Posted on 12/01/2006 8:15:25 AM PST by Milhous
Cheating is not unheard of on university campuses. But cheating on an open-book, take-home exam in a pass-fail course seems odd, and all the more so in a course about ethics.
Yet Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism is looking into whether students may have cheated on the final exam in just such a course, “Critical Issues in Journalism.” According to the school’s Web site, the course “explores the social role of journalism and the journalist from legal, historical, ethical, and economic perspectives,” with a focus on ethics.
...
“Our students are strivers,” he added. “But they are striving to get good clips. It is not like law school, where fine differences in points make all the difference in the world.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Ivy J-Schoolers Fail Ethics, Ace Irony
Cheating on an ethics exam? It sounds like the setup for a joke. But a group of grad students at Columbia's journalism school are suspected of having done just that, according to a source at the institution.
Tomorrow, the entire student body is required to attend a special session of "Critical Issues in Journalism," an ethics course taught by New York Times columnist Samuel Freedman. In an e-mail announcing the meeting last week, vice dean David Klatell stated only that there had been a "serious problem" with the final exam. Failure to attend the session, Klatell warned, would result in a failing grade for the course.
Neither Klatell nor Freedman responded immediately to calls for comment, but students believe the purpose of the meeting is to exhort suspected cheaters to step forward. "It's an 'Out yourself or you'll all have to suffer' situation," says the source.
"Critical Issues," an all-school seminar, focuses on dilemmas facing journalists in the post-Judith Miller and Jayson Blair era. The class includes topics such as "Why be Ethical?" and "Tribal Loyalty vs. Journalistic Obligation." The final exam consists of two essay questions to be completed in 90 minutes. Since the test can be taken at any time during a 36-hour period, students are instructed not to discuss the exam questions with each other.
In this case, it seems a few of the aspiring Woodwards and Bernsteins were a little too adept at working their sources. No word on how the school's administration got wind of the cheating.
If the disgruntled posts on RateMyProfessors.com are any indication, Freedman's students haven't exactly been soaking up his sermons.
"Maybe he could e-mail his 'speeches' to the students instead of making everyone suffer through the most wasted class in j-school (collective punishment?). His ethical Fridays were a pompous exercise in self-adulation. He seldom talks about the readings and a typical speech always begins, 'In (fill in year here).'"
"There was a land of Publishers and Editors called the Newspaper Business... Here in this pretty world Journalism took its last bow... Here was the last ever to be seen of Reporters and their Enablers, of Anonymous Sources and of Stringers... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization Gone With the Wind..."
With apologies to Margaret Mitchell...
It's the whole post-Clinton era attitude -- if you can cheat on the ethics test and pass, then you have demonstrated that you are ethical.
LOL --- thanks for the ping.
By FAXing the answers from a local Kinko's.
Journalistic Ethics 101
Ethics? You can't make them follow any types of ethics - they have free speech/press.
(/sarcasm)
That's almost an invitation to discuss the test with fellow students. Perhaps that was the point of giving the exam over a 36 hour period--to see if one student took the test at hour 1 and the rest of the class at hour 34.
Remember the physics class at UVA years ago where something like a quarter of the students were found to have cheated?
They're journalism majors, what else would they expect from them? They are only emulating the "false but accurate" talking heads that get all the face time on the major networks.
I'd strike "History" and replace it with "the subject matter they plan on covering". If you're going to write about economics, study economics. If you're going to write about technoloy, take technology courses. Politics/government? History and PoliSci.
I wonder if the buggy whip makers had ethics classes in their last days...
"Journalistic ethics" is an oxymoron, is it not?
It won't be that simplistic. If you have 90 minutes at a computer for two essays, with supporting materials, all knowing the questions will do will help you organize your notes better before you start.
My guess (after seeing several instances of cheating) is that some students didn't just share the questions but how they answered them and may have even employed the old cut/paste function. When students cheat on essays there are red flags, writing style changes midstream, a unique, vague, or not well known/discussed example will appear in several essays, and cheaters don't edit well. I heard of a student who started an example with "female" who was later referred to as "he" and "him" in the essay.
They were caught cheating, so I guess they passed.
I guess we know where AP is going to be recruiting its next crop of stringers.
The students at Columbia are taught to disrupt free speech; to stalk and mock those with whom they disagree; and to worship sexual promiscuity. Furthermore, they are carefully instructed in the preservation of the life of a single, tiny tree frog, but then encouraged to recklessly destroy larger unborn babies.
The only "moral" these kids are taught is to respect people who are members of a "special class". Of course, they are simultaneously taught to disrespect members of other "special classes" such as Baptists and legally wed heterosexuals.
Wild sex 101: S&M clubs, nude parties, porn, X-rated romps rule at Columbia
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