Editor,
I had strong mixed feelings last week when seeing the Daily Lobo’s headline, “Plagiarism up, punishment down.”
Part of me resigned myself to it and part of me winced and said, “That better not be true!”
I’m a 56-year-old scientist coming back to finish a Ph.D. in order to teach out my autumn years. And in my lifetime, I’ve seen it: The signal that someone was capable of original thought went from high school diploma to bachelor’s degree to master’s. Part of that has been a surging supply of college graduates, and part of it really is devaluation. Most companies I’ve worked with don’t even put your résumé in a folder unless you have a master’s degree. Why? In part, because institutions that once left cheating sophomores whimpering outside the gates now graduate them in the lower quartile of their classes. Large class sizes make policing difficult, while the Internet encourages plagiarism, and financial and social pressures blur the boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable behavior.
So, a policy that was once “No Tolerance” is now “Three Strikes” — as if cheating was like accidentally exceeding the speed limit. It takes me 30 minutes to get to school in the morning, and I’m not cheating for more than 25 of them. No, cheating is a conscious act. But all cheaters rely on the majority not to cheat — that’s what makes cheating work. They’re free-riders. And like other sociopaths, cheaters don’t see it as their own fault, like accidental speeding.
As a UNM instructor, I’ve reported cheaters, and I’ve been satisfied with the deans’ response. I want cheaters to be punished the first time. Because even if Joshua Chappell (the student quoted in the article) is right that cheaters ultimately fail, they hurt others on the way. Most of my 100-level students struggle to pass (or, occasionally, fail) their courses without cheating. A “Three Strikes” policy means that a significant fraction of their classmates may be doing better than they are by cheating. The fact that cheaters fail by their senior year does not make the honest 100-level student feel any less like a chump. “Three Strikes” cheapens the honest students, their educational experience, and, ultimately, their degrees.
Believe me — in other areas I’m considered a radical, but academically, I guess I’m old-school. Bring back “No Tolerance.”
Dave Dixon
UNM Ph.D. candidate
