Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!sun.soe.clarkson.edu!rpi!rpics!mccombt
From: mccombt@rpics (Todd McComb)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Student and Course Integrity
Summary: sabotage?
Message-ID: <30@rpi.edu>
Date: 21 Dec 88 15:25:28 GMT
References: <1131@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu> <1887@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> <859@quintus.UUCP> <9940@quacky.mips.COM> <871@quintus.UUCP> <19006@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <885@quintus.UUCP> <9233@ihlpb.ATT.COM>
Sender: usenet@rpi.edu
Reply-To: mccombt@turing.cs.rpi.edu (Todd McComb)
Organization: Rensselaer Mathematics Dept., Troy NY
Lines: 36

In article <9233@ihlpb.ATT.COM> nevin1@ihlpb.UUCP (55528-Liber,N.J.) writes:

>In article <885@quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:

>>Why
>>would anyone try to sabotage another student?  There's nothing in it for
>>the saboteur.

Schools that rely heavily on "the curve" give students incentive to
just do better than others in their class.  It seems to me that that
kind of incentive has questionable educational benefits.

>Sometimes the sabotage is unintentional.
> [description of incident deleted]

With all this talk of sabotage, I keep wondering just how someone
would sabotage a student whom they thought was doing too well.  Maybe
someone can enlighten me.  I just can't conceive of a situation where
another student could affect my test score.  (Labs are a little 
different.)

>My teacher for this class had an excellent policy regarding this type
>of incident:  if you cheat on an assignment, you get a 0 for that
>assignment; if you steal someone else's work, you automatically fail
>the course, and you are brought up for dismissal from the University.

Why are people so paranoid about cheating?  As far as I am concerned,
if a student doesn't want to learn the material, they are only
hurting themselves.  Frankly, I don't care if they cheat.

--todd

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                         The way I feel is the way I am.
Todd McComb                                                  mccombt@cs.rpi.edu
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