Academic Integrity Committe Created to Address Cheating in Local Schools

East Chapel Hill High School has begun a program with Duke University's Center for Academic Integrity at the Kenan Institute for Ethics to analyze cheating and unethical behavior within the school.

Betsy Dawson, a Latin teacher at ECHHS, initiated the Academic Integrity Committee last November after witnessing some cases within her own classroom.

The first action of the committee was to revise the honor code of ECHHS. She said they looked at the honor codes of different colleges and adapted them to the needs of the high school.

"We basically looked at what we thought were clear and the best definitions and tried to apply them here," she said.

Dawson said the committee's next action will be a 1,450-student survey that will help the school assess students' participation and feelings toward cheating. The center will process the data for analysis.

ECHHS principal David Thaden said cheating is a common problem at all schools.

"The things we experience are rarely typical in nature," Thaden said. "I don't think there is one main reason."

He said students have many reasons, including the idea that homework is unrewarding, busy work, lack of preparation and parental pressure.

The center will be helpful in many ways, he said. It will educate teachers on how to help students understand what is unethical while teaching students when and how to cite sources to avoid plagiarism.

Thaden said working with the center can help ECHHS administrators devise ways to make academic integrity a communitywide issue.

"Their resource pool becomes available to us because we are members," he said. "We are learning from their experiences how to be more proactive with the kids."

The Center for Academic Integrity suggested the efforts for change be student-initiated, but each school can have differing cheating policy guidelines.

"It's really up to the institution to decide what cheating means to them," said Diane Waryold, the center's executive director. "Some institutions would define it as lying, cheating and stealing, or they might base it as plagiarism or the fabrication of data."

Mary Ann Hardebeck, principal of Chapel Hill High School, said the school will be examining the academic integrity program as well.

"That is something that our student government will be exploring," she said. "One of our objectives is to really promote and foster academic integrity."

She said it is part of an educator's mission to eliminate cheating.

"We must work to develop a climate that discourages unethical behavior," she said. "Teachers must show that they take unethical behavior seriously."

Dawson said that after the surveys provide an accurate assessment of cheating behaviors at ECHHS, the committee will focus on implementing new consequences.

She said, "It is most important that we are creating an atmosphere where honor is respected and students are encouraged not to cheat."

Staff writer Shelley Basinger contributed to this story.

The City Editor can be reached at citydesk@unc.edu.