cheating

Last week, I spoke to one of my history professors who I’ve had for many classes. He was telling me about how in the class I had with him last semester, four people turned in plagiarized papers of the blatant sort - they went online, copied, and pasted.

In this professor’s syllabus, he outlines very clearly how he deals with plagiarism: you flunk the course. He attempted to flunk all four of them them, but the students got around it by simply dropping the course, as the withdrawal date had not gone by yet. He went to the dean, hoping to get some support on keeping their grades as Fs; however, the dean ended up backing the students. They were allowed to drop the course and simply get withdrawals on their audits, rather than the Fs. His line of argument was that they were still being punished, as they had to pay for the course anyway, and they’d have to retake the course.

I think such an argument is bogus. Yeah, they had to pay for the course anyway, but shouldn’t there be more punishment than that? Aren’t universities supposed to represent a bit of integrity? Allowing them to drop the course and simply get a “withdrawed” on their degree audit allows them to more or less erase the fact that they tried to cheat. Having an F on their audit wouldn’t broadcast the fact that they tried to cheat, I realize, but at least it would affect their GPA, which in turn might have effects down the road if they wanted to go to graduate school.

How do you all think academic dishonesty should be dealt with? Is receiving an F for the entire course too drastic? Perhaps an F on the assignment would be more suitable, but I think plagiarism (especially of the deliberate sort as described above) is a serious offense, and should be dealt with with a serious response. Admittedly, though, I’m biased - I work my butt off to do well in my classes, and it drives me up the wall to think that people are getting similar grades simply by cheating.