Summary And Analysis: A Question Of Honor

Cheating has always been an issue among students. Almost everyone cheats in some fashion in classes. Whether it’s by blatantly copying another student’s answers, or working together on an assignment meant to be done on your own, cheating will remain a staple occurrence in academic life. In Rebekah Nathan’s article, “The Art of College Management: Cheating,” Nathan (2005) delves into students’ various reasons for cheating and even includes cheating as an “aspect[] of student culture,” (p. 27) from the point of view of a student. Nathan defends cheating as a whole by including it as an inevitable part of student culture. Additionally, she claims that everyone cheats, further diving into the idea that cheating is not inherently wrong. As a result of consistently defending cheating, Nathan neglects to provide worthy solutions to the issue as well as ignoring the consequences of cheating.

Multiple studies have found that students are spending less time on their academic studies leading to a decrease in education and an increase in temptation of academic dishonesty.  Cheating has been prevalent since mankind existed, but writer William Chace gives his outlook on the issue in his article, “A Question of Honor”. Chace is able to use adequate reasoning to engage the reader in an article that depicts perspectives from every angle. Included within the article are a sense of sympathy, through explanations and even a proposed solution of how to end academic dishonesty.

As one begins to grasp the concept of Schroth’s (2012) article The Plagiarism Plague, it is easy to identify the author’s dissatisfaction for plagiarism and the negative connotations he has for someone who is involved in this heinous offense. He initiates and summarizes his commentary with personal stories of how plagiarism has affected him. Schroth offers several solutions for the copyright issue that is upon us; he states, “the sanction for plagiarism must be at least an F on the paper, accompanied by a letter in the student's file to be consulted if it happens again, with the understanding that a second offense would mean expulsion.” Schroth was also sure to mention the collective approach necessary from all educators for his solution to be implemented. He believes the “policy will be effective only with leadership from the president and full cooperation from the faculty.” The writer goes on to explain how plagiarism has become an epidemic in this society and the effects of its prevalence thereof. Although plagiarism has become rampant in this society, it is still immoral and unethical. College students continue to plagiarize however, because they refuse to regard their education as a top priority and it has become culturally acceptable for people to falsify information without any serious penalties for their dishonesty.

A policy created by school institutions is the honor-code, which prevents students from plagiarizing and cheating off one another. Among scholars, there’s a debate on whether this policy is still in appropriate use today. Acknowledging the issue is Susan Greenberg, a journalism instructor and writer for The Washington Post, and Lynn Morton, an English professor at Queens University of Charlotte. Through examination of the two authors, both provide insightful background about honor-code practices on college campuses. However, their evidence presents opposing points-of-view on the subject.

According to Merriam-Webster, plagiarizing is defined as, “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of

A poll conducted by a website, CollegeHumor, revealed that 60 percent of college students had admitted to cheating on tests and assignments. Due to its popularity, society has began to accept cheating as an average tool used by students to succeed. Accepting the issue of cheating has not only decreased society’s standards, but also has led them to become less ethical. Thus, as a result of the decrease in standards, academic cheating has become a reaccuring problem that is now being accepted by society.

One of the prominent causes for cheating is that nowadays it is almost impossible for a student to writer something that is truly original. Despite the reasoning behind why a student cheats for every student who is apprehended more slip under the radar. Even more so the “radar” is corrupted because some professors may know that the students work is deemed inadequate, they may do nothing for that requires a lot of time a labor. But how does cheating sometimes become tolerated in a sense? Because unlike a crime such as copyright, cheating is a moral injustice.

