How Effective is the Zero-Tolerance Cheating Policy?

One semester after President Richard Joel announced the new zero tolerance policy aimed at tackling cheating, many questions still remain. Students and faculty wonder how successful his policy will be, when it will take effect, and whether alternate approaches will ultimately be necessary to defeat cheating at YU.

Clarifying the Details

The details of President Joel’s new zero tolerance policy are still in the process of being drawn up, and it remains unclear to what degree the policy has changed student attitudes towards cheating. 

According to Yeshiva College Associate Dean Frederic Sugarman, “The President sent his zero tolerance email on March 30.  Basically, I cannot tell if cheating has gone up or down until a full year has passed. [It’s] too soon to give an award here.”

In the meantime, a committee consisting of faculty and administrators from YU’s graduate and undergraduate institutions, including Associate Dean Ira Jaskoll of Sy Syms School of Business and Health Sciences and Professor Carl Feit of YC, is putting together the details of the university’s new official policy.  One member of the committee said that until the new policy is officially put together, older regulations on cheating will remain in place.

Dean Sugarman anticipated that the changes of President Joel’s zero tolerance policy would not take effect until the middle of next semester, only when the committee finishes putting together an official written policy.

However, President Joel’s reaction to a cheating incident in a YU professor’s class last semester in which students were caught cheating markedly differed from his stated stance.  In that instance, President Joel was notably apologetic over the students’ reduced punishment.  In fact, according to a Commentator article written shortly after the incident last May, “the President emphasized the singularity of this case: ‘I made it clear to them [the students caught cheating] that they managed to dodge a bullet they shouldn't have dodged.’”

It remains unclear whether President Joel’s strategy will work, or whether it appropriately tackles the issues. Some students have proposed a student honors code (see Matthew Williams’ article in this issue).  Other students have suggested exploring the possibility of demographic trends in cheating on campus. 

Dean Sugarman, however, has criticized this latter approach, explaining that “we don’t do demographics on those who cheat.  Rumors have it that foreign students or SSSB students are more prone to cheat.  This is hearsay, and even loshon hora.  [There is] no way to prove who cheats by demographic classes.” 

According to a Commentator Student Pulse poll taken last semester, 22% of SSSB students admitted to having cheated on a test, whereas only 7% of YC and Stern students admitted to doing so, but these numbers cannot be viewed as scientific.  One student who wished to remain anonymous commented that “the general student consensus shown by the poll does reflect something, and shouldn’t be brushed aside by the administration.  There’s no reason to introduce more severe punishing measures across the entire university when the problem can be targeted locally.”

Undergraduates Take Action

Several students have decided to take the issue of academic integrity into their own hands.  This September, YCSA Secretary-Treasurer Rafi Holzer (YC ’11) started the Committee for Academic Honesty, described in a September 23 email Holzer sent to the student body as “a grassroots student-run organization that would promote a culture of honesty on campus.”

Holzer, along with student activists Noam Friedman (YC ‘11) and Peter Kahn (YC ‘10), plans on raising student awareness of the ethical problems of cheating through advertising campaigns and other events, while raising student concerns on university policies relating to academic integrity with the administration.

“What the committee aims to do,” stressed Friedman, “in addition to working with the administration to promote high standards of academic integrity, is to create a culture of academic integrity among YU students from the bottom up.”

Administrators and Faculty React

 Several administrators argue that in order to truly face down the issue of academic integrity on campus, cheating needs to be addressed at the grassroots level.. Yeshiva College Dean Barry Eichler suggested that more work needs to be done, by both faculty and students, to promote an atmosphere which opposes cheating.  Although he suggested the possibility of more anti-cheating programming by Roshei Yeshiva, faculty, and students, Dean Eichler worried that such an approach  would fail to impact a sufficient number of students..

Dean Eichler did not offer specifics about the various prospective programs, but was hopeful that the student body would be more vocal in its response to the problem.

“I would love students to speak out to their peers and produce workshops on personal integrity, although no one is going to rush to fill such workshops during club hour,” noted Dean Eichler.  However, he also pointed out that “there are ways to integrate issues of personal integrity into the classroom and student activities.”

When asked why he felt that cheating was such a problem at YC, Dean Eichler attributed the practice to what he described as the unique camaraderie among Yeshiva students.  Unlike other colleges with “a large and diverse student body on campus where you take classes in which almost everyone is a stranger,” Dean Eichler argued that, “Yeshiva’s atmosphere is more difficult and challenging.  Everyone knows everyone else; everyone has the same kind of basic experience. This promotes a certain chevraship, a sense of camaraderie in which there is a mitzvah to help one’s friend.  Such an environment doesn’t allow for the self growth that’s necessary to discourage cheating.”

Dean Eichler maintained that a greater onus should also be placed on faculty to promote academic integrity.  “Faculty members have an important responsibility to create a climate which would discourage cheating.  I think that, for example, the posting of old exams by faculty should be encouraged.  We have to realize students are under tremendous pressures...and I think the faculty has to be more sensitive to the struggle they’re going through and pressure they put upon themselves or parents put upon their children.  Why bother stealing the exam if you have the last exams posted from the last three or four years so you get an idea of what those exams are like?  It’s true this is more work for faculty, but that is what they should be doing.”

In a similar vein, Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Dr. Jeremy Wieder, who teaches in the Mazer Yeshiva Program and Yeshiva College, stressed that “students [need] to be aware that it is permissible and even laudable to do things to prevent cheating and turn people in who cheat.  We [the Roshei Yeshiva] stopped short of saying that students must turn in fellow students.  It’s certainly permissible and not lashon hara, and in some ways, it’s lo ta’amod al dam re’ekha, because often they [other students] suffer when they’re cheating.”