Today I was labeled a "whistleblower and tattletail because I, along with numerous other students, witnessed a table of individuals cheating on an exam in our Anatomy and Physiology class which is a major pre-req into entrance into the nursing program. One of the individuals completed the exam and recieved it back, and took the test back to the table where she distributed all the correct answers to them, in which they in turn proceeded to change all their previous answers. In absolute boldness, one of the girls said quite loudly, "what is the answer to the last one?", and the first individual read off the answers to her. The proffessor does not proctor the exams. He simply hands them out and grades them as soon as you complete them, and then hands them back with the right answers corrected in. He does not wait until each student has completed the exam to pass out the results. Nor does he cruise the classroom to make sure that everyone is done before begining a new lecture. I felt that this was a major loophole that obviously a table of students had taken advantage of. In his syllabus he states that SUSPICION of cheating will result in failure of the exams.
Because at least 15 other students witnessed the cheating as well, we held a brief meeting about the issue and I told them I would address the professor since I was sitting next to the students and saw the entire situation. After class myself and another student asked to speak to the professor in confidentiality. The accussed students had caught wind earlier that they were going to be outted and had actually stuck around in the classroom to see who the individuals were. After they left, I told the proffessor what I and the other students had witnessed. He shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly and told me there was nothing he could do since he didn't see it happening and that next time I would have to tell him while it is happening. He also stated "and if they cheated on the last exam it didn't help them much because they made a 55". They recieved a 98 (which is an A) on today's test that they cheated on. The proffessor regarded me with an "I could careless" attitude and proceeded to pack his things. He did not ask me any questions about who else was involved, raised no concern that he is passing CHEATING students with an A into a highly competitive medical program who are in direct violation of the Colleges Code of Ethics. As I left with the other student, we noticed that the accused were actually waiting on us to leave and procceeded to follow us and threaten us for telling on them. They cautioned that I had better mind my own business and continued with verbal harrassment to the point I had to use profanity to stop them from FOLLOWING ME TO MY CAR. This incident has been brought to the proffessors attention by more than one occasion and he has not taken any steps in changing the testing process.
There is going to be a pending investigation involving the students and the facult member who is now KNOWINGLY aiding them in their attempts to fraud the system. Nursing is a limited access program and is based solely on a point based system. Only sixty of 250 students are admitted each fall and to think that a group of UNQUALIFIED individuals are cheating their way to an open slot is a dissapointment to the College's Mission Statement. We do NOT NEED THESE TYPES OF PEOPLE IN CHARGE OF THE PUBLIC'S HEALTH! These are not leaders, these are not nurses. How would you feel if the doctor who was about to diagnose you had cheated is way through medical school? We have got to crack down on academic dishonesty and stop allowing it to continue because it's easy to turn the other cheek. How would you feel if you sacrificed work and family to dedicate yourself into getting into the nursing program, only to find out that there weren't enough slots, and the people who got in CHEATED their way in.
I am sorry for the detail but it is the only way to explain the severity of the situation. As professionals in the field who have worked very hard to get where you are, what would you have done?
Talk about a lazy professor! God forbid if he actually had to take additional time out of his day to, GASP! (dare I say it?) Grade papers between classes! OH THE DRAMA!
Seriously, I'm all for staying out of the politics at work and school, but in this case, it would have been hard for me not to out them in front of the entire class!
I have no tolerance for cheating, and you did the right thing. There is no way, as competitive as nursing is, I would let a single student get the edge due to dishonesty, and you did the ENTIRE ADMISSIONS system a favor...what if one of those girls got in while a non-cheater didn't?
You did the right thing, and I wouldn't care what the others thought.
Could it be that the purpose of you reporting the cheating was b/c there is a limited amount of space for acceptance into the nursing school and you wanted to increase the odds of you entering by expelling others.
Human Anatomy&physiology is a pre-requisite course. I would be sympathetic about your situation if the severity of them cheating could eventually cause harm to the college's reputation and future risk for patient problems. For ex: Cheating in an actual NURSING COURSE w/ a clinical is much more important. Dont waste your time worrying about others. As long as you make sure that you are doing the right thing you will be okay. If the professor doesn't care why should you.
Im not saying that cheating is okay. But I will say that reporting them makes you no better. Ask these questions first.
Prioritize: Is someone's life at stake? Will they eventually harm a patient?
Could the college's reputation suffer from this?
If I reported a cheater and that person looked at me and said, "Did you report me to give yourself a better chance into the nursing program?"
I could look at them dead in the eye and say PROUDLY, "You bet I did, because only ETHICAL people should be admitted into the nursing profession!"
This scenerio is just an example of what I percieve to be one of the biggest problems in our society. The willingness of some people, to overlook the specific wrong action of a person (group of people) and shift the blame or responsibility onto others. It doesn't matter what the personal motivation was for the reporting of the cheating was,........it was the CHEATING that precipitated the reporting. If they hadn't cheated, they wouldn't have been reported..........period. Integrity isn't something that suddenly appears when there is a big enough dilemma for it to be applied to. It is built by doing the right thing in smaller situations in life, such as: to cheat or not to cheat!!! I think it's a sad commentary of modern life that there is ANY question directed at the motivation behind someone's reporting of a wrong action instead of focusing on the wrong action itself. Just my:twocents: , and believe me, I would have been right behind the OP giving my account of the incident.
It may sound selfish, but i'd report it, and keep going till something got done about it. Why? 1) i couldn't live with the fact that i saw something wrong, yet did nothing, 2) the people that cheated could possibly be my nurse someday.
