Cheating in the chemistry department

Cheating is something that will probably happen at all universities no matter which school you attend as a student.

Unfortunately, nobody has yet created a solution to stop every single student from cheating, even when students are aware of the consequences. However, what about when a professor is aware that cheating goes on in his own class and still refuses to do something about it? This is, in fact, exactly the case of what occurs in organic chemistry lecture here at IU.

I first became aware of the cheating one day when I was sitting in my 10:10 a.m. lecture on the morning before an organic chemistry quiz.

While waiting for class to start, I overheard students around me say they are actually enrolled in the 12:20 p.m. afternoon lecture. We take quizzes during the last 15 minutes of lecture, so at first I thought that these students just wanted to hear the material twice to better prepare them for their afternoon quiz.

However, as I overheard these students talking, they were bragging to others about how they have “defeated” the system of cheating here at IU. Here is a breakdown of their plan: First, they come to the 10:10 to receive a quiz. Once the quiz period has ended and the lecture hall gets chaotic with students getting out of their seats, the cheating students put the blank quizzes in their backpacks and walk straight out the door.

Now these students have an hour to look up answers by any resource available to them. When 12:20 rolls around, the cheating students show up for their actual lecture and are handed an identical quiz at the 10:10 lecture. Now all they have to do is pull out the first quiz that they had been working on for the last hour to turn in as the 12:20 quiz finishes up. Not once during an organic chemistry quiz have I been asked to show my student ID while handing in a quiz.

After class, I walked up to our professor and addressed the situation. He quickly seemed as though he wanted to avoid the question, so he looked at me with a blank stare for a couple seconds and said, “We catch those students.”

WHAT? That is the best a professor can say when I tell him about cheating in his own class, let alone a pre-professional organic chemistry class.

Clearly he thought that I would soon forget about the whole cheating scandal like it never happened or was even brought up in the first place.

After my professor declined to take action about cheating, I decided to write an email explaining the situation to the chemistry chair.

The chemistry department claims they will correct the problem in the future, but who knows how long cheating has already been going on for?

So, what is the solution to this problem? It is actually very simple, to put in a little more effort as a teacher. In order to avoid this painlessly easy system of cheating, all the professors have to do is distribute two different quizzes, one for each lecture.

This creates more work because the professor or assistant instructors would have to properly match up each student with their correct section while entering grades online.

For many people, it seems to be human nature to take the easy route when the option is available.

In this case, it is clear the professors are choosing that path, especially when they admit to being aware of what is going on.

­— Danny Malter, IU student