Cheating

The vast majority of people reading this will not be cheating in my class. I apologize for having to drag you through this because of the behaviour of a small fraction of my students.

ksjp, 1/3/00

University Policy on Cheating or Plagiarism (From the UCB General Catalog)

Achievement and proficiency in subject matter include your realization that neither is to be achieved by cheating. An instructor has the right to give you an F on a single assignment produced by cheating without determining whether you have a passing knowledge of the relevant factual material. That is an appropriate academic evaluation for a failure to understand or abide by the basic rules of academic study and inquiry. An instructor has the right to assign a final grade of F for the course if you plagiarized a paper for a portion of the course, even if you have successfully and, presumably, honestly passed the remaining portion of the course. It must be understood that any student who knowingly aids in plagiarism or other cheating, e.g., allowing another student to copy a paper or examination question, is as guilty as the cheating student.

EECS Department policy

My Policy:

Every faculty member that I have ever spoken to on the subject takes cheating very seriously. Some faculty are willing to work with a student who has cheated, to try to find an accomodation, understand the problem, the motivation, etc. I am not one of these faculty. If I catch you cheating, I will give you an F on the assignment. If it is a midterm exam, final exam, or final project, I will give you an F in the class. You will be reported to the office of student conduct. If you have a previous case of cheating on your record, I will push to have you expelled from the University.

What is cheating and plagiarism?

plagiarize, v. 1) To steal and use (the ideas or writings) of another) as one's own (from the American Heritage Dictionary)
cheat, v. 1) To act dishonestly; practice fraud (from the American Heritage Dictionary)

If you turn in someone else's work as if it were your own, you are guilty of cheating. This includes homework sets, answers on exams, lab writeups, SPICE decks, schematic diagrams, etc.

Examples of student excuses:

I have heard all of the following statements. All of the people making these statements were given an F.
The first few are easy:

"I didn't cheat. I did my own work, but I saw that hers was better, so I turned hers in instead."
"I finished the project early. My friends had midterms in other classes, and didn't have time to work on it. I let them copy mine."
"We made a deal - I did the odd numbered homeworks, and he did the even."

These next few are a little trickier. Are you guilty of cheating if you give away something that doesn't work, or if someone promises that they won't copy but just wants to look, or if you put yourself in a situation where it is trivially easy for someone to copy your work? YES!
If someone breaks into your room or your account, or searches your backpack when you aren't looking, that's not your fault. If you pin your homework on the bulletin board, or leave it on the dining room table when your roommates are around, that is your fault. F's for all of the following:

"I didn't give them my project. I let them have an earlier version that didn't work."
"She said that she just wanted to look at it for reference, but she promised not to use it."
"My friends and I all share passwords to our accounts since we're in a project group in cs170. I had no idea that they copied my project."

And then there is the appeal to friendship, common fraternity, ethnicity, you name it:

"He is my brother. What could I do?"

What you can do is be very blunt: "Are you out of your mind? We can both be thrown out of the university for this! I will not risk my entire college career on this."

Anyone who asks you to cheat is threatening your grade and your future as well as his. Don't give in!