Those aren't the only reasons, but i wouldn't want a cheater being the one responsible for taking care of me. If they'd cheat on a test, who's to sa they wouldn't cheat on pt. care?
Specializes in Peds Critical Care, Dialysis, General.
Honey, if you can't take a failing grade because you either weren't able to get an A or you didn't study, you have no business being a nurse.
Cheating is just one symptom of not being able to cut it, at whatever level.
And no, I never did cheat. I was the nerd on the end of the front row keeping my paper covered.[/quote
]:yeahthat:
I, too, am that nerd. I did report cheating in high school. I wasn't popular to begin, but I know what I did was the right thing.
Cheating on tests is a symptom of cheating in or at life. I pray that I never have an RN who cheated or that any of my family members do. I've taken my licks and owned up to my mistakes and learned from them.
Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.
i'm standing with many of the others who are on the side of the op in support for reporting the cheats. i also say that cheating is indicative of the potential to go on to falsify records, lie about medication errors and omissions and the list could go on and on. these are things that could result in most nurses getting fired from their jobs, when or if discovered, and possibly having their licenses taken away by their state board of nursing! there are patterns to people's behavior. as a manager i can tell you that one of the first things employees will point out is other employees who work around the rules because it is unfair to everyone else. they will want and expect maverick employees to be stopped. it's no different in a school situation with cheaters. i don't want someone without honesty and integrity working for me or with me.
of even greater interest to me, however, was the response of the cheaters. to boldly accost the op and threaten them is an indication that these cheaters are aggressive (not assertive--there is a difference) and may also harbor some violent tendencies. they obviously can't control their emotions and went out of their way to attempt to bully the op. i'd sure hate to see them transferring this kind of behavior onto a helpless patient who wasn't complying with a doctor's orders or who was refusing to following facility rules because they were confused, elderly, or in some way cognitively impaired. state boards of nursing and public health are constantly on the alert for individuals like this who slip through the cracks and end up with licenses working in facilities where they could do potential or actual harm to it's citizens.
in addition to notifying the school's department of nursing and naming names, i would urge the op to also report this confrontation initiated by these cheaters to the campus security department, if only to get it documented. this kind of aggressive and confrontational behavior is not a desirable characteristic in a potential healthcare professional.
I agree with you 100%..You are right, the nursing program is a limited access program. If you are going to cheat to make it in, you probably won't pass the program anyways. Why give seats to cheaters who will most likely not make it out and by chance they pass, will end up hurting a patient.
I went to one college that had a "cheating" policy that I did not consider cheating. I define cheating as not coming up with the answers yourself. If you come up with them, it's your work.
This one college, if you took a class again as a repeat, and the professor gave out an assignment again, if you referred back to your old notes or old tests they considered that cheating...I totally disagreed.
It's still their original work, and if the professor is dumb enough to give out the exact same test or assignment again b/c he's too lazy to draft up another, then yeah for the student for being a good record keeper.
I will respond to you b/c so far you have had the best answer or reply to my controversial statement. I agree with you. But for a student who cheats on a A&P test alone does not mean that he will automatically cover up med-errors or falsify documentation and the student who earned his grade wont. You could look at it in a different way. That cheater may be more likely to double, triple check when administering meds or often seek help from other nurses to avoid certain mistakes.
My question for you is Can you honestly say that you've never cheated on a test? Not the whole test maybe 1 answer. from pre-k to bachelors degree.
And if you are a person with that much integrity. Certainly you've never made a med error or falsified documents or covered up any mistake throughout your whole nursing career. Every nurse has made a mistake. And admitting up to it at the right time is when ethics is involved. What I meant by prioritize: It's a pre-req.,professor doesn't care. In the actual Nursing school it matters. There are M.D.'s who have made straight A's their entire life and have never cheated but fail when it comes to ethical delimmas. Trust me a pre-req. test is not the best determination for ethical standards. I would hope a criminal record would be weighted more heavily.
I'm not certain I'm following your logic, but I believe that someone who cheats and gets away with it is likely to continue the practice.
You can add me to the list of people who have NEVER cheated on a quiz or exam; all of my grades are my own.
There are indeed trust issues, and nurses repeatedly rank at the top of the list of professionals with the highest levels of trust by the general public. Nursing school is tough, and people who cheat usually do not succeed when it comes time to actually know something.
symptom of not being able to cut it, at whatever level.
And no, I never did cheat. I was the nerd on the end of the front row keeping my paper covered.
For all the self-proclaimed nerds: I noticed no one admitted to never falsifying documents, making a med error or covering up a mistake their whole nursing career. Can anyone of you confess that underoath? Im talking to the well seasoned nurses so newbies dont bother responding.
The truth of the matter is that you can't be that judgemental. So you all can just get off that high horse of yours. I live in the real world. No blood, no foul.
I commend you for reporting the cheating. It does show you have integrity and I would have done the same thing for the same reasons. Heck it is really hard to get a slot in a nursing program, why should someone be able to cheat their way in when there is someone waiting who will really work hard to get where they want to be. Cheating is wrong no matter who is doing it or how you look at it.
Ask these questions first.
BSNtobe2009
946 Posts
Talk about a lazy professor! God forbid if he actually had to take additional time out of his day to, GASP! (dare I say it?) Grade papers between classes! OH THE DRAMA!
Seriously, I'm all for staying out of the politics at work and school, but in this case, it would have been hard for me not to out them in front of the entire class!
I have no tolerance for cheating, and you did the right thing. There is no way, as competitive as nursing is, I would let a single student get the edge due to dishonesty, and you did the ENTIRE ADMISSIONS system a favor...what if one of those girls got in while a non-cheater didn't?
You did the right thing, and I wouldn't care what the others thought.