Video related to this article is available below.Issue date: 9/6/07 Section: News
Cheating alleged among Wharton students
Many in OPIM 101 suspected of cheating on final last year
Paul Richards
A large number of Wharton students came under investigation over the summer for suspicion of cheating on last semester's Operations and Information Management 101 final project.
Multiple students in the class, which comprises mostly freshmen, confirmed that students plagiarized parts of the project and have been referred to and contacted by the Office of Student Conduct.
The OSC would not comment because of its policy of confidentiality.
OPIM professors also would not speak about the investigation because no student has been formally charged.
The final project instructed students to work in groups of two or three on a programming assignment involving complicated computer code.
Wharton officials believed that some submitted projects were too similar to each other to have been done entirely independently.
Instructions for the final project specifically prohibited collaboration among groups.
Wharton sophomore Nick Faulkner, whose group was contacted by OSC over the summer, said all groups whose projects were more than 60 percent similtar were or are being investigated.
Until being contacted by OSC, Faulkner had not known that another group had copied his project. He still does not know how anyone else got a copy.
The OSC is not charging Faulkner with plagiarism.
One Wharton sophomore, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that 80 percent of his friend's case had been plagiarized by another group.
"Her group's case had been accessed through a public computer," he said. "At the end of last semester, her case grade wasn't disclosed because the investigation was still pending," he said.
Though professors would not say if they were aware of such behavior, a private tutor from the class, Wharton senior Jason Toff, confirmed that many such cases occurred.
Toff, who does not know how many students are suspected of cheating, said that from his understanding, professors soon learned what was going on because of "excessive overlaps." The professors then "created a piece of software that compared" cases.
Multiple students in the class, which comprises mostly freshmen, confirmed that students plagiarized parts of the project and have been referred to and contacted by the Office of Student Conduct.
The OSC would not comment because of its policy of confidentiality.
OPIM professors also would not speak about the investigation because no student has been formally charged.
The final project instructed students to work in groups of two or three on a programming assignment involving complicated computer code.
Wharton officials believed that some submitted projects were too similar to each other to have been done entirely independently.
Instructions for the final project specifically prohibited collaboration among groups.
Wharton sophomore Nick Faulkner, whose group was contacted by OSC over the summer, said all groups whose projects were more than 60 percent similtar were or are being investigated.
Until being contacted by OSC, Faulkner had not known that another group had copied his project. He still does not know how anyone else got a copy.
The OSC is not charging Faulkner with plagiarism.
One Wharton sophomore, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that 80 percent of his friend's case had been plagiarized by another group.
"Her group's case had been accessed through a public computer," he said. "At the end of last semester, her case grade wasn't disclosed because the investigation was still pending," he said.
Though professors would not say if they were aware of such behavior, a private tutor from the class, Wharton senior Jason Toff, confirmed that many such cases occurred.
Toff, who does not know how many students are suspected of cheating, said that from his understanding, professors soon learned what was going on because of "excessive overlaps." The professors then "created a piece of software that compared" cases.
Viewing Comments 1 - 3 of 3
Jason Toff
posted 9/06/07 @ 11:16 AM EST
To clarify, I CANNOT confirm any cases of plagiarism. All I CAN confirm is that the allegations are primarily not about one student copying another student's case. (Continued…)
Haha
posted 9/06/07 @ 4:44 PM EST
Hahaha stupid Wharton tools
"Shakes Head"
posted 9/06/07 @ 9:08 PM EST
Why am I not surprised?
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