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[expatinuk]

In my first year of grad school I had a student turn in a paper, three weeks late, that was copied directly out of our textbook.  The paragraphs were stuck together in an odd order, with random sentences between them.  Failing grade, definitely.  Highlighted everthing & submitted it to the (faculty-run) academic intergity office.  Nothing happened.  Why?  I forgot that players on our top-ten ranked NCAA I football team are exempt from all rules.  And it turned out he was technically "innocent" because it was the academic coach of the team that had actually put all that intellectual power into pasting paragraphs out of the text together. 

uhhh.... that's the kind of behavior that gets a University on NCAA probation. And believe me the NCAA takes academic work very seriously.

[outlander]

I caught a student with information written on hu's hand during a final.  It was a course I was team-teaching and the other profs didn't care if students got up to go the bathroom during a final.  I did, but was outnumbered as being the "insensitive hard ass".  This student left for a bathroom break, came back 10-15 min later (!!!) - just as I was getting up to take hus test up for being gone so long - and was obviously trying to read information off of hus hand when hu resumed the test.   

I quietly made hu turn hus test in and leave.  The student then went into the front office to complain about me, showing everyone the writing on hus hand, saying, "I can't believe Dr. O. made me turn in  my test because of this!  This stuff isn't even going to help me on the test!"  Turns out the student had indeed written notes on hus hand while out of the room with the intention of cheating, but had written the wrong stuff or not enough information.  So even though the intention was there it wasn't fully realized to it's highest potential.  Technicality, right?

Because I hadn't marched the student to the photocopier and made a copy of the information - even though the student had admitted to the chair that hu was trying to cheat but couldn't do it well - I was told by my chair to let the student retake a different test.  I fumed but complied.  Hu earned a C for the course instead of the D hu would have gotten with a zero on the final (or an F for the course which is what I would have liked, hard ass that I am!).  Two days later I had a royal protest in my office by the parents of the outraged students who had not cheated but had not passed, or had earned a lower grade.  It was a royal mess. 

The last page of my syllabus now has a contract that the students must sign.  It has the grading scale restated on the page, the statement I have made that says that academic dishonesty will NOT be tolerated (and it lists out things like letting others copy work, plagiarism, bringing outside study aids to exams, etc) and a statement that the student understands that they will be held accountable according to MY rules of what I see as unacceptable behavior AND the school's academic honesty code.

I hate having to spell things out, but after that fiasco I wasn't going to get caught with the "I didn't know we weren't allowed to write on our hands" crap again.   How do they NOT know this is inappropriate and how do committees fall for that crap?!

O.

[menotti]

I was on my school's honor committee.  Our official rule was that the first offense was considered educational.  Because of that, the penalty was light (I think it was the professor's prerogative to decide what to do about the grade, but I don't remember) but a student should have been brought in for unintentional as well as intentional violations.  Most students got community service/essays on academic dishonesty for the first offense.  I would guess some professors felt that was "getting away with cheating".

The second offense was supposed to be punished heavily.  In my time there, we only had a single second offense, and we voted to expel the student.  The Dean overturned that, though.

[rattusdomesticus]

I had one student turn in an astounding rewrite of a failing paper -- as in, "Whose mother wrote this" kind of good.

First, I asked him if it was his work. He said "Yes." Then I asked him if anyone had "helped him" rewrite it -- like a tutor or something. He said, "No." Then I pulled out a sheet I'd made which reiterated 12 pompous and obscure terms and phrases he had used, and told him to define each one and use them in a sentence. A real sentence -- not "Obfuscate is in the dictionary" kind of stuff. He got 2 out of 12 and I failed him in the course. My syllabus had, of course, listed this as academic dishonesty, so my d.c. had to support me.

I also had a student bring a handwritten outline into an in-class written essay (final). In my syllabus, I had specifically said that outside materials (notes, handouts, books) were not allowed. I caught her, pulled the outline from her materials, motioned her to come outside the classsroom and confronted her. She tried to say that she had just written the outline, but it was done in a different ink and was very obviously unhurried handwriting. I failed her in the course, just as my syllabus said I would. My d.c. supported this, too.

I miss that department chair. He really did get behind faculty. I hope someday to find another like him.

[philnotfil]

I had one student turn in an astounding rewrite of a failing paper -- as in, "Whose mother wrote this" kind of good.

First, I asked him if it was his work. He said "Yes." Then I asked him if anyone had "helped him" rewrite it -- like a tutor or something. He said, "No." Then I pulled out a sheet I'd made which reiterated 12 pompous and obscure terms and phrases he had used, and told him to define each one and use them in a sentence. A real sentence -- not "Obfuscate is in the dictionary" kind of stuff. He got 2 out of 12 and I failed him in the course. My syllabus had, of course, listed this as academic dishonesty, so my d.c. had to support me.

How do you put that into syllabus language?

[onion]

When I was a grad student at an Ivy League university, I taught the first-year comp course.  The final assignment of the term was a research-based essay, which included two drafts before the final, and the students had to turn in their research with the draft.  One of my students wrote a stunning paper on restructuring the American electoral system.  She was not a strong student, so I flipped through her research.  Tucked into the research was a print-out of an email from her mother, who was a political science professor at a prestigious university.  Her mother had written the paper for her, and emailed it to her.  I called the student in and confronted her; she turned beet red and started crying and claimed that if she didn't do well in school, her parents would be very upset.  I turned this all over to the Dean, and the Dean dismissed all the charges.  When I spoke to the Dean about it, she said "oh, she's under so much pressure from her family, I decided to cut her some slack."  I was livid!  I was still permitted to give her an F on the assignment, and she got a C in the class.

I had another student from a very wealthy family (as in, part of the library and some graduate fellowships bore their name) who blatantly cheated on his midterm, paper, and final.  I caught him each time, and failed him on each assignment.  Now, I was only a TA at this point, and when the prof "teaching" the class asked me why Little Lord Fauntleroy had failed the class, and I explained that he had been sitting in the exam room copy out of his open notebook on the floor, etc., the prof said "This is the kind of student who just does not fail."  Right in front of my eyes, the prof changed the kid's grade to a B. Shocking.