SAT cheating incident concerns U. officials

A University student's admission on national television that he unlawfully raised his score on the verbal portion of Scholastic Aptitude Test has placed the charged issue of cheating on campus in the spotlight once again. Although the student's identity was concealed during an interview broadcast last week on ABC's PrimeTime Live, he said he thinks his admission to the University was secured by the 100-point boost he received from using a dictionary during the test. Admissions Dean Lee Stetson, who did not see that segment of the show, said since there are so many elements in a student's record, the SAT score alone is not significant. "I think it's a matter of his judgment, whether he would have been admitted or not," Stetson said. "I'm just disappointed that students would be so blatant to consider cheating at all, let alone in that manner." According to Stetson, large score increases -- greater than 200 points between tests -- often tip Admissions officials off to the possibility of fraudulent test results. He added that the Admissions Office never knows if students who have applications pending at the University have been accused of falsely completing standardized tests -- any suspicious test results are simply invalidated by the Educational Testing Service. But the inclination of students to cheat is not unique to the University, Stetson said. "I think we are typical of most highly competitive institutions," he said. "The pressure to achieve may lead students to stoop to levels that are just not appropriate." Wharton and Engineering senior Matthew Kratter, chairperson of the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education, said SCUE is very concerned about the issue of academic integrity on campus. The group produced a guide to help teachers catch cheaters in the late 1980s, and is currently working with the Provost's Task Force on Academic Integrity to develop a academic code of conduct, he added. "I think it's a shame that there is someone at Penn who cheated on their SATs and was admitted," Kratter said. "[But] only with positive proof could the University take action." University Provost Stanley Chodorow said he has heard about cheating as a problem on campus from faculty and students alike. Most of the rumors, however, are supported by anecdotal, rather than statistical, evidence. Because Chodorow considers academic integrity a "central value" of the University, he said he is working with students on the Judicial Oversight Committee to develop an honor code applicable to the entire institution. Under such a code, penalties for academic dishonesty would be severe, regardless of whether the infraction occurred before or after matriculation. "If we identified a Penn student who had cheated on the SAT and could prove it, we would take the matter very seriously and might move to bring a charge of false representation against him or her," he said. Anyone who engages in that sort of conduct, Chodorow added, does not deserve to be enrolled at the University -- although no system designed to detect deception is foolproof. History Professor Bruce Kuklick said an incident in his History 451 class five years ago, where 10 students swapped take-home exam answers and were caught by teaching assistants who noticed similarities between their papers, has caused him to take the position that students are not trustworthy. "I do all sorts of things to make sure that cheating does not occur [in my classes]," he said. "I don't like doing this -- I don't think it's an appropriate faculty role." While the awareness of cheating as a "common, but not rampant" problem on campus has increased in recent years, Kuklick said the realization that the problem of academic dishonesty is widespread will not necessarily solve it. "I think [Chodorow] is right in wanting to inculcate on campus a set of attitudes in cheating is just not acceptable," he said. But Kuklick contends that faculty members "ought to have presumptive rights" in cases of cheating, and should be able to act summarily on their suspicions, even though injustice would result if professors' presumptions are incorrect. This position may be difficult to reconcile with Chodorow's plan to involve students, like those serving on the Task Force on Academic Integrity, in the creation of a University honor code, but Kuklick is not concerned. "Chodorow's basic idea is a very good one," he said. "[It is] a real difficult problem that [he] is trying to deal with."

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