By Stacey Wells ‘15

When I walk down Sherwood hallways, I see cheating everywhere. Students copying each other’s papers, students looking up answers on their smartphones, students making cheat sheets. I can’t help but think that nearly everyone is cheating.

Actually, almost everyone is cheating. In a study performed in February 2011, 43,000 public and private school students were surveyed about cheating. The Josephson Institute of Ethics’ Report Card on American Youth’s Values and Actions found that 81 percent of students had allowed another student to copy their homework. One out of three students admitted that they used the Internet to plagiarize an assignment and 59 percent of students have cheated on a test within that past year.

In Sherwood, just like many other schools, cheating is very common. In an anonymous survey of 104 students, 79 percent confessed that they have let another student copy their homework more than once within the past year. One out of two students have taken quotes from the Internet without citing them. Upperclassmen were more likely to have cheated off another student during a test than underclassmen, as 46 percent of upperclassmen have cheated off another student more than once in comparison to the 27 percent of underclassmen. As the student moves closer to graduation, cheating occurs more often.

An abundance of survey respondents tried to justify that cheating is not a big problem by stating that “everyone does it,” but just because “everyone” does it, that does not make it right. Students shouldn’t rely on what everyone does and they definitely shouldn’t succumb to the pressure to cheat. Instead, they should rely on themselves to do the right thing and not cheat. Even though resisting the pressure to cheat may be difficult, it can be done.

Besides, when students cheat they don’t learn the material. This will eventually catch up with them when they have to take the final exam. They won’t know the material and they probably will not do so well. Even if they do pass with flying colors, the cheating will still affect them and will have negative consequences on their life. If they continue cheating when they reach college, there is a possibility of losing credit or even getting kicked out of the university. Students who cheat put themselves at a disadvantage because they will have difficulty learning how to do things by themselves later on in life.

Since cheating damages one’s character and weakens the capability to learn independently, academic dishonesty needs to be taken more seriously. Cheating should have more severe consequences attached to it to show students it will not be tolerated by teachers. Students should be informed how serious cheating actually is, and harsher punishments will help achieve this goal. Most incidents of cheating that I have witnessed were either passed over with just a quick remark or completely ignored. Teachers sometimes accidentally encourage cheating between students by assigning tons of busy work, and then barely checking it. This leads students to cheat off one another, just to get the work done. Teachers need to be aware that the more busy work assigned, the more cheating will occur. In the end, students need to learn that cheating isn’t acceptable and should learn this lesson through detention or another form of punishment.

One student respondent expressed her thoughts in a very powerful statement. The student said, “Cheating, whether trivial or not, is truly a loss to the one who cheats [and] this needs to be explained to students so that they realize that cheating … hurts the cheaters themselves.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.