I'd turn them in, because their cheating is devaluing my degree. Their cheating could get found out later, and the resulting scandal will lead to no end of the sniggering about whether my degree has value or not. I mean, I've watched my alma mater get slammed over the last year for the football player rape scandals, the Ward Churchill debacle, all sorts of money scandals, and the eventual departure of the leadership of the school. All of that has diminished the value of my degree, probably more so than picking up another Nobel and another McArthur and a few more Fulbrights.

I say, report 'em. This is different from a family who is cheating ADC to stay alive on their minimum wage income and crushing medical expenses. You can't eat a test.

Honor code? At my college, one of the bright stars of our department won awards with a story about Israel she Made Up... I'm thinking not so much. I still hate her though for making "the journalism department" sound like "lying sacks of shit" to the people we tried to report for/on. Die, Mary Ann Singleton, die.(Although I doubt that she really had a name like a Maupin character, but the memory is fickle, and only the hate remains.)

Well, yes, since said breakage happened the summer before I signed the code of conduct. But, they didn't think that made any difference.

That's pretty bogus. Weenies. t ::stabs them::

It worked out for the best. I got out of the FAC environment, and my family did too.

Hec went to a VERY LIBERAL liberal arts college, IIRC.

Not politically, but it had an extreme hands-off administrative approach when I was there.

FWIW, I did know every single person in my graduating class by name, and over the course of 4 years had socialized or taken classes with probably 90% of them. I certainly did feel a loyalty to my classmates, which was reinforced by my experience there. But I also felt a strong loyalty to my school and its academic standards, and to my professors. I never cheated on anything in college for the simple reason that I respected all of my professors (even the ones I didn't like particularly).

At Tech, the honor code was one line "No member of the Caltech community shall take unfair advantage of any other member of the Caltech community."

This covered cheating, specifically, as nearly everything is graded on a curve AND nearly every student wants to go to grad school, so the grades actually mattered. Thus, cheating is an unfair advantage, almost always. In most cases, not reporting an honor code violation is ALSO an honor code violation.

The honor code did NOT cover, however, underage drinking, which was covered by institute policy only. There were also other things covered under policy that were not generally considered honor code violations, but this was the big one.

The honor code was enforced by a student-only committee, while institute policies were enforced by a different committee with representation from students, administrators, and faculty.

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

Interestingly, I'm writing a paper on this right now. Attaching importance to grades is not always about self-worth, though: grades really can affect futures, as my friends who didn't get into grad school can attest.

And I should say that people regularly copied my answers in high school without my permission. I finally got tired of one cheerleader doing it, so on a test I put down wrong answers, made sure she copied them, turned in my test, waited for her to turn in hers, then grabbed mine back and changed my answers.

She got a 30-something. I got a 95.

She never tried to copy off me ever again.

Attaching importance to grades is not always about self-worth, though: grades really can affect futures, as my friends who didn't get into grad school can attest.

That's true. Grades are not meaningless - particularly in the sciences.

Did you ever turn anybody in for cheating, Gris? Would you have?

I have nothing much to add, except w/r/t:

Who would hire a graduate of Cheaters State University?

There was an article in the Washington Post a couple years ago pointing out how many high-level federal employees (director of DHS was cited) stated on their resumes (or SF-171s) that they'd attended colleges they hadn't. Some of the colleges didn't exist. One was a mail-order degree place: you sent them money, they sent you a degree.

So, we the taxpayers would.

She never tried to copy off me ever again.

Yeah, but that's frontier justice and crafty.