products written by professionals and often
specify the grades received by the authors of the papers.
Employees of the companies insist, however, that their products
are intended for research purposes alone.
"If (a customer) says he is going to copy it, we can’t sell it
to them," said Maggie Dressler, of A+ Termpapers, a company
stationed in New Jersey. Before her company went on-line,
advertisement was limited to passing out fliers in the New York
area, and according to Dressler, A+ Termpapers has serviced
hundreds of students in the five years during which it has been
operating.
"I think most students use it as research instead of going to
the library. Or they add it to their own research," Dressler said,
countering the suggestion that students may submit the paper as
their own work.
"It’s pretty transparent what they’re up to," Wilding said of
companies that claim to simply provide "research assistance."
According to Wilding, his office keeps general catalogues of essay
services such as A+ Termpapers in order to check suspicious
essays.
Wilding said professors have the ability to spot "unauthorized
assistance" in research papers when a student’s work progresses
unexpectedly.
"If they’ve been turning in lots of mediocre work and suddenly
(turn in) something beautifully written, we can tell," he said.
On-line essay services are not the extent of technological
cheating aids.
Newsweek reported in November that a cheating ring Â
involving $6,000 pencils with coded answers to the Graduate
Management Admissions Test (GMAT) Â was uncovered.
Clients taking the GMAT would purchase the special pencils which
would be produced shortly after someone on the East Coast took the
test. The three-hour time difference allowed the East Coast cheater
to call the West Coast scam leader with the answers and essay
questions.
Educational Testing Services is now preparing to find out which
of its high-scoring test-takers were aided by a fancy pencil.
Cheating at UCLA can get pretty fancy, too. Wilding recalled
incidents of actual theft, including students breaking into
buildings and stealing copies of a test, or groups of several
students swapping schedules and taking each other’s tests.
There are ways to prevent this, according to Wilding, but it
takes some extra effort on the part of professors, such as
requiring more thorough identification checks.
Students caught cheating are not always dismissed from the
University of California, Wilding said. Most often they are
suspended for a time period ranging from as little as one quarter
to four years. If suspension is the punishment, however, they are
allowed to attend another University of California school in the
meantime.
Wilding said his focus is to "set up a sense of pride in school
and education so that students don’t want to cheat. Students who
are determined to cheat, will. What we need to do is create a
culture in which people take academics seriously."
Photo Illustration by SHAWN LAKSMI
Students are not deterred by professors’ test strictures and
teaching assistants’ watchful eyes.