Presumed Innocence

As a general rule, professors don’t trust their students. That’s not to say they automatically assume the worst in everyone, but most teachers would probably prefer to administer final exams in a 6-square-foot closet instead of a standard classroom, given our track record on academic integrity. All the better if said closet is lined with lead to prevent text messages from being sent in or out.\nCheating may be as old as the Socratic Method, but new advances in technology have ushered in a new era of high-tech curve-setters. The recent scandal at the IU School of Dentistry is the latest in a long line of less-than-admirable performances, but cheating is not solely confined to highly competitive doctoral programs. As a result, teachers have been forced to take advantage of the same technology their students are using to counter the seemingly irrepressible urge to cheat.\nIn theory, the best way to detect cheating is to use the resources today’s college students have access to against them. In practice, however, utilizing new technologies to catch perpetrators before they cheat only antagonizes and insults the student body.\nTake, for instance, the popular anti-plagiarism Web site www.turnitin.com. If you’ve ever written a paper in college, or even in high school, you’re probably familiar with it. If not, just wait – you will be eventually. The Web site cross-references your paper against a database of millions of previously submitted essays and systematically compares your work to that found on the Internet. Never mind the clear infringement on intellectual property rights; there is yet another, more insidious way of catching cheaters that will soon find its way into classrooms.\nRadio Frequency Identification tags are being introduced by the UK-based Edexcel International. RFID tags emit short-range radio signals containing small amounts of information. They are typically used to track retail inventory but have also been implanted under the skin for purposes such as managing an individual’s medical records and providing positive identification of lost house pets. Some people even use them to unlock their front doors. \nThe tags are now being used to track university entrance exams to ensure that test materials are not tampered with ahead of time. The technology will be used in tandem with an online system that flags students who perform well-above average, insinuating that anyone who scores a perfect 2400 on their SAT is a natural-born criminal. \nJerry Jarvis, Edexcel’s Managing Director, admitted that stolen test materials are “extremely rare.” A mere 70 security breaches were reported out of 620,000 bags of university entrance exams and high school equivalency tests – one-tenth of one percent – and yet he toots the company horn as if condemning students to a life of unwarranted suspicion is something to be proud of. Indeed, the implication is clear: No student is capable of doing well without resorting to unethical test-taking tactics. \nThere used to be a principle in civilized countries that a person was innocent until proven guilty, but maybe turnitin.com discovered that the Founders plagiarized the 5th, 6th and 14th Amendments.