Episodes of cheating that you have known and loved

[youbet]

Not cheating, exactly, but I had lot of contacts with people who were ahead of me in my degree programs and I made a big effort to get old tests. At Georgia tech, they called it "word", as in, "have you got word on professor X's physics class?" I always knew the material, but often there was a tricky question or two. I'd study and understand the intricacies then wouldn't get caught out on those. I felt a little guilty if the prof re-used an old test that was exactly the same. Rarely happened, but sometimes I'd get a 4 year pile of old tests. And to add to the guilty, I paid it forward or backward to the students who followed me. But typically, for me, the difference with and without the old tests was no more than upgrade from a B+ to an A.

I noticed that DS's frat house (at a top ten engineering-orientated university) had extensive files of past exams as well as assignments, projects and papers written by earlier residents. Pledges were assigned the task of keeping things filed and organized and spent lots and lots of time doing so. The cabinets filled a small room.

This was years ago. I'm sure today they've added computerization and scanning the documents and establishing a search function.

I suppose it's a benefit of belonging to a "nerd" fraternity at a tech-orientated university.

 

[Retiree_Having_Fun]

At engineering school - had a final exam that was traditionally very difficult. I loved the subject and knew I would have no trouble at the exam.

We were in a large lecture hall and everybody was setup by the proctor to be about 4 chairs apart. After about 10 minutes, I guy that I knew sat right next to me and proceed to unabashedly look at my test. This was a two hour exam and I promptly closed my test book and sat there for the next 60 minutes knowing I could do the test in less than 1/2 the time available. They guy decided to wait me out but finally gave up after 60 minutes of me staring forward.

He moved next to somebody else and copied off them - proctor was an idiot and reading some harlequin romance book throughout the test.

 

[RunningBum]

Not cheating, exactly, but I had lot of contacts with people who were ahead of me in my degree programs and I made a big effort to get old tests. At Georgia tech, they called it "word", as in, "have you got word on professor X's physics class?" I always knew the material, but often there was a tricky question or two. I'd study and understand the intricacies then wouldn't get caught out on those. I felt a little guilty if the prof re-used an old test that was exactly the same. Rarely happened, but sometimes I'd get a 4 year pile of old tests. And to add to the guilty, I paid it forward or backward to the students who followed me. But typically, for me, the difference with and without the old tests was no more than upgrade from a B+ to an A.

I did something like that. I think it was differential equations, there were a bunch of classes but all were going to use the same final, and I found out which professor was making the final. One of my friends was in his class and I got all of his old tests from the year. I worked through them again and again and the test was hard but I got the highest grade in the class, maybe even all classes, and brought my grade up from a B to an A+.

 

[homestead]

In High School algebra class a good looking blonde girl sat next to me. She never paid any attention to me except on test day because I usually got top scores on the tests. I saw her trying to copy so I just used my arm to shield my answers. The teacher never noticed.

 

[RunningBum]

I reprogrammed a simulator so I could pass the unbeatable Kobayashi Maru test at Starfleet. Oh wait, that was Captain Kirk in Star Trek.

 

[Walt34]

In high school I handed a paper into one class that I had already used for another class. It was cheating but not copying from another.

If it was actually your paper and your work, why is that cheating?

In college by carefully selecting the topic I once was able to use the same term paper for three different classes in the same semester and got an "A" in all of them. I did do the work, it was in fact my paper, and it met the criteria for all three classes. It never occurred to me that anyone would consider that cheating.

The worst part of course was that this being pre-computer days I had to retype the extra two copies.

 

[rodi]

One case of cheating was so blatant it was ridiculous. A group of students from another country all spoke the same dialect. They talked through l throughout the whole test in their dialect. It was obvious to us other students they were group working the problems. Finally a student went to the teacher and complained. Teacher refused to do anything about it or stop them from talking.

