As this is a reflection paper about my own academic misconduct, I will start out with an introduction to my situation. If nothing else, it will give an insight into my situation and my reasons for knowingly engaging in academic misconduct.

In my SE140 class, attendance accounted for 10% of the total grade. Attendance was taken by a sign-in sheet. The material of the 8:00am lecture was unrelated to the project which made up the other 90% of the grade, and it was uninteresting, so it was largely unattended. I (and many other students) had a friend sign me in on the attendance sheet so that I would not lose the attendance points.

I did this knowing that it was dishonest, but there was no reason to attend the lecture other than writing my name down in order to earn points. I will gladly take a poor grade in an engineering class if I perform poorly on an assignment, but to be honest, the idea that my grade in the final class of a competitive engineering department is partly determined by walking into a room twice a week makes no sense to me. I did not want to lose points for something entirely unrelated to both my skills as an engineer and as a student, and that ultimately is why I engaged  in this misconduct, though there were other factors encouraging me.

It was common that students would come to class, sign their name, and leave; this apparently was adequate to earn the attendance points as these students were not punished (as were showing up and sleeping or going on the internet, which were also common). At the time I didn’t see the difference and so I elected to stay at home and be signed in. Furthermore, the class TA told several of my clasmtes that the students of the previous year signed each other in with no reaction from the professor (I learned later from graduates of the SE department that it happened two and three years ago as well). Having a lecture which was not only unrelated to our class project and future careers but also unstimulating did not help - in one lecture we were asked which senses people use while riding a bicycle: the answers were sight, hearing, touch, and smell. So while I understand that it was wrong to have someone sign me in, and I regret my actions sincerely and take responsibility for them, I cannot help but feel that the structural engineering department and the professor of the class ought to consider a serious reevaluation of the SE140 lectures.

Now that I have explained my situation, I will take the point of view of the university’s academic integrity office. In the university’s Policy on Integrity and Scholarship, in the ‘Student Responsibilities’ section, one of the responsibilities is that “ No student shall knowingly allow any examination or assignment to be completed, in part or in total, for himself or herself by another person.” I clearly violated this policy, as I asked a friend who regularly attended lecture to write my name for me. This is a policy which must be in place in order for any kind of academic institution to function, as there can be no accurate assessment of a student if that student does not complete the work that is in their name. Such a situation completely undermines the processes of educating and evaluating students.
Any academic institution is concerned about academic dishonesty because it will cause both economic and social harm to the institution. A small number of academic dishonestly cases is probably expected at any university, but if these cases come and the university is not strict in its enforcement of its ethics policies (or it has weak ethics policies to begin with), several new problems will arise.

First, a lax enforcement of ethics policies creates a reputation of academic dishonesty around the institution. Even if this reputation is unfounded, potential students will be discouraged from attending the university. What serious student would want to attend a university where your grade does not correspond to your talent in your field or your talent as a student? And furthermore, attending a university with a reputation for academic dishonesty would no doubt be a negative mark in the eyes of potential employers. It is also possible (though this is pure speculation on my part) that the university or some of its departments would lose private funding due to the poor reputation. These consequences could cost the university a considerable amount of money, and provide a strong economic incentive for a strict enforcement of its academic dishonesty policies.

A second problem concerns the motivation of the institution’s current students. If cheating runs rampant in the classroom and goes unpunished, students who work hard to earn their grades will be discouraged by their classmates who get good marks with little effort. Students attend a university for both education and evaluation, and although the honest student may be getting a better education, the evaluation is also important, and a student who feels they are being evaluated unfairly will be severely demotivated in their studies.
In considering my future actions, I can say with confidence that I will not engage in further academic misconduct at UCSD. I have never had problems in the past with completing assignments honestly, and I will not have those problems in the future. And although I would prefer not to be graded on my ability to attend a lecture, my punishment in this case has provided quite a bit of discouragement from having a friend sign me into class in the future. Although my SE140 team won the competition which was the focus of the class and originally comprised 90% of our grade, the loss of attendance points combined with the restructuring of the grading scheme dropped my grade in the class to a B. Had I simply not attended lecture, I certainly would have received a better grade in the class. It is simply not worth the risk to cheat on attendance, not to mention the harm I am doing to my education by not attending the lecture.

If I encountered the same situation again, I would simply not go to class and lose the attendance points (note that I am discounting the apparently acceptable but probably dishonest option of signing myself in and then immediately leaving class). I cannot honestly say that I would attend the lecture enough to earn a significant amount of attendance points, and my time spent outside of that class aided me in my others. I commonly studied or did homework in that time, and had an optimization class at the same time on Thursdays anyway. Even if I only slept, it would indirectly help me in other classes by keeping me more alert during lecture and helping me focus while doing homework.

The single most important thing I have learned about this whole situation is that it is not worth it for me to cheat. I do not need to cheat to do well in my classes, and it was a mistake for me to try to gain extra points by having my name written by a classmate. There is really nothing else to say about what I have learned, as I knew that what I was doing was wrong from the outset.

Still, I cannot help but feel some bitterness. Not towards the university or Sixth College - I cannot blame anyone but myself for my actions, and it would be absurd for them not to punish me in some way. I feel bitter because, for all of the cheating which I heard about or witnessed firsthand at this university, I am now on academic probation for dishonest attendance. I have seen people copy each others’ programming assignments word for word; I have heard people say they programmed notes into their calculator for a closed-notes test; I have been told of graduate students comparing and copying answers on a take-home final; I know of several students who lied to the SE140 professor and were cleared from this whole attendance issue, simply by answering a few questions about the lectures by reading the lecture slides he posted online, while I immediately came forward and confessed. And I am the one who is on academic probation, who lost more than a full letter grade in a class and had to do over twenty pages of writing, and who will have to write a lengthy explanation when I apply to graduate school and will no doubt have a weaker application, because of my attendance. So as I write this, I do feel bitterness towards those people, and towards a system which could not or did not punish them as it did me. And although I cannot do anything to rectify those situations, I know what I personally did wrong, and I can help myself in the future by not doing it again.