The one thing I’ve learned about the Petraeus affair (the scandal which initially involved the head of the CIA having an affair with his biographer, but then spiraled into some sort of love hexagon where a lot of people sleeping with a lot of other people) is that you can’t get away with anything. Ever. Every mistake you make, crime you commit or affair you have with your biographer will be found out.
This doesn’t really bother me, as the most scandalous thing I do in a day is going to bed at midnight when I tell my parents eleven. However, some of my fellow Trevians seem to be strangely ignorant of the likelihood that they will be caught in whatever rebellious activities they are participating in whether it’s injecting illicit substances, cow tipping, or, most commonly, cheating on tests.
At the beginning of every year, I sign a form about Academic Integrity. Like almost everything I sign, I do not read the form. I assume that it’s about cheating or plagiarism or copying. I assume that I am not supposed to do those things. I assume that I will get caught, and if I do get caught my teachers aren’t going to say something like, “don’t worry about it bro, just try not to cheat again.”
Apart from the one time in the seventh grade where students were writing the answers to each other (I spent the period staring at this act of rebellion with a mixture of admiration and outrage) I have never witnessed the standard “I’m going to copy the answers off of you, but I’ll be super-secret about it so be chill” version of cheating.
Some people may have thought I’ve cheated because I have a bad habit of glancing around the room to see how far everyone is, which results in my classmates discreetly moving their desks away. However, besides an unfortunate moment during a spelling test in second grade, I have never cheated, not because I am a good or moral person, but because I can’t handle the kind of pressure that comes with lying. The one time I told the train conductor that I had already paid for my ticket when I actually hadn’t (this was during my rebellious streak freshmen year, around the same time I tried to dye my hair with kool-aid) I ended up panicking and jumping off the train a stop early. There’s nothing like being stranded in the cold darkness of downtown Winnetka to help you see the error of your ways.
I don’t necessarily care whether or not people cheat, as long as it doesn’t involve me. I don’t think I’ve ever been copied off of during a test (although to be honest, if someone did I probably wouldn’t notice) but there have been times when I’ve felt my Academic Integrity was severely threatened.
In my experience, if you ask someone what was on a test that they’ve taken and you haven’t they either laugh awkwardly or give you the wrong information. Neither of which helps. I understand why this would be someone’s response. I do not appreciate specific question about the test. I am already angry that I took a test. I am angry at you because you’re bringing up the horrible memories of that test. I am not going to give away answers when I am in that state of mind.
The one thing that confuses me is how angry people are when they get punished after they get caught. If you want to walk on the wild side and cheat then go for it, but you can’t get angry at people if they punish you.
As a random example, let’s say it’s past midnight and I’m still writing an article because I spent all day discovering the beautiful unknown frontier that is the internet. It would be, hypothetically, my fault that I’m going to be exhausted tomorrow and I, again hypothetically, need to accept the consequences of my actions, just like people who cheat need to accept that they will judged and punished by their teacher, parents and department chair.
I do not care if you cheat, but if you whine about getting caught then you should know that somewhere in this school I am judging you.