Another case was widely used for a few tests. The teacher had two sections of the same course. He didn't care which section you attended. So students enrolled in the afternoon section would attend the morning section. In test days that means they got to see the test and smuggle it out of class... Then retake it that afternoon, having the advantage of books, groups of students, etc, to solve the problems in between the morning and afternoon section. Again, other students reported it to the teacher and it took him a while to believe... But after the midterm he took attendance on test days and if you weren't enrolled in the morning section, you were kicked out and denied the opportunity to take the test in the afternoon. That ended that scheme.

 

[Lsbcal]

If it was actually your paper and your work, why is that cheating?

In college by carefully selecting the topic I once was able to use the same term paper for three different classes in the same semester and got an "A" in all of them. I did do the work, it was in fact my paper, and it met the criteria for all three classes. It never occurred to me that anyone would consider that cheating.

The worst part of course was that this being pre-computer days I had to retype the extra two copies.

You did it even better then me.

Why is it cheating? Well, let's put it this way I would not have wanted my teacher to know I reused a paper from another class. So if it's not cheating it sure isn't something honorable.

 

[JoeWras]

Another case was widely used for a few tests. The teacher had two sections of the same course. He didn't care which section you attended. So students enrolled in the afternoon section would attend the morning section. In test days that means they got to see the test and smuggle it out of class... Then retake it that afternoon, having the advantage of books, groups of students, etc, to solve the problems in between the morning and afternoon section. Again, other students reported it to the teacher and it took him a while to believe... But after the midterm he took attendance on test days and if you weren't enrolled in the morning section, you were kicked out and denied the opportunity to take the test in the afternoon. That ended that scheme.

Wow! Big classes with multiple sections always had exams at one time only, in the evening. Apparently, MegaUni had a process for this and it always worked out without conflicts, except that it conflicted with beer drinking.

I disliked those mega-classes because of that. Thankfully, they were few in number. Things like Psych101, Physics101, etc. All times were published well in advance for those who had conflicts like jobs. Beer drinking was not a job or acceptable conflict.

I remember one time the professor was late to the 7PM final. We were about to leave (all 200 of us) when he came in harried. He said someone stole a box of tests. So, he created ad hoc questions on the fly, writing them on the chalkboard.

I did well on that exam!

Turns out, the "stolen" tests were covered by a painter's tarp. Duh-oh! He gave everyone the option to keep the score or dump it. I kept mine.

 

[Badger]

When I was in grad school I was proctoring a history exam when I noticed a young woman constantly looking down into her lap. A common cheating method (male and female) is to have note cards on your lap during an exam. However, when I did a circuit around the room, I saw nothing untoward. After I got back to the front, the lap referrals began again. I am convinced that the young lady either had note cards under her skirt or had written notes on her thigh. But I was NOT going to confront her. What would I say, "Young lady, what are you hiding under your skirt?"

I had a somewhat less than successful student in class that tried a similar tactic but was using her cell phone in her lap. Cell phones were not permitted in class or had to be turned off and put away or get a "0" on the test. She was willing to take the chance. I could see her hide the cell phone as I walked around the class. At one point the cell phone dropped from her lap onto the floor with an accompanying noise. I could see she was in a panic. I knew her grades were low enough she was not going to get more than a "D" for the semester so I let it go to see what she would do. She couldn't take the chance of picking it up right away so she waited until she handed in her exam to pick up her books that were on the floor to retrieve the cell phone. Anything that she was able to get off her cell phone didn't help. She dropped the class soon after and lost out on her tuition and time. I guess she saw the "writing on the wall".



Cheers!

 

[Junior]

More cases:

People paying a professional to whom they sent a picture of the exam (via phone) and solves it for them to get a 75% or 85% mark to not get caught.

Twin brothers in different classes doing half of the other brother's subjects. They got caught when one of them broke his arm and had to do an exam of a subject he had not prepared for.

 

[Bigdawg]

Pursuing an MBA in my early 50's while working and traveling, I had my DW do several of my papers for a couple of classes. She enjoyed doing them and did excellent work. I couldn't have done it without her. I considered it "helping" not cheating. I retired 2 months after graduating.

