alt Hacker NewsI was a grad student @ Princeton a handful of decades ago.
I was a TA for a few classes and, given the honor code, we did not proctor the exams for undergrads. We just handed them out (left the room) and returned to collect them at the end.
- One of the exams in a course that I TAed had 5 free-response questions.
- There were also 5 TAs in that class, so we un-stapled the exams and each TA graded one question (for consistency).
- We re-assembled the exams and returned them to the students.
- A few days after the exam, one of "my" students (she attended my recitation) came to me with her exam and explained that I had incorrectly graded question 2.
- I told her that I didn't grade question 2, so she had to go take it up with "TA # 2"
- A few hours later, "TA #2" pays me a visit and she (TA#2) is annoyed. She tells me, "Your student is trying to pull a fast one. She answered Q2 incorrectly. She erased her answer and put in the correct answer and she wants it re-graded"
- I briefly defended the student and said something like, "Why would she do that... and how could you even know?"
- "TA#2" responded with "... because I photocopied all of the student responses after I graded them."
- Then I felt like a piece of shit for doubting my fellow TA. And felt even worse being naive enough to not be suspicious.
- "TA#2" and I brought all of this info up with the prof. who was running the course.
- We were told that the situation would be handled by an Honor Committee or something like that. We forwarded the information to the committee, but no one spoke to us and we were not allowed to participate in the deliberations.
- After about a week, all we were told was that the student was able to explain the "discrepancy" between her exam and the photocopy.
To this day, I have no idea what that student could have possibly said to explain her actions.
After that, I started photocopying every damned scrap of paper that I graded.
edits for clarity. The student did not get a zero on the exam, nor was she booted from the course. I don't remember if she was given credit for Question 2, but the TA and I were both expecting her to be tossed, which obviously didn't happen.
Replies
It's a very different world from the exams I had in Denmark, both uni and high school:
* all exams were proctored
* the proctoring were done by external people hired to do this.
* you could not leave exam for the toilet without asking first and then being followed out by a watcher, which then would follow you back and check the toilet afterwards for notes.
* you were never handed back the papers you handed in.
* responses were judged both by your own teacher and by an independent teacher from another institution.
* you must use ballpoint pen (permanent) and not pencil. Pencil responses were ignored.
Today the studens are even handed Faraday-bags that their phones and smart watches must be kept in during the exam. Full instructions for exam watchers for a business school: https://www.nielsbrock.dk/da/om-niels-brock/til-eksamensvagt...
I had a similar experience when I was a TA at UT Austin that I wrote about on HN years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23163472
If you want rage bait, read the proceedings of honor code committees at your school. At least at Northwestern they were public record (sometimes with redaction of identities). The number of people who got off with obviously bullshit excuses was maddening even to read about.
That student was shameless for success. I’m sure she has navigated her way through plenty of institutions by now, confusing getting away with it for being clever.
I'm not defending the honor code or anything, but photocopying students' exams seems like an end-run around the policy.
Great story.
I don't think you need to feel like a piece of shit for your brief defense of the student. Erasing and replacing the answer is unusual. As is photocopying all the tests.
Asking someone for an explanation of an unusual circumstance is perfectly natural. Perhaps TA#2 should feel like a piece of shit for her lousy explanation!
Honestly - the first thing that came to my mind is that the papers got stapled back together wrong, and her original correct answer was swapped with someone else's incorrect one. And instead of simply explaining that, she decided to just erase what was there and re-submit. But who knows?
I wish I as a student had this power. I took an exam once for a class I had taken before (transfer student woes). I went into the hall, took the easy exam, turned it in, and left. They lost my test.
I had no idea until 3 weeks later when exam scores were finally uploaded and mine was missing. The quarter was over and what the hell could I possibly do at that point? I had no possible evidence to give to show that I not only took the test but definitely passed because I've already taken the class
There is an easy solution to Princeton’s problem, and it’s to have an honor system with a backbone. The way honor historically worked.
At my private high school, and at my university (although they later gutted it), we had a “single sanction” honor code.
That is, if you were caught lying, cheating, or stealing - in any way, and in or out of school, though usually it was in - you were immediately expelled. No mitigating circumstances. No negotiation.
To many of my peers this sounded very harsh, especially since these were very good schools you worked hard to get to and succeed in. But part of why they were good schools was because of this.
We do zero tolerance for so many things but integrity is the one thing that misses it for some reason.
I used to proctor accounting exams. It's insane to me that people would just leave the room to students. At the very least they might have questions and then they ask the class instead of calling the proctor
So, they didn't face any consequences. Did they at least keep the original grade or was this so well explained they also got the re-grade?
I mean I get that the student broke the rules, at least per this anecdote. And what was done is dishonorable and the student deserves what is coming to the student.
But, I think it gets to a deeper issue with education.
Like, the cynic in me will say that the student learned a new tactic, one that got rewarded, and they are likely to repeat it over and over.
But the teacher, the hopeful part of me, the one that wants growth and striving, that part of me says that the student learned a lesson and is unlikely to repeat that hack. That they got dragged about, told a lot of very tough stories, saw the consequences, and then saw the light, and they will never do it again. And that experience taught them more than the class ever could about life - a much more valuable lesson in the end.
I hope that is what occurred. I think that's probably what the many admins told themself what would happen. I have worked with Princeton grads though, and it is much more likely that nothing of the sort occurred.
Most 'elite' grads think they pulled it over on the school, like they always have, that they were cleverer, somehow. That they 'won', when they really lost and learned worse than nothing, they learned the wrong thing. And then they get out into the real world and they get a successful bigjob and a nice little manageable coke habit and a not as manageable addiction or two. Then a spouse when that time comes and that other line says something no-one really wants, but not with a person they respect or that respects them. And by the time the second kid is done teething, the divorce is done and they think they are 'free' again. So they dive off a cliff in some azure water as the grandkids aren't well taken care of by expensive as hell help.
The ayahuasca vomit dries on the corner of their mouth as they check their actually-personal account for the half dozen 39th birthday wishes, they wonder where it all went wrong. They decide that it was others, not themselves, surely, that can't be true, because Dad was an asshole and Mom really wasn't ever 'there'-there when you think about it.
Because they are still trying to pull one over, to be cleverer, to be the 'good' one at whatever life is in their mind: A long fucking ladder covered in degrees and accolades and tears and jackasses. They live in the derivative.
So, look, don't be butthurt about a jackass undergrad that is too blind and treadmilled to ruin their own life.
But do be butthurt that the system is too fucking tired and old to really deeply care anymore about the young and not just hurting their 'future' - as if that could ever be measured by only a GPA.
"There is no honor among elites"
Academic integrity committees at prestigious schools are horribly lax. They want these types of issues to go away quietly.
I have a friend who in college had another student take his test from the "complete" pile, erase my friend's name, and put on his own instead. It was only through blind luck that my friend figured it out. He, the TA, and the professor reported it – with smoking gun proof – but nothing happened.
The same laxness applies to academic research integrity. Universities rarely punish academics who are discovered to falsify data.