Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons/ Brian Turner
The following reports are real cases adjudicated by the Emory College Honor Council. Any personally identifiable information has been omitted to protect the privacy of all parties involved.
• Before the start of a lower level science course exam, a junior claimed he had overheard a group of nearby students, whose identities he could not provide, discussing the answers to one of the test problems. When the test began, he struggled with the question and jotted down what he had overheard. The student was not aware of the fact that his exam version was not the same as those of the nearby students and, consequently, his test answers were incorrect for his version of the test but correct for the other version. Because he gained an academic advantage when he listened in on the other students, the Honor Council found the student guilty of seeking unauthorized assistance and gave him a zero on the exam and a one-year mark on his record.
• Prior to an exam, a lower level humanities course professor warned students not to pen notes on their hands and encouraged them to use the bathroom to wash off such notes. During the test, a proctor asked a senior to let her see his palm, where he kept notes that he claimed to have used solely for studying throughout the day. The Honor Council did not find this likely, found him guilty of seeking unauthorized assistance and gave him an F in the class and a two-year mark on his record.
• Two sophomores collaborated for a lower level science course paper. Though they were allowed to discuss the assignment and share data, they were not permitted to copy one another’s work. The Honor Council found that, while there was no evidence that the students had copied one another, the structure, content and phrasing of the papers were so similar that they could not be considered independently written. They were both found guilty of seeking unauthorized assistance and received zero credit for the papers, as well as a verbal warning.
— Compiled by Lydia O’Neal, Asst. News Editor
A College senior studying economics and French, Lydia O’Neal has written for The Morning Call, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Consumer Reports Magazine and USA Today College. She began writing for the News section during her freshman year and began illustrating for the Wheel in the spring of her junior year. Lydia is studying in Paris for the fall 2015 semester.
