Cheating at MHS

Every person has done it at some point in his or her life. From large scale assignments and tests to simply copying one answer from the back of the textbook, everyone’s guilty of cheating in some form or another. Now, chances are you know at least one person in MHS that has cheated on a test or assignment, but just how many people in MHS really do cheat?

MDO conducted an anonymous online survey, randomly gaining responses from a sample of more than 30 MHS students. The questions were relatively straight-forward, yes/no questions, asking inquiries such as “Have you ever cheated on an assignment?” or “What percent of the school do you think cheats?” The responses are as follows.

The first question on the survey was “Have you ever copied homework from another student?” This question unsurprisingly resulted with more than 85% of the responses being ‘yes.’ And this is relatively common knowledge among MHS students, as copying assignments is standard procedure to most students in the school. Copying homework is the easiest loophole for students who need quality homework last minute. This technique is most commonly used among students who are thriving off their homework points for their grade. With it almost guaranteeing full credit for minimal effort, it’s almost no wonder why many people do it so frequently.

Among other questions on the survey, were “Have you ever cheated on a test or quiz?” and “Have you ever plagiarized on an assignment?” According to the survey, about 60% of participants have cheated on a test or quiz. It’s much less common to cheat on a test than a homework, as a homework is far more trivial and the consequences are far less severe. In comparison to homework, cheating on a test can be a death sentence for your grade if caught, something that students are more than aware of if they are willing to risk it. As far as plagiarism goes, many students are not as inclined to plagiarize, as plagiarism has serious consequences and is something that many students don’t exactly think to use as a loophole. One reason this could be is because not only is plagiarism not as authentic as students would like, there’s a chance that what is being plagiarized could be wrong information. About 80% of students that filled out the survey reported that they have not plagiarized, one of the most generous statistics observed.

Some of the other questions on this survey included “How often do you cheat?” with around 60% saying ‘not very much.’ Other questions included “Do you know people who cheat on assignments?” and “What percent of the school do you think cheats on assignments/tests?”, where more than 85% of students know at least one person who cheats, and 50% of the students believe that a staggering 75% or more students in the school cheat. Though the final question is what caught the eye of MDO the most, in which more than 70% of the students  said they didn’t care if people cheated. This is where much of the problem of cheating in the school lies. It revolves around the mindset of “it’s not that bad,” and in some cases, it really isn’t that bad. But when this mindset is taken over by a good majority of the students in this case, it makes people wonder just how prevalent cheating is and are there too many ways to get away with cheating.

There are certainly numerous ways to get away with cheating, be it via a smartphone or the old school method of writing on your hand, but it appears these methods and ideology has taken over in the place of actual work. It makes you wonder if they’d get more work done if they’d just do it rather than risk it and break your neck trying to cheat.