DW is currently a GS employee. I'm a gov contractor. All GS employees where she works are assigned to a "competency". Her job has absolutely zero correlation to the "competency" she is assigned. She works hard. A min of 45 hours/wk but only gets paid 40. She is required to take a certain amount of online courses that align with her "competency". I take them for her. I know her job well because I did that same job in the military for 20 plus years. Trust me, these courses provide zero benefit to her career or jobs skills for this last job she will ever have. So cheating? Yes. Do I care? Not in the least bit.

 

[jollystomper]

The last physical fight I was in was in high school, when another bigger, stronger student tried to bully me into copying one of my papers to submit as his own. When I refused, at lunch he cam up and sprayed a soda on me, I shoved him, and we got into it for a bit before folks broke it up. Fortunately those were the days when the schools did not automatically suspend you for a fight, I got a chance to explain my side so nothing happened to me.

In college I worked in the one of the academic departments in which I also took several classes during my years there. Since part of my job was copying tests for upcoming classes, on a couple of occasions I was approached by two "friends" who knew I worked there asking me to get them a copy. I refused, I had no desire to get kicked out of my Ivy League school. Today those "friends" are lawyers, go figure. Also, I would let my supervisor - the office manager - know when I was taking a class so that she would not have me working with any of the class related materials ahead of time. One she forgot and gave me some stuff to copy, among them was an upcoming exam for a class I was taking. I told both her and the professor, and the professor created a separate exam for me to take.

DW as a professor has encountered multiple episode of cheating. Two of them:

-The "funniest" was a paper where about a half-dozen students used the exact same couple of pages, which they sadly had copied from someone who was not a stellar student. The student has misread/misheard a phrase as "anointed whale" and used it throughout the paper... and so did the folks who copied it.

-The "saddest" was twice when she was pressured by coaches to "reconsider" the failing grade she had given to a varsity student that would make then academically ineligible. Both times she refused, and was escalated to her department head. In both cases she stood her ground, and the students had simply stopped doing work and coming to class, and no she was not going to come up with "make up" work for them. Incidents like these were one reason she refused to become a department head, as they were constantly having to deal with this. Interestingly, in one of the cases, two years later the student sought her out to thank her for what she did, it helped wake him up to personal responsibility that many folks had shielded him from due to his athletic skills.

 

[Bigdawg]

It appears cheating is a skill set developed at an early age and carries through with the person the rest of their lives. I can honestly say I never did it or saw any value to it. Cheaters are like thieves except they are robbing themselves.

Hmm, ever drive 56 MPH in a 55 zone? Thought so. Cheater!

 

[HawkeyeNFO]

At flight school, the motto was "If you ain't cheatin, you ain't tryin." That being said, it only applies in a few situations, and there's really no way to cheat your way through training and earn your wings.

When I went to the Command and General Staff College, a couple of Army Majors were so stupid that they copied and pasted items from the internet, put it in their papers, but failed to cite their sources. It was obvious that they were lazy and cheating because they also failed to remove the underlined hyperlinks from their papers. Plagiarism was taken very seriously, so they were dealt with accordingly. Not sure what the punishments were, but it involved UCMJ charges and associated proceedings.

 

[Stonewalker]

Boy am I embarrassed....thought this was about affairs....

ROFL. So did I.

 

[frayne]

Hmm, ever drive 56 MPH in a 55 zone? Thought so. Cheater!

Apples and oranges my friend.

 

[sengsational]

I was taking a summer course which is really short... the first day the prof said we would have a test each Fri... and that there were examples of his tests in the library (come to find out a number of profs had them there... I never knew)...

The source of many of the old tests that I accumulated were publish like this...by the prof and at the library 'copy center' for a nickel a page. I think it was the prof trying to level the playing field between those who were connected with previous attendees and those who were not. Now everyone had "word" on the class. My "transgression" into oranges was that I didn't stop after studying the currently published test. I dug into the oldest, dustiest archives. Very often those offered zero benefit to the nature of the test I ended up talking, but always helped me better understand the material, if by nothing more than sheer repetition.

