Prevent cheating with contracts

Cheating has no place at a university. It undermines everything a collegiate society… Cheating has no place at a university. It undermines everything a collegiate society represents and in some cases – such as classes graded on curves – can actually lower the grades of assiduous students. A university should do anything and everything within its power to prevent it.

Some schools, such as the University of Virginia, operate on an honor code system. As soon as you enroll, you sign a form that clearly states the policy. If you are found guilty of cheating, you are permanently dismissed from school. No three strikes, no warnings or citations. You cheat, you’re out.

Pitt would do well to adopt a similar policy.

At the beginning of the next round of registration, every student should be presented with a standardized form stating a zero-tolerance policy on cheating. Students should not be permitted to register without signing the form.

There would be a specified process for handling allegations of cheating. A suspicious professor would present evidence to a board comprised of students, faculty and staff members who, without knowing the name of the student involved, would review the evidence and decide if there was enough to merit a hearing, where the student could have a chance to defend himself. If found guilty, the student would be immediately expelled with no chance of re-admission.

A system that warns or censures a student, even once, before expulsion, would fail because it would allow students to cheat throughout their college careers until they are caught for the first time. The threat of expulsion would perhaps cause them to mend their ways, but after how much cheating?

Most students don’t cheat. However, many students have, after a long and terrible night of cramming, entertained the possibility of writing a few key dates on their hands or programming a crucial formula or two into the old TI-83. If such generally honest students knew that to be caught would lead to immediate dismissal, they would probably never act on these devious notions.

Students who make a habit of cheating and think they have perfected it would likely be deterred from applying to Pitt in the first place, which is fine. Such students don’t add anything to a university community.

In order for Pitt to continually improve its reputation and standing, we must adopt such a policy and enforce it rigorously.