By Patrick Clark 8/31/12 5:22pm

red in the face

harvard

A Harvard Student Writes In on Cheating Scandal

After we posted on the cheating scandal embroiling Harvard University yesterday, a student implicated in the investigation wrote in to offer another side of the story.

If you haven’t been following, the university said yesterday that nearly half of the 279 students in an undergraduate course—later identified by the Harvard Crimson as Government 1310: Introduction to Congress—were being investigated for academic dishonesty on a take-home final exam.

According to press reports, the inquiry was opened after a teaching fellow, or TF for short, noticed that students collaborated on the exam despite instructions that such collaboration was prohibited, and that some students used “same long, identical strings of words.”

But our source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that while collaboration may have been expressly forbidden*, it was widely practiced by students and even teaching fellows. Read More

By Patrick Clark 8/15/12 8:00am

Cover Story

Illustration: Mark Hammermeister

Our Cheating Hearts: Honor, Integrity and Playing by the Rules are All Out of Style

“I guess I’m not as cynical as you are,” Neil Barofsky, former watchdog for the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program and presently the busiest cynic caught up in the government’s entanglement with the banking business, told The Observer.

In a time when everyone seems to be cheating—and most everyone getting away with it—we’d put it to Mr. Barofsky that there doesn’t seem to be much percentage in honest behavior. If Wall Street executives, tween idols and journalistic heavyweights are shirking the rules to get ahead, doesn’t it make sense for the commoners to do the same? Read More

By Drew Grant 7/09/12 5:01pm

High School drama

Stuyvesant High School (Wikipedia)

71 Stuyvesant High Schoolers Accused of Cheating on Regents Exams; Face Expulsion, Suspension, Shame

Every month, there’s some new scandal over at the uber-prestigious  Stuyvesant High School.  Last month, the young ladies of the  math and science public school held a “Slutty Wednesday” to protest the dress code that denied them the right to wear booty shorts and mini-skirts to home room.

Later that month, over 50 students were implicated in a ring that cheated on the state’s Regents exams, using their cell phones to pass around a photocopied version of the test and swapping answers. Today, justice was served…at least partially…on a radio program announcing the possible punishment of these 2.0 sneaks. Read More

By Rex Reed 7/26/11 7:23pm

movies

Gosling and Carell.

Crazy, Stupid, Love? No, Yes, and Absolutely Not.

What to say about an uphill slog called Crazy, Stupid, Love? It’s not nearly crazy enough to clear the clogged arteries of summer comedies, and when the love appears, it’s in all the wrong places. Oh well, at least they nailed the stupid part.

This movie is so hapless that not even two directors could Read More