CAMP BRIEF: Monday, March 22, 1999

Three out of five students engage in some kind of cheating while at Penn, according to a survey conducted by the University Honor Council and the Office of Student Conduct. The survey results were released as part of what the Honor Council has labeled "Academic Integrity Month" at the University -- a time the group plans to focus on educating students about cheating in the hope of making it less frequent. "You would like to think that Penn students would be less likely to cheat," said Kevin Hodges, a Wharton junior and chairperson of the Honor Council. "I'm just relieved that it was not higher [than the national average]," which is about the same as at Penn. Academic Integrity Month includes discussion groups, where two members of the Honor Council -- a 13-member panel created in 1995 by then-Provost Stanley Chodorow as part of an overhaul of the University's judicial code -- will share their academic experiences at the University. There will also be various workshops and movies showing on the Penn Movie Channel on Resnet to spark discussion on cheating issues. The movies include A Few Good Men, Quiz Show and Jerry Maguire. The survey, which questioned 600 students, mostly undergraduates, showed that 380 -- or 63 percent -- have cheated at the University. The term cheating encompasses a wide range of academic dishonesty, from working on an exam after time was called to copying someone else's work. According to OSC Director Michele Goldfarb, the wide range of cheating may cause the percentage to be high. "Academic integrity covers a spectrum of conduct, some clear-cut, and others less clear-cut in some students' minds," Goldfarb said. "We have to do as much as we can to educate." Goldfarb and Hodges both reported that the results of this survey are at the national average. The most common reasons for cheating were not enough time to study and too much pressure to get good grades. "I can't imagine how many times I have talked to students who did something that violates the academic code because they were terrified of getting a B on an exam," Goldfarb said. "It's an extremely competitive place, but all of our students can do the work." Other responses to why students cheated included a wide variety of answers from social and time reasons to laziness and sleep deprivation. The departments that have the most serious cheating problems include Mathematics, Chemistry and the foreign language departments, according to the survey. "Students have to realize that there are serious consequences," Goldfarb added. "The worst thing that can happen to a student is to get caught in an academic dishonesty case." Consequences vary in severity of the case. Students could receive no credit for the course or be suspended or expelled from school, for example. "Changing attitudes takes more than surveys or showing people movies on Resnet," Hodges said. "[The University] needs to create a culture that does not allow cheating to happen."