Cutting corners and taking shortcuts are becoming the staples for many of today’s students.

Scholastic dishonesty, or cheating, seldom draws the alarm in our heads that it should.

Under the Alamo Community College District Student Rights and Responsibilities section, the District’s definition of what classifies as scholastic dishonesty is outlined. Cheating on exams is right at the top, followed by plagiarism and collusion, which means the unauthorized use of group work.

A Palo Alto student attending her fourth semester here said she had been tempted many times to cheat in one of her classes, but she never got the courage to. A busy week at work followed by a Spring Break in Corpus left her behind in two classes.

“I did what I had to do so that I wouldn’t lose my financial aid,” she said.

In her case, the cheating involved someone else’s term paper from a previous semester. She was relieved after turning the paper in.

“I was never more stressed than the week following due date,” she said. “I felt weird talking to the teacher afterward, because she thought I was such a good student.”

The question that arises from these actions is whether or not this student’s conscience should have prevented her from cheating, when it obviously altered her relationship with her instructor.

Diana Nystedt, instructor of English, doesn’t like to deal with any offenders personally, so she does as her syllabus states and sends them to see the Department Chair and the Dean.

“Still, some students will fall to temptation.  Thankfully, I do not have to determine the penalty for these students,” said Nystedt.

The instructors themselves sometimes deal the punishment. During her second semester at PAC, one student recalled an instance in which she was actually caught with the copy of an exam for Psychology, but was allowed to take a makeup test and was dropped a letter grade.

“I was so mad that I got caught, but at least nothing worse came from that,” she said.

Technology has greatly increased the possibility that students can cheat. A Google search for “college papers for sale” returned more than 20,000 links to sites that offer “100 percent guarantees” for college-level research papers on any number of topics. For a price $9.95 a month, unlimited downloads, you can have a custom-written paper returned within 24 hours.

Teachers all over have used the Internet to work in their favor by running searches on student assignments. Instructors are utilizing a new program that’s offered to all ACCD faculty members called Turnitin.

The Turnitin database contains more than 4.5 billion pages that instructors, and even students can use to proofread turned in assignments to check for plagiarism.

A sophomore in his last semester at Palo Alto College recalled a time he got suspended from his high school for turning in a “mostly copied” mid-term paper.

“I did most of the paper. It’s just that I used big chunks from this one web site by cutting and pasting,” he said.

Another problem that has risen is the ability, or lack thereof, to regulate the amount of cheating that may take place in online courses. In certain courses, the student and teacher have little to no interaction throughout the semester.

Elizabeth Tanner, Math Department Chair, said, “The relative lack of supervision in on-line courses very naturally introduces the question of academic dishonesty.”

Who knows if the person who signed up for the course is actually participating and completing the assigned work? The difficulty instructors have with the lack of control in the online classroom environment has kept some from teaching Internet courses.

When an instructor accuses a student of scholastic dishonesty, the student is handed a Punitive Action form by the instructor with a description of the offense and a course of action. The maximum penalty handed down to an offender is a grade of “F” for the course. Secondary offenses bring the penalty of expulsion from all ACCD schools.

Before any punishment can be enforced, the student has to agree to the allegations made by the instructor. With his/her signature on the Punitive Action form, the student admits to his/her wrongdoing.

Without an admission of guilt, the complaint goes to the Department Chair, who hands it to the appropriate Dean. Any resulting disciplinary action is placed in the student’s permanent file.

Employers tend to dig up the history of prospective employees, and blemishes like these could affect the perception of the employee’s character.

For more information, consult your student handbook or inquire about the classes the library offers for the proper citation techniques.