Cheaters sometimes win.

story by fletcher

Life doesn’t stop for anyone. Students everywhere are constantly struggling to stay on top of their workload and sometimes they fall behind.

“I try my hardest but sometimes there’s just too much,” sophomore Emma Bowen said.

The constant stream of assignments and tests lead students to whatever is in their power to preserve their grade. This can result in a range of tactics from staying up until 2 AM to skipping class or even cheating.

“I’ve been one who writes things on my arms every once in a while. Just a quick equation or two”, senior Valerie Littejohn said.

Littlejohn is not alone in this. Many student has experienced cheating in one form or another. Forms can vary from writing on notecards and changing your home screen’s live photo to copying entire essays outside of class.

“In English [classes], we hear more about plagiarized essays either between peers, like one person does an essay and another turns it in or they just find something online and turn it in as their own”, English teacher Tierney Devins said.

Plagiarism, just like all cheating, requires secrecy. You can’t get away with cheating if your peers tell on you. But that doesn’t seem to be a problem.

“You don’t really gain much from [snitching],” junior Julian Headley said. “And if someone does cheat, you don’t know why they’re cheating. They might really need the grade.”

Everyone understands what someone is going through when they cheat. They know that someday they could be cheating and if they snitch now, they could and likely will get snitched on later.

“I feel like whatever that person wants to do, they can do it. It’s not really going to affect me. It’s not morally right. But people are just trying to do their best,” Littlejohn said.

Morality seems to play a large role in cheating. In a 2012 study, Josephson Institute of Ethics found that although 50 percent of high school students admit to cheating, 93 percent of students feel “satisfied with their own ethics and character”. This seems to imply that cheating is only done out of necessity.

However, sometimes students cheat because they would rather just not do the hard work, leading many teachers and students to be apprehensive about cheating in any form. Instead of letting it slide, they offer other incentives to not cheat like retakes and talking to the students directly after a bad test.

“Let’s talk about why you got that zero. Do you need to come in and make up this test with me? Do you need to retake it? Do you need a different setting? For me the zero is more of a wake up call,” Devins said.

With all of these measures in place many believe that cheating is never necessary. But as long as there are teachers that give assignments, there will be students that cheat. The only question is if it is necessary.