Christi Brookes said academic dishonesty on CMU’s campus is rampant – from homework to projects.

The assistant foreign languages professor said her biggest problem comes from Internet translators.

“Sometimes I think students think that typing in a sentence is the equivalent of a more efficient way of looking up a whole bunch of words,” Brookes said.

Brookes said she can easily identify when a student has used an Internet translator because the mistakes are worse than that of a beginning French learner.

Situations such as this are not uncommon.

“I think professors are aware of cheating, why else would they say ‘don’t look at others’ papers’?” said Carissa Schultz, a Sturgis sophomore.

In 2001, CMU ratified its academic dishonesty policy to clearly outline the university’s rules and regulations as well as procedures and consequences of academic dishonesty.

But tracking academic dishonesty at CMU is difficult because professors do not have to report instances.

“There are two things necessary for policy compliance,” said Hope May, director of CMU’s Center of Professional and Personal Ethics. “First is an understanding of the policy by both students and faculty and second is the enforcement of the policy,”

May said in her experience, both students and faculty are in the dark about the policy, even though it is outlined online as well as in the university bulletins.

If the entire CMU community understood the policy, May said, there would be a large reduction in academic dishonesty. She said this requires much more than merely understanding the policy.

The policy does not require professors to report instances of academic dishonesty to anyone, causing instances to go unrecognized by higher authorities. This also makes repeat offenders difficult to track.

St. Johns junior Alex Pfaff said many students peak at other people’s papers.

“I know other people who cheat – whether it’s on tests or just homework answers,” he said.

Pfaff said he knows people who cheat off each other and collaborate answers together.

He said he wouldn’t necessarily call it cheating.

“Yes it’s dishonest by all means, but it’s not like plagiarizing an entire paper,” he said.

Brookes said she has failed students on individual assignments as well as an entire course.

She said she believes students are good at heart, but are tempted to get a better grade – which leads to an unfortunate choice.

“The only way, I believe, to stop academic dishonesty is to be aware of its existence, educate students as to what is and is not appropriate, and send a message out that it’s not OK in my classroom,” Brookes said.

Dean of Students Bruce Roscoe agreed.

“The beauty of informing, even if there are no consequences, is that we can look for a pattern,” he said.

Roscoe said faculty control the situations, but students may appeal a faculty member’s decision.

“We believe in due process, the appeal process is very important and takes time and work,” he said.

Richard St. Andre, former associate dean for the College of Science and Technology, said he has handled issues from student grievances to academic dishonesty.

“Very few academic dishonesty cases in the College of Science and Technology ever made it to the dean’s office, maybe four or five in 10 years,” he said.

St. Andre said most instances are handled at the department level and in almost every case by the individual instructor.

Schultz said she thinks professors should report cheating to deans so there is a way of tracking students who cheat.

“If you don’t report it, how do we know cheating won’t be tolerated?” she said.

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