Administrative Procedure For Academic Dishonesty

Feliz Arana
Wakefield 101-F
Argument Essay
August 16, 2011
Copy Cats Tacoma Community College has certain academic policies put in place to encourage students to grow and uphold good ethical academic practices. Most of the policies make good sense to avoid taking others information without giving credit in one’s own paper. However, one particular policy under “Administrative Procedure for Academic Dishonesty” is flawed and does not take into account instructors practices. Specifically the academic misconduct guideline indicates that academic misconduct to the intentional violation of college policies. “Academic misconduct is the intentional violation of college policies (e.g. tampering with grades, taking part in obtaining or distributing
I took a class here at TCC and the teacher was a brand new biology professor. So when we arrived to class he basically told us he just signed his papers to work here. He was not very professional at all when it came to taking exams or even a simple worksheet or lab. I understand that teachers need to work together but sharing the same materials is ridiculous. My instructor would blatantly tell us that he did not make this test up. Or even a simple lab we would do. Sharing tests and different materials takes away from the learning environment. Especially when me as the student is asking what something means because we never went over it in the class. It brought my grade down tremendously, when an uncovered subject was brought to his attention he politely excused those questions and everybody would get that answer correct. Everyone in the class would complain especially when he could not explain a concept. He would have us refer to Google which was actually amusing because he is an instructor. I wasn’t in the other instructor’s class that he was borrowing testing materials from, I was in his class and he shouldn’t borrow from other instructors if he can’t explain the information. It was not just this instructor who is guilty. Many other professors do this as well here at TCC and don’t give credit to the actual source. The dead giveaway is if a student asks a question and he/or she as the instructor is not able to give an explanation
When the instructor reuses the test over and over again the students begin to catch on to the patterns within the tests. One student may take the course in spring quarter and ace the tests then their best friend takes the course in summer quarter and needed help with some answers. They are more than likely going to ask their friend for the test answers especially if they know for a fact the teacher uses the same tests. I have actually had friends who have done this before. Teachers’ practices are contributing to the students’ academic misconduct. If this doesn’t change we are going to have a big dilemma in this world where the students graduating with their degrees will venture off into the workplace and will not have the knowledge for the tasks being given. With the teachers using the same texts over and over again the students aren’t learning anything by themselves. Still currently instructors are using the same testing materials repeatedly and aren’t noticing that it is a