By Juliana Pearson (March 9, 2002)

The rural community of Piper, Kansas, may seem a world away from suburban Washington DC, but the events that have unfolded there in the past few months are an excellent (and rather frightening) addendum to Lasso Online’s special edition on cheating (See Special Edition, January 14^th). 

It all started out innocently enough. In November, a second year teacher at Piper High School, Christine Pelton, assigned a major project to her sophomore botany classes. They were to collect 20 leaves, write two paragraphs on each leaf and do an oral presentation. The students were informed when the project was assigned that it was worth 50 percent of the final grade and cheaters would receive no credit. The project was a curricular staple; it had been assigned annually for over ten years. Pelton expected educational exploration and intellectual inquiry.

Sorry, no such luck, Ms. Pelton. Piper High’s unfortunate biology teacher began to suspect plagiarism as the projects were turned in. She noted some of them included identical responses. Pelton decided to combat the apparent cheating, which seemed only just. She scanned the papers and ran them through turnitin.com, the same Internet plagiarism detector that several teachers at George Mason have used recently (see "Turnitin.com," January 14^th). Twenty-eight of 118 projects were reported as plagiarized. Acting on her policy, Pelton decided to fail the students. It was only fair to the 90 students who didn’t cheat, right?

Not so, according to the students’ parents. The angry complaints were soon clogging Pelton’s E-mail and voice mail. The parents’ poor, victimized babies hadn’t done anything wrong! The school must not have been educating students about plagiarism. This wayward teacher had to be brought to justice. Parents angrily rallied at the next school board meeting.

Here’s the low point of the saga: the board sided with the parents, despite the fact that Piper High’s principal and the district superintendent, not to mention many parents and teachers, supported Pelton. The board ruled the students would receive partial credit for the project. Also, it would no longer be worth 50 percent of the final grade but 30 percent, allowing many students to pass the course who didn’t do as well on the project as they might have liked.

The verdict satisfied parents like Theresa Wolley, who told the Kansas City Star last month that she was sure her precious 15-year-old did not plagiarize. She said her daughter was hurt by the accusation. "She questions herself. She said, ‘Mom, I don’t think I am an A student. I did that (project) the same way I did everything my whole school career. I must have done something wrong." Either this girl is exceptionally naïve or she knows how to manipulate an unsuspecting parent. I’d be willing to bet it’s the latter. Did Mrs. Wolley not remember that she had some influence on her child’s judgment and morals? If I were this woman, I would have preferred that my daughter failed and had to retake the course so that she could learn exactly what she had been doing wrong for all these years.

No doubt Wolley was also pleased that the stress of the whole affair forced Pelton to resign the day after the school board handed down its decision. "I went to my class and tried to teach the kids but they were whooping and hollering and saying, ‘we don’t have to listen you anymore,’" she told the Kansas City Star. Dishonesty had triumphed.

Once Pelton resigned, the scandal quickly gained national attention. The Associated Press picked up the story as did NPR, which conveniently broadcast it on national airwaves so I could hear it while eating my cheerios in nightgown and socks. If only Piper had let Ms. Pelton do what she wanted, the rural district wouldn’t be under such national scrutiny! The community is torn. Disputes have erupted at basketball games and PTA meetings. The school district quickly adopted a hush-hush policy on the issue. No teacher was allowed to comment and the faculty’s voice was further silenced (although some did comment anonymously). Students in the district, whether or not they were involved in the scandal itself, have been teased about cheating. Meanwhile, national commentators continue to cite Piper as "an example of failing education and moral standards."

On March 3^rd, the Associated Press reported the latest development in the case. Leona Sigwig, a language arts teacher at Piper High, has finally taken some initiative. Siswig conducted an informal survey and (surprise!) Piper High does educate its students about plagiarism. As at many schools, including GM, nearly all classes include a detailed discussion of proper research method, plagiarism and copyright laws, and most teachers make it clear that cheating will result in punishment. "I suppose it is possible that one or two genuinely didn’t understand they were plagiarizing but I doubt that more than two of them didn’t know," said Siswig. Your point is well taken, Ms. Sigwig. Thanks for crediting high school students with having at least a little judgment and a coherent, individual thought or two. I’d agree that most students who cheat know exactly what they’re doing.

When I heard the story on the radio, my first reaction was one of relief. The scandal itself was far from Falls Church, and I doubted that faculty authority would be undermined here to the extent that it was in Piper. At the same time, I knew that the case served as a warning for Falls Church and other school districts with reasonably high academic pressure. In Lasso Online’s student survey on cheating, many students cited parental pressure to do well as a reason for dishonesty. I’m generalizing, but I can easily envision a group of Falls Church parents clamoring to school board meetings with the wool over their eyes in a Piper-like case.

Perhaps the most unsettling interview on NPR was one with a high school senior. The eighteen year-old, who is heading off to Kansas State University next fall, expressed dismay. She had worked hard in high school, but felt that people were going to look down on her for being a Piper High graduate. She was worried that her peers and professors would think she had cheated. As a high school senior so close to graduation, awaiting letters from colleges, I sensed her discouragement. What if an admissions committee, for example, held a bias against a student because they came from Piper? Hopefully, those at KSU and other schools will forget the scandal quickly, but it is still painfully ironic that four years of hard work could possibly be disregarded while dishonest sophomores receive passing grades. I remembered the Lasso survey. Many students claimed that cheating was not a big deal because it only affected the people involved. Only they lost out. Cheating is, however, a big deal when it destroys teaching careers and diminishes the perceived academic integrity of an entire community. Stop and think about it.