Friends cheating.. what to do?

[ajeanpants]

I have quite the dilemma here. We have a med-surg final coming up in a few weeks, and many of the questions will be from previous exams. I don't know about your schools, but my nursing school does alot to ensure that no one has written record of test questions (for example, during a test review we aren't allowed to take any notes, we never get tests back, etc). One girl has somehow obtained copies of all the previous exams and is talking about distributing them to our classmates. The problem is, everyone involved are very close friends of mine who have always had great character and integrity and I am completely shocked they are doing this. There are tons of people who need to ace the final in order to even pass the class, but not these people. It is so unfair to those whose grades are hanging in the balance and it is just plain wrong. I'm afraid that if I tell the prof they will get in big trouble, and I'm the only person who knows about this who isn't participating, so I will lose many close friends. Any advice?

[PMFB-RN, RN]

I don't see the dilemma. Your "friends" are cheaters. You need to turn them in. Nurses are consistently rated as among the most trusted occupations among the public. Your "friends" are going to be faced with many moral dilemmas in their career from being responsible for vulnerable people's cash to access to all sorts of narcotics, to being mandatory reporters in cases of child or elder abuse. It is entirely possible that one day some abused little girl is going to confide in them. They may have to testify in court in order to get the abuser put away. Do you we really want people without integrity doing this job?

[DolceVita, ADN, BSN, RN]

I am late to the party but where did this person get copies of old tests? From someone in the previous semester? Did they steal them? Also, why would an instructor keep using the same tests?

Where I grew up we used previous tests to study from all the time. It was encouraged.

[SunshineDaisy, ASN, RN]

I'm tardy to the party too. Has anything happened? As others have said, that is reason for expulsion here. They don't even want us talking to others in other classes about the tests, they consider it cheating! I also ditto the others on sending an annonymous email telling the instructors what was going on!