Cheating used to be considered an unmentionable sin. However, in this day and age, it has become more common and somewhat of a daily occurrence. Cheating is more widespread today than in the past. According to the article titled Education: The New Morality, cheating has not been an issue of values, but simply one of practicality. This shows that many view cheating as a mere occurrence and something that can often be skipped over. The reason cheating has become such a pervasive movement is because many students tend to rationalize their cheating behavior. A common rationalization that many students use is, " That 's the only way I 'll get anywhere in life." Many students also tend to incorporate reasons, such as parental pressures,

The writer, Todd Pettigrew wrote the article “All your profs wrong about plagiarism,” explains that plagiarism takes the form of counterfeiting, which means to fake instead of stealing. Many college students result to piracy rather than to add in the work because they are lazy or desperate to succeed and rarely pay attention to the causes of cheating. Students who view plagiarism as counterfeiting may see nothing wrong with the crime because they fake their work instead of stealing another person’s own words. The scholar knows the system of cheating, acknowledges the consequences, and understands the crime; however, continues the offense because they want to pass the class. The two main ways to cheat consist of going online and blatantly stealing

Cheating is the new culture, well it’s not the new culture is has been the culture. Cheating is when you be dishonest in class submitting work and answers to the professor as if they were your own. Not everyone has the same depiction of cheating. According to Rebekah Nathan, cheating has been part of the college culture for the last couple of centuries (Nathan 28). In college there is many ways to cheat. Throughout Nathan article, “The Art of College Management: Cheating”, she gives the readers a student perspective on cheating also their reasons and justifications. Not everyone feel the same way about the topic of cheating how Rebekah Nathan do. In Mathieu Bouville journal article “Why Cheating is Wrong?” he discuss the reasons why cheating is wrong also how it affects students in the long run. Cheating will become a more often thing and schools will continue to report high numbers of academic dishonesty. Keeping it part of the culture. Which is acceptable to Nathan, but she failed to layout the consequences of cheating. Throughout the four articles on cheating each author view it differently, but Rebekah Nathan article offers effective insight about the college culture and the practice of cheating.

She reviews how educators can be very strict on enforcing honor-codes, but students have trouble understanding the line between original, individual work vs. plagiarized, group work. “As a journalism instructor, I have encouraged students to work together in ways that other honor-code-bound professors would deem “unpermitted collaboration--...” Teachers all have their own rule about plagiarism violations and explain to students the punishment they face if caught. Even though students received discipline in this one computer science class at Stanford University does not mean all instructors at honor-code schools are as rigorous when it comes to collaboration work among their students. Not every college upholds the same conduct when someone has been found at fault; every situation is different. The way one school approaches the situation may not be the way another school does. “Further, rates of overall cheating at honor-code schools rose slightly between the 1990-1991 and 2005-2006 school years, while they declined at no-code schools. As McCabe writes, the influence of honor codes “has eroded over the past two decades.” Greenburg includes no explanation why this decline and rise happened to farther her argument. Not enough anti-plagiarism encouragement methods in the schools could be a reason for the rise. Her connection of the two schools does not necessarily mean that

To some degree this true, in that plagiarizing words does take them from the mouth and mind of the original author, leaving them with an inability to utilize them until returned. In essence it is as Pettigrew (2010) indicates, “…taking the work of another and passing it off as your own is not that you’ve taken the work…you’ve passed it off as your own. Plagiarism, therefore, is not stealing. It’s counterfeiting.” On a penalty grid, counterfeiting hold a much stiffer penalty than simple theft, so perhaps this puts it in a better perspective.

Plagiarism is an increasing large issue on college campuses, a habit to most of the student. According to the article ‘’The Plagiarism Plague’’, the findings on the survey made to 50,000 students on more than 60 campuses was that 70 percent of the students admitted that they cheated. Half of the students surveyed admitted that one or more times made serious cheating on writing assignments, with 77 percent of the students surveyed said that cheating was not a serious issue.

There are many definitions of plagiarism. The Code of Academic Honesty at Cornell University described this act as “the unacknowledged use of the words or ideas of others” (2005). “Using the words, sentences, arguments, rhetorical structures, and ideas of another without proper citation and acknowledgment” is how plagiarism was defined in the Code of Academic Honesty at the University of Iowa (2016). The Honor Code

Many researchers have indicated that cheating is a serious problem on campuses (Bowers, 1964; Engler et al., 2008; Gallant, 2008; Leming, 1978; McCabe, Trevino, & Butterfield, 2001). Studies completed by Bowers (1964) and McCabe and Trevino (1996) revealed nearly identical results regarding student-cheating behavior despite the 30 year time span; both studies identified that