Is cheating on the rise?

Relieved after their fourth-period final exams on Dec. 20, most students streamed into the hallways and looked forward to enjoying their lunches. But students from teacher Margarita Morelle’s AP US History class remained in the classroom and looked on as first their teacher and then assistant principal Kevin Mount searched each backpack for a missing test copy.

Students claimed that cheating had occurred during finals in many classes, ranging from Chemistry Honors, AP Statistics and Anatomy and Physiology to AP US History and World History. According to several witnesses, cheaters employed methods that included revealing test questions on Facebook and using cheat sheets, smartphones and other electronic devices during exams.

Four academic integrity incidents were reported to Mount during that week.

“I was busier than I hoped to be during finals week dealing with that kind of issue,” Mount said. He dealt with one plagiarism incident and three incidents involving cheating on tests.

According to junior Kabir Chandrasekher, a student in Morelle’s class, Morelle discovered a missing test copy after students had completed their exams.

“Then she counted it a couple of times, and then we all looked around the classroom,” Chandrasekher said. “And then the [assistant principals Mount and Karen Hyde] searched through our backpacks, but they couldn’t find anything.”

The incident in Morelle’s APUSH class remained unresolved, since the administration “didn’t have any good evidence as to where [the test copy] went,” according to Mount.

Despite the number of incidents reported to Mount during finals week, he sees no cause for excessive alarm.

“My view of Saratoga is not that this place is rife with cheating,” Mount said. “I think 99 percent of our kids do the right thing 99 percent of the time. I really believe that. A common denominator across all the academic integrity issues is that, almost to a kid, it boils down to enormous pressure.”

Junior Kevin Chen believes the pressure comes mostly from parents who want their children to succeed.

“We develop the mindset that if we don’t get good grades, we’re going to fail in life,” Chen said. “So people think that it’s worth the risk to get a better life, even though cheating really just hurts us in the end. They don’t realize that.”

Senior Alex Amato also cites competitive pressure as a impetus for students to cheat.
“Students feel like they need some sort of extra edge to remain competitive and they’re willing to turn to cheating for that,” Amato said.

According to Amato, what students see in the world around them also influences their willingness to cheat.

“We see things, like business leaders and politicians and other people who lie and cheat a lot,” Amato said. “It sort of diminishes the power of the word ‘to cheat,’ and a lot of people don’t see it as that large of a problem anymore.”

Amato believes the amount of cheating at Saratoga has increased over the years.

“There’s a shift toward kids being more willing to cheat and seeing cheating as less of an ethical dilemma,” he said. “When kids cheat nowadays, it’s more [a question] of whether you’re going to get caught or not.”

Mount, however, has not seen a significant increase in the number of reported academic integrity issues.

“If we look at the spring of 2011, we had 23 incidents of breaches academic integrity,” Mount said. “In the fall, we had exactly 23.”

Nevertheless, Mount believes many factors, such as recent technology, have made cheating easier.

“Every $29 phone has a camera on it now,” Mount said. “Technology allows more opportunity, but we still see, all sorts of old-school stuff, such as looking over someone’s shoulder [and] writing notes on the desk.”

Amato agrees that technology has changed the methods students use to cheat.

“I myself have seen students using their tech gadgets to cheat on tests,” Amato said. “It makes it a lot easier, because if someone has a question, they can look it up on their phone.”

Chen points out that technology may have led to an increase in cheating because social media allows students to share information with an entire web of friends.

“I imagine people going on Facebook and maybe telling a question, so more than one person can see,” Chen said. “Instead of, back then, before technology was big, you had to actually tell each other.”

Looking forward, Mount believes teachers should make sure students understand their responsibilities.

“Work with your students and be clear about what your expectations are during testing so they don’t put themselves into situations where they appear to be cheating,” Mount said. “As a teacher you don’t want to create an opportunity for students to cheat.”

On the other hand, Amato believes the solution lies with students.

“I don’t think we can just address it through disciplinary measures, because right now we have pretty high consequences for cheating,” Amato said. “I think something more powerful than the administration cracking down on students would be peers [telling] each other how wrong cheating is and how much it hurts others.”