embarrassment

One of San Diego State’s premier departments suffered a major blow last week when cheating allegations went virtually unpunished. This is a disgrace to the university, a slap in the face to other students who do not cheat, and an embarrassment to all faculty, staff and students at SDSU.

Last fall, Dianne Bartlow accused several students of cheating. She claimed they fabricated interviews in one of her broadcasting classes. After the allegations were investigated, the students received a failing grade on that assignment only. The cheating students did not fail the class. In fact, many of them passed the course with Bs or Cs.

In comments to The Daily Aztec on April 24, journalism department head Tim Wulfemeyer said, “In journalism, there are certain things that cannot be tolerated, both academically and professionally. I hope lessons have been learned.”

Unfortunately, from the extremely light sentence the cheating students received, it seems the whole campus has learned the lesson that it’s basically all right to cheat. If there’s a pop quiz or lengthy assignment you know you’re going to fail, why not cheat? After all, if you get caught, you’ll just get failed anyway, right?

In this case, that’s right.

The campus community doesn’t even know who the cheaters are. Their privacy is considered too important. Cheating should be a matter of public record, and the names of those accused and disciplined should be made public.

The buzz is that some students felt confused by Bartlow’s assignment. If that was the case, those students should have made an attempt to clear things up with her rather than subvert ethical standards.

The incident and the “punishment” that was handed down make the journalism department at SDSU, and the university itself, look bad. The March/April 1997 Society of Professional Journalists newsletter was headlined “Thou Shalt Not Fake: But SDSU students who made up news stories get mere slap on the wrist.”

Indeed, they did.

At the very least, the students involved in cheating should fail the entire course and be forced to repeat it.

The new policies instituted in the wake of this incident are a joke. If a student is caught cheating, his or her file is flagged. If caught cheating again, the student can be suspended for a year. Only with the third offense is the student expelled.

What sort of message does this send to the students?

College is supposed to prepare students for careers. How can it do this by adopting standards that would never be suitable in real-life situations?

In the future, cheating students should be made an example of. Currently, they are only an example of the university’s failures.