Amidst the recent turmoil of the administration change, another sort of turmoil has emerged at Mississippi State University. At the end of the fall semester, one of the largest cases of cheating known to the university was uncovered. The university handled the situation quickly, yet opinions are mixed on the efficiency and correctness of the university sanctions.
The university threw out all exams and gave students the option to keep grades based on previous work or retake another version of the exam in January.
By Dec. 20, four men were arrested in connection with the incident. The accused students involved will appear before a university judicial committee to determine whether university-imposed sanctions will be imposed.
On one hand, the university acted swiftly and efficiently in handling the situation. The warrants were out and the arrests made not two weeks after the mass cheating was discovered. We hope that the penalties imposed by the university’s academic system and the county justice system are harsh enough to deter any future cheaters.
On the other hand, some feel that the penalties might not broad enough to encompass all who cheated. The only people who might receive punishment for the crime were the four men arrested by the Oktibbeha County Sheriff’s Department. Other students cheated on the exam and got away with only having their grade thrown out or having the option to retake the exam.
The scandal itself and the university’s handling of it may have several different results. One result the knowledge that a large number of students cheated and got away with it. According to university policy, if 40 people cheated, 40 people should be punished, but in the case of the algebra exam, only four people were punished.
After the university threw out the exams, another problem arose. All of the exams were thrown out, including the exams of those students who did not cheat.
The students who honestly studied for the exam and made good grades, or the grades they needed to make higher grades in the course, were given the same option as those who did cheat. These students will now be punished for a crime they did not commit. The option to retake an exam that might will be much harder than the first exam may not be much of an option at all.
In defense of the university and the math department, the teachers have no way of knowing which students cheated and which ones did not, so throwing out the exams was the most feasible option to take.
This incident calls into question the quality of a Mississippi State University education. Since the cheating incident involved so many people and is so widely publicized, many future employers of MSU graduates will be aware of the incident, and many may have questions about the integrity of the graduate applying to their business. The cheaters have lowered the quality of every MSU graduate’s degree. Cheating is widespread and goes on at virtually every academic institution all over the world, but only rarely do 800 students get caught in one scandal, whether accused of actually cheating or not.
A change is necessary for the survival of the honest educational system, at least here at MSU. To prevent future exam theft, the math department will have a faculty member present at the time the exam is printed, but is this enough? The math department is modifying the flawed process, but will the other departments on campus follow suit or will a universitywide policy be a better answer?