I would never turn somebody in for cheating in school.

What if you were graded on a curve? I know it's tough -- I have actually watched students cheat on assignments I did poorly on and not done anything. But I'm starting to think more as a teacher these days, and cheating like that... it keeps the professor from really doing his job, for one thing, if he gets the wrong picture about how students are really doing in his class; it cheats the students who are really trying to do the work, for another; and it keeps the students who are copying from really learning the material. Mind you, so does the penalty, quite often, but there are good reasons for penalizing it. It's not really a victimless crime.

(ETA: which I think is what many of the students doing it, and the students not turning them in, believe, that it doesn't hurt anyone so whose business is it?)

I'm with Hec. I actually surprise myself by feeling that way, because I'm usually all with the Justice and the What's Right, but honestly, I don't care what my classmates do. If they get an A because they cheated, and I get an A because I worked my ass off, well, I still got an A and I learned what I need to learn to be a good nurse. The cheaters' A doesn't diminish that at all.

Moreover, the cheaters don't learn what they need to know to be a good nurse, and boy howdy is that going to be a problem when they go to take the licensing exam. Four years of nursing school down the toilet.

ETA that Emily makes a good point about grading on a curve, which I hadn't even thought of--only one of my professors to date has done it.

Why not Hec?

I think it's a really bad impulse to set myself up as the ethics police over my peers. I think it also betrays an alignment with the power structure/hierarchy over loyalty to your peers, which also feels wrong/petty/bad to me.

There's a reason why snitch, tattletale, informer, rat, narc are all such unpleasant words.

This is a class that is graded on a curve.

And really, I doubt that going to the prof is going to do anything, since I don't know my "peers" who did this.

It's just frustrating that I spent hours and got nowhere, and these guys did nothing. And actually, I can't believe that girl would just let them copy her work. I know how long and hard I worked on that lab report to get nowhere. I can't imagine the amount of time it took to actually complete it.

I get both sides. Although I feel like I should fry their asses when I work so hard, in reality I have never turned them in. But I should! And it would feel good.

I think it also betrays an alignment with the power structure/hierarchy over loyalty to your peers, which also feels wrong/petty/bad to me.

I dunno. This seems to suggest that the power structure//heirarchy is less worthy of loyalty than ones peers, and that's not always the case. I went to college because of what the structure represented and offered. The peers were just sort of there, for better or worse. Usually better, but they weren't what I was in college for. Of course, for most of my college career I was planning to join that power structure/heirarchy after graduation (and still would like to do so), so I probably went into school somewhat pre-aligned.

There's a reason why snitch, tattletale, informer, rat, narc are all such unpleasant words.

There are a number of reasons, some of them having to do with maintaining a corrupt status quo. I do understand your ethics police point -- I think most of us have that image in our heads of the class tattletale who constantly ran to the teacher to prove his own imagined superiority. But if one of your peers were picking pockets or stealing credit card numbers, would that justify breaking ranks to report it?

This is a class that is graded on a curve.

That does change the equation, but I still wouldn't do it. As Jen notes, what does that have to do with what I learned?

Pegging self worth to grades is one of the worst things smart people do to themselves. I think it's really destructive.

But if one of your peers were picking pockets or stealing credit card numbers, would that justify breaking ranks to report it?

That's different than telling on a co-worker who arrives work to late every day, just because you resent the fact that they haven't been caught and you make every effort to get in on time.

I guess it depends on where you peg the infraction on your individual scale of wrongitude.

an alignment with the power structure/hierarchy over loyalty to your peers

Hmm. I don't have any inherent loyalty to the people with whom I go to school just because we're all students. I don't like the ones who cheat and I wouldn't side with them, were I forced to choose sides. But as long as I'm not forced to choose sides, I'm fine with watching them dig their own graves.