4 ms·

Its a trap. A written confession may result in serious consequences; without that, prof can't prove John is John...

fusiongyro 14y ago
This is classic programmer thinking. Administration will accept that the account belongs to the student because the names are the same and the question matches the exam question. Stronger evidence will not be required.
- jeremyjh 14y ago
  At first they may accept that but do you really think the student isn't going to challenge it? There actually is due process involved in matters like this, and part of that is assessing the evidence. The only reason the prof asked for the confession is because otherwise he has absolutely nothing.
  - fusiongyro 14y ago
    The burden of proof for a reprimand at a university is a lot lower than in a court. Every university takes a hard line on cheating (or at least, wants to be perceived that way), and all other things being equal they will side with their faculty over their students. So no, I doubt very seriously that "due process" at the university level is going to require harder evidence than this, until the student is thrown out of the school and dad's lawyer decides to sue, and even then it won't be hard to materialize a contract signed by the student at matriculation that alleviates the university of any kind of obligation to be fair about these kinds of punishments. The likelihood of a student being "framed" is a lot lower than the likelihood of the student just being stupid and expecting not to get caught. When bringing this up before the university ethics board the student will have to do more than argue that anybody could have registered under their name. There will probably need to be some proof that somebody else did it. If you think otherwise, wait until you or somebody you know winds up on the wrong side of a university ethics panel. You'd be surprised how very little it takes to get in trouble and how difficult it can be to get out of trouble. A friend of mine got brought before an ethics panel for hacking, by simply sending the IT staff an email about a page with a vulnerability. Nothing was exploited and nobody was told about it except one person in the IT department. It took five profs arguing against the absurdity of the proceedings to get the sentence reduced from being kicked out to "just" one semester of probation. In short, the prof doesn't need the confession. The student would be wise to write one and play up that this is their first time cheating. Trying to fight this like a legal battle will only make the school that much more eager to kick the student out.
w1ntermute 14y ago
Most of the time there's a demand for a written confession, it's to get evidence against the student. Despite what anyone might say about how it's important to "own up" to your mistakes, when there's already solid evidence against someone, you confront them first and then make them write an apology. You don't ask for a confession up front unless you have nothing to work with.
pbhjpbhj 14y ago
Maybe not beyond reasonable doubt but if the student wants to push the point then a University board is likely only to need to demonstrate that the questioner is a particular student on the balance of probabilities (in order to avoid falling foul of a later legal challenge). There may well be data held on the Uni computer network, for example that would help to prove who the culprit is to a high enough degree too - eg an account ID matched with IP of math.stackexchange.com around the time the question was asked.
- jeremyjh 14y ago
  That would not be possible unless all HTTP is forced through a proxy server, which is very unlikely in a Uni network. I worked in a University NOC and I can tell you that this is not going to happen even if they do have the logs; unless an actual crime was involved or its somehow going to mean negative PR you aren't going to get cooperation from them on something like this.
  - pbhjpbhj 14y ago
    I would've expected a basic "domains accessed + timestamp" log on a per login basis would be reasonably standard to guard against abuse of computer facilities. Would grep-ing a classes logs for the timestamps of accesses to "math.stackexchange.com" be too great an infringement to guard against fraudulent activity. It's probably only tortuous but still fraud in the process of obtaining a degree is a pretty serious offense in Uni terms.
- mcg1969 14y ago
  I doubt that StackExchange would be willing to assist here, but if they were, they could share the email address used to establish the account.

This is classic programmer thinking. Administration will accept that the account belongs to the student because the names are the same and the question matches the exam question. Stronger evidence will not be required.

jeremyjh 14y ago
At first they may accept that but do you really think the student isn't going to challenge it? There actually is due process involved in matters like this, and part of that is assessing the evidence. The only reason the prof asked for the confession is because otherwise he has absolutely nothing.
- fusiongyro 14y ago
  The burden of proof for a reprimand at a university is a lot lower than in a court. Every university takes a hard line on cheating (or at least, wants to be perceived that way), and all other things being equal they will side with their faculty over their students. So no, I doubt very seriously that "due process" at the university level is going to require harder evidence than this, until the student is thrown out of the school and dad's lawyer decides to sue, and even then it won't be hard to materialize a contract signed by the student at matriculation that alleviates the university of any kind of obligation to be fair about these kinds of punishments. The likelihood of a student being "framed" is a lot lower than the likelihood of the student just being stupid and expecting not to get caught. When bringing this up before the university ethics board the student will have to do more than argue that anybody could have registered under their name. There will probably need to be some proof that somebody else did it. If you think otherwise, wait until you or somebody you know winds up on the wrong side of a university ethics panel. You'd be surprised how very little it takes to get in trouble and how difficult it can be to get out of trouble. A friend of mine got brought before an ethics panel for hacking, by simply sending the IT staff an email about a page with a vulnerability. Nothing was exploited and nobody was told about it except one person in the IT department. It took five profs arguing against the absurdity of the proceedings to get the sentence reduced from being kicked out to "just" one semester of probation. In short, the prof doesn't need the confession. The student would be wise to write one and play up that this is their first time cheating. Trying to fight this like a legal battle will only make the school that much more eager to kick the student out.

w1ntermute 14y ago

Most of the time there's a demand for a written confession, it's to get evidence against the student. Despite what anyone might say about how it's important to "own up" to your mistakes, when there's already solid evidence against someone, you confront them first and then make them write an apology. You don't ask for a confession up front unless you have nothing to work with.

pbhjpbhj 14y ago

Maybe not beyond reasonable doubt but if the student wants to push the point then a University board is likely only to need to demonstrate that the questioner is a particular student on the balance of probabilities (in order to avoid falling foul of a later legal challenge). There may well be data held on the Uni computer network, for example that would help to prove who the culprit is to a high enough degree too - eg an account ID matched with IP of math.stackexchange.com around the time the question was asked.

jeremyjh 14y ago
That would not be possible unless all HTTP is forced through a proxy server, which is very unlikely in a Uni network. I worked in a University NOC and I can tell you that this is not going to happen even if they do have the logs; unless an actual crime was involved or its somehow going to mean negative PR you aren't going to get cooperation from them on something like this.
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago
  I would've expected a basic "domains accessed + timestamp" log on a per login basis would be reasonably standard to guard against abuse of computer facilities. Would grep-ing a classes logs for the timestamps of accesses to "math.stackexchange.com" be too great an infringement to guard against fraudulent activity. It's probably only tortuous but still fraud in the process of obtaining a degree is a pretty serious offense in Uni terms.
mcg1969 14y ago
I doubt that StackExchange would be willing to assist here, but if they were, they could share the email address used to establish the account.