Comment by Forgeties79
6 hours ago
I’m an alum now, not a student, but even college students can submit a FOIA request. Additionally, the school can look in to it if it wants. The possibilities are near-endless for getting this kind of info. There’s also the simple fact that it’s not like it’s a secret when someone is expelled.
I don’t understand why you think it’s so impossible for people to prove this problem exists. For starters, they could simply survey the faculty and ask them how they handle cheating at the school to better understand how it’s reported. Which they did, and it was very revealing. Most did not feel comfortable reporting. They literally told the school. So out the gate you had less than half the faculty even participating, which immediately changes who is impacted (I.e. incredibly unfair enforcement). Before we’re even getting into race and other factors students are basically subject to a near-coin flip over whether or not their professors even report it. Then you have to take the professor’s own potential biases into account, since it’s basically all on them (and peers to a lesser degree. Do I need to explain 18-21 year olds can exercise poor social judgment and/or may not want to ruin someone’s life? Or worse, want to?) voluntarily report this.
Additionally, you could see the breakdown by race (and more) of people that were expelled. The numbers made no sense if you wanted to assert the system was fair - less than 20% of those reported or expelled were white at a school over 80% white. For emphasis: This was the case both for reporting them and verdict. It was common knowledge and over the years there had been several attempts by students to shut the one strike/expulsion only system down. There were also big gender discrepancies, with men being accused and expelled way more than women. Do you believe that claim?
The real issue here is why you immediately come from a place of “that’s impossible,” when it’s something that’s not actually very difficult to prove. That’s literally why it was removed. It was demonstrably discriminatory. Either way, this isn’t complicated and the data isn’t and wasn’t exactly hard to come by. So now it’s gone and the school is better for it.
I didn’t say it was “impossible.” I just asked you for your evidence. Do you have evidence similarly situated individuals were treated differently? Do you have evidence of events of cheating going unreported? I’m not saying you’re wrong about your ultimate conclusion. I’m asking about the type of evidence you believe is sufficient to support that conclusion.
The fact that most teachers were uncomfortable reporting might suggest enforcement was self selecting, but what makes you think it was the particularly racist teachers self selecting into enforcement? And under Title VI, which is what your allegation amounts to, disparate impact isn’t a valid theory of of discrimination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_v._Sandoval.
Again, strict rules against cheating are societally critical. Petty corruption and cheating is a huge tax on a society, and countries like Singapore and China have greatly improved the lives of ordinary people by taking draconian measures to stamp it out. So you have a very heavy burden if you’re arguing against such rules based on allegations of racial bias.
Replying to your dead comment:
Why is multiple county and school district-wide segregation policies "personal racism" but as soon as it goes to a university it becomes "institutional"?
I’m not going to doxx myself in a futile effort to convince you systemic racism is real.
Again, the numbers spoke to the truth of the matter. White people were reported and expelled at a rate that was so much lower than their non-white and international peers that it defied credulity. Men were also accused and expelled at a rate far higher than women were - something tells me you won’t push back against that.
The school didn’t end an over century-old practice that was a major point of pride for them because of vibes. It ended because it was harming only certain groups and was not effective at curtailing cheating.
> I’m an alum now, not a student, but even college students can submit a FOIA request.
"Show me the reports on unreported cheating"?
> Additionally, you could see the breakdown by race (and more) of people that were expelled.
How do you know they were expelled for cheating? And not sexual harassment, or in some universities breaking codes of conduct around public behavior.
You have heard of FERPA, right? It would be entirely illegal to give information that allows identification of students based on academic results.
Over half the faculty literally admitted they don’t report/don’t feel comfortable reporting in an anonymous survey when this was being more rigorously interrogated. It’s easy to infer “therefore a lot of cheating goes unreported” from that.
Second question: Because cheating is handled by a specific group and sexual misconduct/assault is a criminal offense that gets you arrested (it’s also handled at the school level by a specific group). They aren’t the same thing and they aren’t combined in reporting. I can’t imagine any school combines those two but maybe there are outliers.
The number of students expelled for cheating at my school was a concrete, annual number that was public knowledge.
So many of you keep asking all these random questions trying to poke holes. If you don’t believe me, just move on. I am giving you all the specificity I’m going to give you. You either believe me or you don’t. I have nothing to gain by lying on HN about a school I attended decades ago. I am relaying something I have a lot of firsthand knowledge of. You can find value in it or not.
There was a clear, demonstrable problem with the way cheating was handled. They've altered it because of this. That’s the story.