The Triangle

Issue date: 2/1/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Ashley Peskoe In an undisclosed class, students are seen sitting close to each other during an exam. University officials have not released information about the number of students cited for academic dishonesty at Drexel.

Media Credit: Ashley Peskoe One professor said he randomly checked student identification cards after exams were handed in while University officials pointed to the student honor code as a means of preventing cheating.

In the wake of the Jocelyn Kirsch scandal, claims of cheating have surfaced and Drexel University officials are speaking out about what policies exist to prevent academic misconduct.

Security measures during exams have increased in the past few years at Drexel, according to Paul Deroo, instructor of chemistry at Drexel.

Approximately three years ago, the chemistry departments decided that they would randomly and alternately assign seats to students before each exam due to suspicions of students communicating during exams, according to Deroo.

"Several years ago we had some reports about some things going on with students in exam rooms," Deroo said. "There were suspicions from TAs, but also from undergraduate students."

Vice Provost for Academic Affairs John DiNardo said that he thinks all accounts of academic misconduct should be accounted for.

"[It is] important to recognize student academic dishonesty and that it is caught and is to be reported and the record maintained," DiNardo said.

However, there is no record that is publicly disclosed at Drexel.

"Except as may be otherwise required by applicable law, the University does not publish or release student conduct statistics," Stephen Rupprecht, interim assistant dean for Student Conduct and Community Standards, said.

Northeastern, one of Drexel's benchmark institutions, said that they publicize statistics, but that they do not identify any individual information.

"It helps the community in its awareness of what is occurring here," Valerie Randall-Lee, director of Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution at Northeastern University, said.

"It is our preference for our conduct process to be as transparent to students and our community as possible. We feel that publicizing statistics is one way to enforce our philosophy," she added.

Temple University will release the number of students reported under academic misconduct, if someone requests the information, according to Ray Betzner, a Temple spokesman.

While other schools maintain policy for their disclosure of disciplinary statistics, Drexel does not have one.

"Regarding academic misconduct, there is no current policy for disclosing disciplinary statistics," Rupprecht said.

The University of Pennsylvania's policy is to not disclose the number of students or the information of students that have been reported committing under academic misconduct.

"Everything is completely confidential," Jeanne Leong, a spokeswoman at the University of Pennsylvania, said.

Other security measures for preventing such statistics include cameras in the testing rooms, showing photo identification, and obtaining a student's signature as a form of recognition, according to DiNardo.

"At the end of the exam, we have to make sure that the name on the exam paper matches the name on the student ID and that the picture matches the face [of the student,]" Deroo said.

Deroo recounted an incident where checking IDs at the end of an exam did reveal a cheating incident.

"We had one incident where a proctor was checking IDs and realized that the ID didn't match the student taking the exam," Deroo said.

"It wasn't even a Drexel student," he added.

The cheating charges against Kirsch are similar to the incident that Deroo described, according to a Dec. 11 report by the Philadelphia Daily News.

"On test day, Anderton [Kirsch's boyfriend] showed up and took the test, which had about eight multiple-choice questions and seven to eight open-ended queries," the student said a Daily News article.

The article also reported that Kirsch was absent on test day.

With the cautious security measures during exams, instructors are not looking to catch individual students.

"We're not looking to nail individual people, but to protect the integrity of the exam room for everybody," Deroo said.

Also, the university, along with the Undergraduate Student Government Association, has created the "pledge of honor," currently showcased in the Creese Student Center lobby.

"[The pledge] embodies the ideas of a student body in which students pledge their own adherence to honesty," DiNardo said.

The beginning of the pledge reads, "As members of the Drexel University undergraduate student body, we seek to uphold a learning environment that embraces preeminent standards of education, integrity, and community."

Specifically for freshman writing classes, most teachers use turnitin.com, according to DiNardo, a website that detects plagiarism in student essays.

"The real idea here is to discharge students from cutting and pasting," DiNardo said.

The academic misconduct policy at Drexel has been "around for a while," according to DiNardo.

Rupprecht confirmed that no major policy changes were made in the last academic year.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools