In the article, In a Memphis Cheating Ring, the Teachers Are the Accused, talks about a man named Clarence D. Mumford Sr., 59, who was the mastermind behind the whole teacher scandal. Throughout his 23 years in the educational department, Mumford has been an assistant principal, guidance counselor, and teacher in Memphis. Mumford had people who he knew were teachers that would help cheat for other teachers on Praxis exams. The Praxis exam is a test that measures people who would like to be certified teachers, knowledge and skills. He paid teachers who knew the material on the exam and a lady named Shantell Shaw was one of the teachers who were found to be a part of Mumford’s scheme. Shaw took part in the scheme because she wanted to “help out” another teacher who failed the Praxis exam 11 times and she felt bad; not knowing this whole time Mumford was a criminal mastermind. It turns out that when she took the exam, she was the suspicious one caught, and the main reason for this whole investigation to crack open. There were eight people who have pleaded guilty of the charges and 18 people who confessed to paying Mumford. All of this has led to him having 63 counts, including mail and wire fraud, and identity theft. Which resulted in his seven year sentence that he felt was much better than the recommended 9 to 11 year sentenced that was indicated once he heard his sentencing. The 18 people that confessed to paying Mumford were banded from teaching for five years.

This goes to show that cheating isn’t necessarily worth it. Clarence D. Mumford’s intentions seemed to be that he just wanted to help out others. The fact that it backfired on him since he was especially doing it for a price, just proves that he didn’t care about students getting a good quality education from teachers who should be teaching.

-Natasha Hackman

What’s In Store for Freshmen’s at Baruch College

Baruch has taken on the approach of informing freshmen’s about the seriousness of cheating and the consequences behind it. They are starting early on, so that new coming students can understand that cheating will not be tolerated. So all freshmen’s have to take a freshman seminar class, which basically helps you with adjusting to Baruch as a new student. One day my class talked about what academic dishonesty is and the consequences that you may receive due to your actions. So what is academic dishonesty? Well, basically it consists of 4 main things, which are plagiarism, obtaining an unfair advantage, falsification of records and official documents, and collusion. These things can be presenting another person’s work as your own, retaining prior access to examination material, acting as someone else during an exam, and lending assistance. Also, with academic dishonesty a student who feels that it is unfair and see other people cheating can report them anonymously. Based on the things we learned, we were given short scenarios of cheating and each group had to briefly tell the class their scenarios and then identify who were the people responsible during each cheating incident. After, our teacher told us the consequences and we were given a quiz on how important the four main things are in academic dishonesty and what were learned about it.

I basically learned that cheating isn’t worth it. I chose to want to go to this school and I wouldn’t want the fact that I didn’t study and decided I am going to cheat off of someone who put in the effort, to jeopardize my chances of getting an education and graduating on time. An exam is basically to test my knowledge in that subject and I know that if I work hard enough to study and plan, that I may see some good results, knowing that it was all me who got me where I am at.

-Natasha Hackman

“Stuyvesant Principal, Now Retired, Mishandled Cheating Case, Report Says”

By: Al Baker

Published: August 30th, 2013

In late August, Principal Stanley Teitel struggled with the constant misuse of electronic devices for cheating purposes. He was accused for not monitoring his students while taking exams such as standardized city and state tests. His handling of the many occurences of cheating at Stuyvesant Highschool were poor, leading his job to be taken away. This day in time, also known as the 21st century to many of us, our phone is the one thing many people don’t leave home without. To many, people can hardly live without their handheld device. Accusations have increased more and more as people, mostly teenagers have misused it for cheating in school. This has been one of the most common scandals in High School, specifically Stuyvesant in New York City. In this case, student Nayeem Ahsan, sent answers throughout the test to other students. The number of students excelling in these tests and getting caught for cheating grew more. During the Physics regents, he waited till the proctor left the room to switch with someone and realized the new proctor was falling asleep, even though she denied it. This is when the cheating games had begun, and the answers circulated the room just through their handheld device. Many students were suspended and had to retake exams. However, as technology advances, phones have been misused for unjust cases such as cheating. Many have thought that to end this cheating epidemic, they should just ban phones in schools. More than 60 student were involved in this cheating scandal, just by using smart phones to receive answers on their city and state standardized tests.

-Natalia Harris

“Students Accused of Cheating Return Awkwardly to Harvard”

The cheating scandal occured in Harvard’s Government class with 279 students enrolled.  Harvard suspected that almost half of the class was cheating on their take-home final exam. The consequences for the majority of students was forced withdrawal, and few of the students faced temporary suspension which lasted for one year. In response to this scandal, to prevent future scandals; Harvard has set up a new administration branch dedicated to academic dishonesty. Also, they created new agendas that will include presentations regarding academic dishonesty for future freshman orientations. These students who faced temporary suspension returns to Harvard with a stain of academic dishonesty to their names.