Harvard's Cheating Scandal Fallout Can Extend to Football?

[bonarae]

xtroublex xsmhx

This has already claimed a famous victim in men's basketball. See the 2012-2013 Basketball Thread in Other Sports for the link.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/9/10/football-cheating-scandal/

[Pard4Life]

This entire "scandal" is the professor's fault... I'd reprimand the professor and give warnings to the students.

[Lehigh Football Nation]

You are having problems in an extremely difficult, confusing class. What do you do, as a student? You go to the graduate teaching fellow, a person whom you are required to go to anyway in weekly sessions, for help. You share notes with your classmates in an effort to understand the class and do well at it. I really fail to see how this crosses some line in the sense of cheating, which appears to be part of the threshold of investigation.

On the exam, there is a rule, "students cannot discuss the exam with others" - yet it is a take-home, "open internet" final. Structurally this is something that is completely untenable and unenforcable. You cannot prove that any of the exams are "pure".

This really should be a story about how shockingly out-of-touch college professors are with reality. I think there are grade school teachers that could structure a course better than this yahoo. The faculty are simply closing ranks around this incompetence and trying to prove that it's all the student's fault - which it isn't.

Fittingly, this is also being spun as some sort of indictment against Ivy League athletics, which is complete and utter bull****. Athletes got no "preferential treatment" in this case either way, which is very clear to anyone paying attention. If anything, athletes are being bastardized as third-class citizens, as if the pointy-headed ones nod their heads and say, 'Of course an athlete would be cheating.' Once again, perceived bias against athletes is just accepted as reality, which is the real crime of these types of articles.

[Ivytalk]

I generally agree with Babar's take on this. Some student heads will probably roll as a result. If some are football players, the team will just have to deal with it.

Babar, give my best to "La Reine Celeste," Pom, Flor and Alexander!:)

[Lehigh Football Nation]

Part of my issue with this is with the reporting of this. Not sure if it's because of the nature of sports reporting or not, but the way it's being reported is that seems like it's disproportionately hitting athletes because it's only the athletes that are personally being "outed".

I've had my issues with the NYT before, but it's not them I have a quarrel with here, since they have kept the students anonymous and haven't explicitly made it into an athletics scandal. It's other papers that are saying "XX, starting center for the Harvard basketball team..., and YY, football player, are involved in this cheating scandal that rocks the school."

What's really unfortunate is that the impression is getting out there, like it or not, that this is an athletics academic scandal on scale with the Army cheating scandal of the 1950, which was athletics-based. It is not.

[Ivytalk]

Part of my issue with this is with the reporting of this. Not sure if it's because of the nature of sports reporting or not, but the way it's being reported is that seems like it's disproportionately hitting athletes because it's only the athletes that are personally being "outed".

I've had my issues with the NYT before, but it's not them I have a quarrel with here, since they have kept the students anonymous and haven't explicitly made it into an athletics scandal. It's other papers that are saying "XX, starting center for the Harvard basketball team..., and YY, football player, are involved in this cheating scandal that rocks the school."


What's really unfortunate is that the impression is getting out there, like it or not, that this is an athletics academic scandal on scale with the Army cheating scandal of the 1950, which was athletics-based. It is not.

True enough. Most of the accused students are not varsity athletes. Just grade-grubbing gutseekers who should know better.

[Green26]

I generally agree with Babar's take on this. Some student heads will probably roll as a result. If some are football players, the team will just have to deal with it.

Babar, give my best to "La Reine Celeste," Pom, Flor and Alexander!:)

Not me. I agree with Lehigh, not Babar. From what I've ready, there was a somewhat common practice of how tests were taken with test rules like this one, perhaps even with tests for this course. The rules were really quite open and vague, except if one focuses on the one sentence alone, i.e. not consulting. And multiple students talked with one or more TA's, apparently generally and with respect to the one bad question with an unknown phrase. I don't see how students can be "convicted" on this, unless someone says that they were involved in a particular group who got together and blatantly cheated. I suppose if the there are multiple paragraphs with the exact same wording, I might have a different view.

If it's true what some have said this particular prof has said in the past, perhaps he ought to be tossed out.

As for Babar, I don't think what may be done at Princeton is particularly relevant to what is done, i.e. the practice of test-taking in similar situations, at Harvard.

If Harvard takes action that causes a graduate to lose a good job or injure a reputation, Harvard better be damn sure that it's right and it can prove it was right. My guess is that Harvard will slim down the number of people who are evidentially deemed to have cheated. My guess is that the students or former students are smarter, and have families with much better lawyers, than the administrators who are trying to push this one.

That being said, I am completely opposed to cheating, if it is truly cheating.

[grayghost06]

I used to tease the locals who went to George Mason ( and seemed to have an inordinate amount of multiple choice and take home tests) by saying, " Do you really think that's the type of exams they take at Harvard?". My point being it was not the best measure of learning. Apparently I was misinformed.

[Ivytalk]

According to the Boston Globe, all FB players were still on the roster as of yesterday afternoon.

[Lehigh Football Nation]

Sadly, I saw an article like this coming.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/25/opinion/mills-harvard-cheating/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_latest+%28RSS%3A+Mo st+Recent%29



The scandal centers on 125 students, as many as half of them varsity athletes from the men's basketball, baseball and football teams, according to The Boston Globe. They stand accused of copying from one another or plagiarizing on a take-home exam in a spring 2012 government course, "Introduction to Congress," with an enrollment of 279.

...

Now, Faust's period of grace is over, thanks to the national publicity surrounding the cheating scandal. The future of an ethics-skirting basketball program is in the spotlight, and so are the teaching practices that led massive numbers of students to cheat in a course many originally took because it had a reputation for being easy.

...

Amaker then got himself into hot water by recruiting players with lower academic profiles than his predecessor had recruited. He was investigated for a possible violation of NCAA rules for allowing a coach, whom he would later hire as his assistant, to work out with a player Harvard was trying to recruit.

A five-month Ivy League investigation into Amaker's recruiting practices cleared him of wrongdoing, but the tone was set for a sports program based on cutting corners and winning at all costs.

I love it - Amaker is innocent, yet he "set a tone"! Guilty!

This idiot is calling this an athletics scandal, when it most decidedly is not, and throwing Tommy Amaker under the bus for no reason at all. If I'm Amaker, I'd sue his *** to high heaven and make sure he never works again.

[Sader87]

I'm guessing Tommy A will not proceed with that LFN.....let's just say, he has played fairly loose with the rules at Cambridge and within the Ivy League.

[Lehigh Football Nation]

I'm guessing Tommy A will not proceed with that LFN.....let's just say, he has played fairly loose with the "rules" at Cambridge and within the Ivy League.

Fixed it a little. I personally think Amaker's "violations" are of more the unwritten kind that Harvard is supposed to suck at basketball. Years after the NY Times (and "unnamed sources in the Ivy League") ran that kid out of town (a kid who, incidentally, would have been welcomed with open arms at Holy Cross or Lehigh), I'm still exceedingly upset as to how that played out.