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I went to a school that actually tried to enforce it, and unfortunately it ended up being enforced wildly disproportionately along racial lines. My school had

I went to a school that actually tried to enforce it, and unfortunately it ended up being enforced wildly disproportionately along racial lines. My school had a very simple rule: if you were caught cheating, you were expelled. No strikes, no exceptions. That is a massive burden to put on an educator. Getting expelled from your university is a very serious, mandated fork in the road for anyone it happens to. So what do they do? If they relate to/empathize with the person, they try to handle it without reporting it. If they don’t, they reported and “let the system handle it.” As any reasonable person would expect, white people were not reported and marginalized groups were. Privileged groups also got exceptions (the football team had a massive cheating scandal that should have expelled about 15 players, and the professor reported it! But mumble mumble uhh they learned their lesson). After over a century they finally ended the system recently and honestly? Good. I appreciated what they were attempting to do, but it didn’t work.

f33d5173 6mo ago
You could just... make punishments more proportionate? If people are regularly circumventing your punishment system because they feel it's too harsh, maybe take that as a sign.
- Forgeties79 6mo ago
  That’s exactly what they did. Switched to a multiple strike system. Still, it was a very controversial change. The point though is these “honor codes” can become incredibly discriminatory and often, when scrutinized, prove not be effective at stopping cheating.
rayiner 6mo ago
[flagged]
- FireBeyond 6mo ago
  What, did racism end with “I have a dream…”? Public high schools in Georgia were still holding segregated proms no more than 10 years ago.
  - george916a 6mo ago
    [dead]
  - rayiner 6mo ago
    The elimination of personal racism in towns of less than 1,500 people in rural georgia isn’t a prerequisite to be skeptical of the claim that a university, which is subject to tremendous legal scrutiny and liability, is treating people differently based on race with regard to rule enforcement. Especially so when you’re invoking the specter of racially discriminatory enforcement as a reason against rules that would be highly beneficial for everyone. You can’t invoke unproven allegations of racism to argue against having rules and enforcing them. That’s just a red herring for people who don’t like rules.
    - nixon_why69 6mo ago
      OP stated that they witnessed the discrepancy firsthand. They didn't name the school, how are you so confident that they're wrong?
      - rayiner 6mo ago
        How does a student know how much cheating goes unreported in each group to form an opinion as to whether the policy is being applied fairly?
        Forgeties79 6mo ago
        I’m an alum now, not a student, but even college students can submit a FOIA request. Additionally, the school can look in to it if it wants. The possibilities are near-endless for getting this kind of info. There’s also the simple fact that it’s not like it’s a secret when someone is expelled. I don’t understand why you think it’s so impossible for people to prove this problem exists. For starters, they could simply survey the faculty and ask them how they handle cheating at the school to better understand how it’s reported. Which they did, and it was very revealing. Most did not feel comfortable reporting. They literally told the school. So out the gate you had less than half the faculty even participating, which immediately changes who is impacted (I.e. incredibly unfair enforcement). Before we’re even getting into race and other factors students are basically subject to a near-coin flip over whether or not their professors even report it. Then you have to take the professor’s own potential biases into account, since it’s basically all on them (and peers to a lesser degree. Do I need to explain 18-21 year olds can exercise poor social judgment and/or may not want to ruin someone’s life? Or worse, want to?) voluntarily report this. Additionally, you could see the breakdown by race (and more) of people that were expelled. The numbers made no sense if you wanted to assert the system was fair - less than 20% of those reported or expelled were white at a school over 80% white. For emphasis: This was the case both for reporting them and verdict. It was common knowledge and over the years there had been several attempts by students to shut the one strike/expulsion only system down. There were also big gender discrepancies, with men being accused and expelled way more than women. Do you believe that claim? The real issue here is why you immediately come from a place of “that’s impossible,” when it’s something that’s not actually very difficult to prove. That’s literally why it was removed. It was demonstrably discriminatory. Either way, this isn’t complicated and the data isn’t and wasn’t exactly hard to come by. So now it’s gone and the school is better for it.
- FatherOfCurses 6mo ago
  https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2022/06/30/academic-integrity-issues-are-not-race-neutral-opinion https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2022/06/30/academic-int... https://www.princeton.edu/news/2019/04/02/racial-bias-associated-disparities-disciplinary-action-across-us-schools https://www.princeton.edu/news/2019/04/02/racial-bias-associ...
grey-area 6mo ago
The obvious answer would be to make the punishment more proportionate. Caught cheating in an exam? Lose half the marks for that exam (for example). Expulsion is far too harsh if cheating is widespread but there should be some penalty.
- Forgeties79 6mo ago
  Agreed. And they finally changed it to a multi-strike system with different punishments. Which is good!
Jiro 6mo ago
Could it be that cheating was enforced dispropportionately along racial lines because cheating happened disproportionately along racial lines?

f33d5173 6mo ago

You could just... make punishments more proportionate? If people are regularly circumventing your punishment system because they feel it's too harsh, maybe take that as a sign.

