{"id":108026,"date":"2015-11-26T00:14:41","date_gmt":"2015-11-26T07:14:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/students-say-cheating-is-under-reported-at-fort-lewis-college\/"},"modified":"2015-11-26T00:14:41","modified_gmt":"2015-11-26T07:14:41","slug":"students-say-cheating-is-under-reported-at-fort-lewis-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/students-say-cheating-is-under-reported-at-fort-lewis-college\/","title":{"rendered":"Students say cheating is under reported at Fort Lewis College"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Some
Some students say cheating occurs with some regularity at Fort Lewis College, An average of about five cases per semester go before Ken Pepion, FLC associate vice president for academic affairs and the provost\u2019s designee for handling academic dishonesty allegations.<\/span>Cliff Vancura\/Durango Herald photo illustration<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Students at Fort Lewis College say cheating \u2013 whether it\u2019s plagiarism or sharing answers on an exam \u2013 occurs with some regularity.<\/p>\n

Jandrea Fevold, accounting student in the School of Business, said the school has not taken allegations seriously in the past when she called out two accounting classmates. She says they routinely cheat.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not fair to the other students, and it taints the whole program,\u201d Fevold said. \u201cOur profession is based upon ethics and integrity, but people would rather just stay out of each other\u2019s business. Nowadays, people are judged off their GPA. But how real is that GPA? How honest?\u201d<\/p>\n

In a day and age when the job market is tougher, the pressure is higher to maintain good grades and a bachelor\u2019s degree is considered the bare minimum, students cheat for a variety of reasons. Analyses on college students across the nation point to a range of motives for cheating and make connections to everything from the standard pressure to be successful or laziness to self-esteem issues, moral values and, as the dean and director of student conduct and conflict resolution at the University of Florida suggests, because students aren\u2019t sufficiently prepared in high school.<\/p>\n

According to a study conducted by a Rutgers University professor, 36 percent of almost 64,000 polled undergraduates in the U.S. admitted to copying or paraphrasing sentences from the Internet without sourcing the work. Other analyses, like one published in 2009 in The Journal of Educators Online, notes the growing ease of cheating in the digital age.<\/p>\n

Ken Pepion is the associate vice president for Academic Affairs and the provost\u2019s designee for handling academic dishonesty allegations at FLC. He said it is at professors\u2019 discretion how to handle cases of plagiarism or cheating. In most cases, students will admit to cheating, in which case they receive a failing grade for that exam or assignment.<\/p>\n

When that happens, students appear before Pepion, who explains school policy and possible consequences.<\/p>\n

\u201cProvided there are no further incidents of it, that\u2019s the end of the case,\u201d Pepion said. If students persist in cheating, they face a hearing before the Academic Standards Committee, which can suspend students and permanently mark their transcripts. The committee can also, in rare instances, dismiss the charges.<\/p>\n

But how often do allegations actually make it out of the classroom? Both on a national scale and at particular colleges, it\u2019s difficult to accurately quantify the matter beyond what students admit to and what is reported. At FLC, the average number of cases that come before Pepion is consistently about five per semester, with an uptick as mid-terms and finals approach. Most of those claims involve cutting and pasting forms of plagiarism.<\/p>\n

But Zach Schult, a business major and FLC sophomore, said he sees cheating, in certain forms, happening daily at school.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s definitely a lot of helping each other on quizzes and copying homework,\u201d he said. \u201cPlagiarism, not so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Has he himself cheated? \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Durango Herald asked FLC professors for their perceptions of the school\u2019s cheating climate. Ryan Haaland, professor of physics and engineering, said the campus has strict policies, but there is \u201ca general feeling that we would like (the policies) to have stronger teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n

More specifically, he would like to see a campus-wide discussion about how to address the issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn one end is stress and the desire to get that grade that leads to a scholarship or job. The other end is laziness: \u2018I didn\u2019t prepare, so how am I going to cover my ass?\u2019\u201d said Haaland, who has been an educator for about 30 years.<\/p>\n

Speaking to his own department, however, Haaland said the pass rate for last year\u2019s engineering students on the national exam was 15 of 16 on the first attempt. Given the rigor of both the exam and the monitoring of it, Haaland believes in the integrity of that pass rate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s extraordinarily good, which implies to me if students were rampantly cheating, they would not be prepared for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most students interviewed for this story said they know of, have witnessed or they themselves have partaken in cheating in some manner. Students agreed that cheating in the form of plagiarism is not the most common problem, but sharing homework or looking up test answers is.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see it happen mostly on busy work and homework,\u201d political science major Zaq McDaniel said, adding that he had cheated in high school but not college.<\/p>\n

International business major Matt Tomaselli said it also depends on how much value the student places on the work.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt kind of depends on the class and just whether they take it seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

jpace@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

For students who study, seeing cheating is disheartening<\/h4>\n

The Durango Herald asked Fort Lewis College students to weigh in on their perceptions of academic dishonesty on campus, where they see it and why it happens. They gave varying answers.
\n In several students\u2019 opinions, the Internet increases the challenge of preventing academic dishonesty. For example, Google is just a click away for students taking online tests, and many instructors post notes and other classroom instructional material, online.
\n \u201cIt happens more with online quizzes and students wanting to double-check their answers,\u201d exercise physiology major Lauryn Andre said. \u201cIf a teacher doesn\u2019t want students to cheat, they should not give tests online. The resources are there, and there are multiple devices right in front of you to look it up.\u201d
\n Eric Wzientek, a freshman geology major, said he hasn\u2019t cheated \u201cyet\u201d in college, but he said it\u2019s happening around him, mostly in the form of students with their phones out.
\n Others don\u2019t see it.
\n \u201cI don\u2019t have any experiences with cheating here,\u201d said Joanne Song, a sophomore studying anthropology. \u201cEveryone here is rather honest.\u201d
\n Mariah Gachupin is a senior gender and women studies major. She said the prevalence of cheating may have some correlation with particular departments, and some professors might monitor their students more closely.
\n \u201cI have friends that stay up all night studying, and then they see people with their phones out during an exam,\u201d she said. \u201cIn most classes, professors are really watching, so where is the difference? I hear of it in the athletic department and exercise science a lot. But I know my professors really watch us and make sure we put all our stuff away before an exam.\u201d
\n jpace@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pressure and desire to succeed sometimes lead to copycat work<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":108027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5794,5735],"tags":[1228,132,13,70],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-108026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","tag-ethics","tag-fort-lewis-college","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-news-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108026"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=108026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}