 

[foxfirev5]

Cheating isn’t limited to students or school. It infected the workplace, and seems to be pretty common in sports and dating sites.

Well I'll be the first to admit to a cheating episode in the corporate world. During a reorg and company sale a consulting firm was hired to "evaluate" the current staff. The process included a number of touchy feely courses which were followed by a test. It was soon discovered that for some reason older employees were more concrete in their thought process and not doing too well on the tests.

My small group of six fifty somethings did not do too well on the first round of exams. Then one of the guy's got in with an HR person and got the "right" answers. We then split the answers among ourselves and got enough random wrong answers to avoid detection.

No regrets. New management took over and scrapped all this crap. However one person did get canned for supposedly "failing the program". His termination was even dated a week before the evaluation started. He made out very well. Bless the secretary who had the guts to stand her ground about the dates she was told to fill out the paperwork.


Looking back there are very few years over the decades where I couldn't have been fired for some offense. Construction and building - need I say more?

 

[CoolRich59]

...but sometimes classmates will sabotage experiments so that you would get a worse grade than everyone else.

Had a similar experience, but in law school. The #1 ranked student in our class would walk around before finals "sabotaging" people by telling them he'd learned that the exam would contain a question about some esoteric topic when it didn't. Those who fell for it would spend inordinate amounts of time studying niche material that was never going to be tested.

After a couple of semesters, most people caught on to his game and refused to talk to him.

I was able to administer a little karma to him however. In our Property class, for reasons unknown to me, the byzantine nature of executory property interests came easy to me (stuff like the rule against perpetuities). Before our Property final, this guy came to me because he was having trouble understanding some of these future interests. If it had been anyone else, I would have gladly helped. In his case, however, I deliberately gave him the wrong answers.

Sure enough, the topic was covered on the final, he got it wrong, and for one semester, was knocked from #1 to #2 in class rank. He never talked to me again, but my classmates actually gave me an ovation when the news came out.

 

[Lewis Clark]

It was obvious that they were lazy and cheating because they also failed to remove the underlined hyperlinks from their papers.

As an online college teacher I see this a lot. When I was working full time I would usually catch at least 40 or 50 incidents like this each semester.

One of my students was trying to answer a question about how halos form in the atmosphere. She searched the Internet and found an advertisement for a product called "Halo" that was a piece of chemistry laboratory equipment. She copied and pasted the entire advertisement, including the spelling errors.

When I told her I caught her cheating, she swore up and down that she was offended I would accuse her - a preacher's wife! - of cheating, and even appealed to the department chair. When the chair and I told her we did not believe her, she finally backed down and admitted it.

On at least 2 occasions, I had students taking proctored tests using an online proctoring service. The students are recorded on video by webcam during the test, and they are monitored by a remote proctor. The students were caught on video looking up answers during the tests.

 

[Nick12]

Cheating in the restaurant business I was in many moons ago was rampant. Ringing up transactions but not all the money made it to the cash register..

 

[easysurfer]

Maybe it's just me, but the first time I ever heard of the term "proctor" is from the recent news of the parents cheating on college admissions.

Perhaps, not the best comparison, but the school admissions cheating reminds me a bit of the steroids era in baseball. Knowing that's been going on taints the accomplishments of the non-cheaters.

 

[SALTedOut]

In high school a classmate cheated off the person next to him. He just waited for her to bubble in her scantron sheet and matched her answers. The problem was the teacher had 3 versions of the exam with the questions mixed up. He got none of the answers correct.

She wrote a note on his returned exam that said something like, "next time you cheat make sure you know what you are doing."

 

[Retiree_Having_Fun]

This happened near us in Chicago. - uncovered with data analysis.

Also had cases of teachers allowing their students to start early and finish late. Thus gave the kids more time.