BYU Named Nation’s Most Cheating-Impaired University
Mar 6th, 2010 | By admin | Category: Breaking NewsWritten By: Ms. Ruthy
For the fourth consecutive year, Brigham Young University has been named the nation’s most cheating-deficient campus according to the Princeton Review, beating out Smithtown University by a narrow margin. The designation was based on a national survey of college students on which BYU scored lower than any other university with only 7% of students claiming to have cheated within the last semester.
BYU Staff, faculty and administration have taken this as a severe blow to the university’s reputation. “To be honest”, said a disheartened President Samuelson “I’m not sure where we go from here. It seems that this generation of students doesn’t care to maintain the high standards of academic fraud that have always been our legacy.”
But other faculty members think that students may not be entirely to blame. Said Biology Professor Karl Anderson, “I actually had a freshman in my 110 class tell me she had never once cheated in high school. It would seem that secondary schools aren’t doing enough to prepare students for the reality of demanding college bamboozlement.”
With fewer and fewer students successfully cheating on, or even attempting to cheat on AP exams in high school, it’s no wonder that many arrive at BYU unprepared to lie, steal and con on a college-level.
In an attempt to encourage scholastic treachery and deceit of every kind, Student Services has funded a campus-wide poster campaign promoting such slogans as “Studying is so last decade”, “Cheating is like eating -the only way to survive!” and “Imitation is a compliment – plagiarize the authors you admire!”
Many auxiliary departments are also getting involved in the fight for academic dishonesty. The BYU bookstore has recently marked down Test Answer Booklets by as much as 60% in an attempt to entice first-time cheaters, and the University testing center, who has always sold pencils to students who may have forgotten their own has bolstered their offerings to include WIFI-enabled calculators and carbon-copy scantrons for sharing amongst classmates.
BYUSA has spear-headed volunteer-run workshops in the Wilkinson Center aimed at teaching students simple cheating techniques such as stuffing paper into the barrel of a mechanical pencil, or wearing long sleeves on test day to conceal answers written on the arms.
“There’s really no limit to the ways a student can cheat with enough preparation and hard work,” said Suzanne Talbot, BYUSA Co-President “ Many student’s haven’t ever considered beneficial tactics such as blackmailing professors with personally-devastating information or simply offering a bribe.”
Career advisor Shannon McLellan bemoaned the failure: “We as a university are charged with the responsibility of preparing young men and women for success in a variety of careers. If we can’t even teach them to text-message answers in the testing center, how will they ever learn to fib on their taxes or steal credit for a co-worker’s finance report?”
“As for our designation as the nation’s most Stone Cold Sober university,” continued Ms. McLellan, “I just can’t believe we’re still beating out the Trinity Amish College for the title.”