Forgeties79 6mo ago
That’s exactly what they did. Switched to a multiple strike system. Still, it was a very controversial change. The point though is these “honor codes” can become incredibly discriminatory and often, when scrutinized, prove not be effective at stopping cheating.

rayiner 6mo ago

[flagged]

FireBeyond 6mo ago
What, did racism end with “I have a dream…”? Public high schools in Georgia were still holding segregated proms no more than 10 years ago.
- george916a 6mo ago
  [dead]
- rayiner 6mo ago
  The elimination of personal racism in towns of less than 1,500 people in rural georgia isn’t a prerequisite to be skeptical of the claim that a university, which is subject to tremendous legal scrutiny and liability, is treating people differently based on race with regard to rule enforcement. Especially so when you’re invoking the specter of racially discriminatory enforcement as a reason against rules that would be highly beneficial for everyone. You can’t invoke unproven allegations of racism to argue against having rules and enforcing them. That’s just a red herring for people who don’t like rules.
  - nixon_why69 6mo ago
    OP stated that they witnessed the discrepancy firsthand. They didn't name the school, how are you so confident that they're wrong?
    - rayiner 6mo ago
      How does a student know how much cheating goes unreported in each group to form an opinion as to whether the policy is being applied fairly?
      - Forgeties79 6mo ago
        I’m an alum now, not a student, but even college students can submit a FOIA request. Additionally, the school can look in to it if it wants. The possibilities are near-endless for getting this kind of info. There’s also the simple fact that it’s not like it’s a secret when someone is expelled. I don’t understand why you think it’s so impossible for people to prove this problem exists. For starters, they could simply survey the faculty and ask them how they handle cheating at the school to better understand how it’s reported. Which they did, and it was very revealing. Most did not feel comfortable reporting. They literally told the school. So out the gate you had less than half the faculty even participating, which immediately changes who is impacted (I.e. incredibly unfair enforcement). Before we’re even getting into race and other factors students are basically subject to a near-coin flip over whether or not their professors even report it. Then you have to take the professor’s own potential biases into account, since it’s basically all on them (and peers to a lesser degree. Do I need to explain 18-21 year olds can exercise poor social judgment and/or may not want to ruin someone’s life? Or worse, want to?) voluntarily report this. Additionally, you could see the breakdown by race (and more) of people that were expelled. The numbers made no sense if you wanted to assert the system was fair - less than 20% of those reported or expelled were white at a school over 80% white. For emphasis: This was the case both for reporting them and verdict. It was common knowledge and over the years there had been several attempts by students to shut the one strike/expulsion only system down. There were also big gender discrepancies, with men being accused and expelled way more than women. Do you believe that claim? The real issue here is why you immediately come from a place of “that’s impossible,” when it’s something that’s not actually very difficult to prove. That’s literally why it was removed. It was demonstrably discriminatory. Either way, this isn’t complicated and the data isn’t and wasn’t exactly hard to come by. So now it’s gone and the school is better for it.
FatherOfCurses 6mo ago
https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2022/06/30/academic-integrity-issues-are-not-race-neutral-opinion https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2022/06/30/academic-int... https://www.princeton.edu/news/2019/04/02/racial-bias-associated-disparities-disciplinary-action-across-us-schools https://www.princeton.edu/news/2019/04/02/racial-bias-associ...

grey-area 6mo ago

The obvious answer would be to make the punishment more proportionate. Caught cheating in an exam? Lose half the marks for that exam (for example). Expulsion is far too harsh if cheating is widespread but there should be some penalty.

Forgeties79 6mo ago
Agreed. And they finally changed it to a multi-strike system with different punishments. Which is good!

Jiro 6mo ago

Could it be that cheating was enforced dispropportionately along racial lines because cheating happened disproportionately along racial lines?