December 8, 2002 7:28 AM

Paging Owen Courrèges....

Student paper discloses cheating scandal at Rice

I suppose I should be shocked or upset at this sort of news, but I must confess I'm beyond that. Our children mirror the parents who raised them, and judging by what some adults are doing these days, their kids haven't had much in the way of role models.

Fourteen Rice University students have been recommended for suspensions and another for expulsion in an ongoing investigation of cheating, according to the Rice Thresher, the student newspaper.

Most of the students were varsity athletes, according to an anonymous student quoted in the Thresher as a member of Rice's Honor Council, the student organization that investigates cheating allegations.

According to the student newspaper's Friday edition, physics professor Arthur Few accused 22 students of cheating on their final take-home exams last spring for the class Physics 2003: Atmosphere, Weather and Climate. Few declined to comment.

Hearings have been completed for 18 of the students, the Thresher said, with three being cleared of wrongdoing.

"I'm not disputing any of the facts in the (Thresher) story," said Joan Shreffler, a senior from Chapel Hill, N.C., who chairs the 28-student Honor Council. Shreffler and several other members of the council declined to comment further on the matter.

I'll be interested to see what my young friend Owen will have to say about this. This is not the first time a cheating scandal has happened, nor will it be the last. The sad thing is that the news of yet another scandal barely passes for news any more. Shame just isn't what it used to be, I suppose. Have our standards slipped so far that cheating no longer carries any meaningful stigma? Apparently so.

I don't want to be the one to decry our national lack of morality (whatever THAT means), but I am concerned that integrity and honesty seem at times conspicuous by their absence. Of course, it's not as if those we've selected as leaders (whether by election or acclaim) have been setting much of an example in this respect. Time was when a man's word meant something- or is that just me showing my age again??

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on December 8, 2002 7:28 AM.

Somebody wanna 'splain this one to me? was the previous entry in this blog.

I suppose travelling really DOES broaden one's horizons is the next entry in this blog.

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