Facing Academic Dishonesty Charges: Navigating the Honor Board

[luckycharms]

You guys actually believed him?

This scenario is almost verbatim from a friend of mine who was accused of having similar results (to his lab partner, no less) and was "convicted" by a kangaroo court. After fighting expulsion, he only got a mark on his transcript which haunted him all the way to graduate school admissions. These honor boards are no joke.

 

[George Jones]

My wife was "caught cheating" on a final exam in E&M. An official committee decided that my (not then) wife should fail the course, and that an official letter detailing the incident of "cheating" be put in her file.

The exam took place in a large classroom, and a number of the students in the course gathered in the room for last-minute studying before the exam. As a check that she could remember Maxwell's equation, my wife wrote them on the blackboard in small script.

At the time of start of the exam, the prof (A) came into the room, my wife forgot about erasing the equations, and she took a seat near the back of the classroom.

About 30 minutes into the exam, prof A noticed the equations and recognized my wife's handwriting. He immediately went back to her, and aked her if she had written the equations. She admitted doing so. He turned her exam answer booklet to a blank page, and asked her to reproduce Maxwell's equations, which she did.

At my wife's hearing in front of the committee, A said that: 1) he thought my wife could not read the small equations from where she was sitting; 2) he thought my wife had no intention of cheating; 3) my wife successfully reproduced Maxwell's equation when challenged.

In spite of this, A told the committee that he felt that my wife should be reprimanded. Committee member B, another physics prof, said that my wife's offence was very serious, because even if my wife couldn't read the equations, people closer to the board might have been able to, thus skewing the marks of the entire class on the final exam. My wife feels that A was strongly under the influence of B, and that without B's encouragement, A might not have taken any official action.

Regards,
George

 

[z-component]

I was thinking more along the lines of a friend of yours getting ahold of some letterhead and making it look official.

Oh, god! That's the worst idea of an April Fool's joke ever. If anyone ever did that to me, I would NOT take it lightly. But, good idea Moonbear.

 

[Cyrus]

Did you all rememeber to set your clocks forward 3 hours today?