Finals week can be a desperate time for students who are trying to make the grade for the semester, which may lead some to cheat on exams.

“We do see a spike in violations around midterms and finals week,” said Jennifer Jensen, associate dean for academic affairs at Harpur College. “Harpur has been addressing more and more cases over the last several years.”

According to Binghamton University’s honesty code, cheating includes copying off an exam, plagiarizing or multiple submissions of an assignment, forging an exam and bribing others for exam information.

A study by Rutgers University of 23 college campuses and 18,000 students found that 40 percent of the participants had admitted to plagiarizing content off of the Internet.

The Rules of Student Conduct for 2009-10 explicitly states that students claim responsibility for the originality of their work as soon as they become students of the University.

“Sometimes, students think that cheating on a quiz it isn’t a big deal and it won’t get them in trouble,” Jensen said. “Then they fail a course or get suspended as a result.”

PREVENTION

Educators are continually trying to understand and deter cheating during exams.

“There is more cheating in a large class because you are anonymous,” said Susan Bane, professor of chemistry and director of the biochemistry program. “People feel pressured and they make mistakes.”

To counter cheating, Bane tries to make her exam environment unfriendly to misconduct by assigning seats and banning cell phones.

A number of BU professors also require students to submit their papers to Turnitin, an online program that finds matches in submissions with works already in its online databases.

THE ACT

Katie Povejsil, vice president of marketing for iParadigms, Turnitin’s parent company, said that some college students do not realize that they are cheating.

“[Students] will say plagiarism is bad, but [they] don’t realize that copying something from the Web is not okay,” Povejsil said. “A learning process has to take place.”

Povejsil noted that plagiarizing in school may lead to cutting corners in one’s profession, which can have career-ending consequences.

Some BU students agree.

“People that cheat are only cheating themselves out of taking full advantage of [their] education”, said Lior Marko, a senior majoring in political science.

According to Marko, a person’s dishonesty can become automatic and may spread to his or her professional life.

Third-party Web sites such as www.customwritings.com, who claim to deliver authentic work to a student for a price, may not be all that they seem, Povejsil said.

“You never know what you’re getting with those sites,” she said. “They are known to harvest student papers and recycle them.”

Povejsil said that a lot of those reused papers are already in the Turnitin database.

CONSEQUENCES

Academic dishonesty can have disastrous repercussions if the perpetrator is caught.

According to Elizabeth Droz, dean of students, the University keeps records of cheating on a student’s file for six years, and if a student wants a job on campus or to transfer to another school, their record might be the deciding factor.

Cheaters can also be brought to meetings with the Academic Honesty Committee and face class failure, suspension or, in some cases, expulsion.

“Faculty need to talk about [academic dishonesty] in their classes,” Droz said. “To give examples of what is honest and dishonest.”

Both Jensen and Droz agree that to avoid the desire to cheat, students should improve their time management and study skills.