Volume 67, Issue 8

Editorial

Cheating at Yeshiva – Towards a More Efficient Response

Let us be perfectly clear: Cheating is unacceptable under any and all circumstances.  Students who cheat on an exam or a paper, including first-time offenders, deserve no less than a failing grade for the assignment, if not expulsion from the university.

At the same time, we remain troubled by recent reports concerning Yeshiva’s handling of alleged cheating during the final exam of Yeshiva College’s Money and Banking course last semester.  When several students in the class informed the administration that some of their peers had cheated, every student in the class received an incomplete grade pending an investigation – a perfectly appropriate course of action under the circumstances.  What is perfectly inappropriate, however, is Yeshiva’s failure to inform the class why they received incompletes until early February – more than a month after winter break began.  Even worse, administrators reportedly utilized profanity and threats during their interrogations of suspected offenders.

While we recognize Yeshiva’s obligation to expunge and punish cheaters on our campuses, administrators must also realize that students’ careers and reputations – indeed, their very futures – are at stake.  Nothing – including an act as reprehensible as cheating – can justify such intimidation and irresponsibility.

Sadly, though, these incidents reflect wider, and more serious, problems vis-ŕ-vis Yeshiva’s management of cheating on campus.  All too often, proctors remain blissfully oblivious of student conduct during exams, making it painfully easy to cheat and get away with it.  At present, Yeshiva also lacks a formal director of examinations, leaving a discombobulated bureaucratic quagmire in the face of students’ academic malfeasance.

While it may be impossible to fully eradicate cheating at our university, Yeshiva can still go a long way toward achieving that goal by improving the administrative efficiency of our response to this abomination in our midst.

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