Cheating Charges No Fair

Everyone's a sinner. And a cheater, if you're at Dartmouth.

In the past two weeks, a scandal has erupted at Dartmouth College over 78 students who allegedly cheated on a computer science assignment. Most of the students have been accused of downloading the solution to a problem set on the course's website--which had accidentally been left unlocked by the course's professor--but others have been accused of cheating by incorporating help provided by their teaching assistants in their answers.

One piece of advice to Dartmouth administrators: Get over it. It would be easy to take a morally superior position--yes, copying answers is cheating. But let's climb down from our ivory tower for a minute to examine reality. Imagine that it's 3 a.m., the night before your big CS problem set is due. You check the website to see if anything has been posted on the discussion page, and behold, the professor has posted the solution to the problem! You check the solution and immediately recognize the flaw in your program that has been plaguing you all night. You fix a few lines in your program and grab a few hours of sleep before class the next morning. Is this cheating? Of course not.

By these standards, everyone at Harvard would be expelled for cheating. What professor in his right mind would leave the unlocked solution to a problem set on the course's website if he didn't want students to use it? And, perhaps more importantly, what normal student would not at least check his or her answers if the solution were posted on the web? By making the answers available to the students on the website, the professor gave away his right to call the solution private information.

This type of mistake happens at Harvard all the time. Just last semester, in Social Analysis 10: "Principles of Economics," there was a problem set in which almost all of the solutions were written in the course pack. Those who found this pleasant gift used the answers to improve their performance on the problem set. Perhaps the purpose of putting the answers in the reading was to encourage students to actually read the coursepack. In that case, students should be commended for doing all of the work assigned for the class. Using the answers in this sense is a part of the learning process--and is certainly not cheating.

The second charge made against the Dartmouth students is even more preposterous than the first. Asking a TF for help on a problem set should not constitute cheating. The very purpose of having TFs is to help students understand the material that they didn't understand in lecture. Despite their best efforts, professors occasionally give problems to students that are too difficult for the course, and TFs often have to fill in the gaps of knowledge required to solve these questions. If a TF gives more help to a student than the professor wants, the student should not be held responsible for using that help. If someone is to blame, it should be the TF who shared the information. Labeling students who utilize such resources cheaters is not only unfair but also counterproductive.

What it all boils down to is common sense. The Dartmouth administration should recognize the gaping holes in the professor's accusations and just let the matter drop. The purpose of an Honor Code and a judicial system at a college is not to vindictively prosecute students who have not really committed a crime. So, let the cheaters win for once!

--ROBERT J. FENSTER