Ohio State GroupMe Cheating Ring Busted, Our Streets Are Safe At Last

WJ Cope7 years ago

It looks like we’ve hit the motherlode, boys. A despicable group of cheaters has been busted by authorities at Ohio State University.

From The Washington Post:

More than 80 students at Ohio State University are accused of cheating, using a group-messaging app to collaborate on classwork, according to reports.

The student newspaper, the Lantern, reported that undergraduate students in a business marketing course in the spring were discovered using the app GroupMe to share answers on class assignments.

Cheating has come such a long way in the last 15 years or so. I remember watching a documentary back in the early 2000s that sought to expose the world of “e-cheating” or whatever buzzword they’d come up with. It featured a student who would have his friend text the answers of a test to his giant Nokia cell phone, and it made me laugh even then. Times have changed, however, and a simple internet search can connect you with gigantic databases of test banks. The students don’t seem to be doing that, though. The article wasn’t too specific beyond saying “the students shared answers via GroupMe,” so we’ll have to brainstorm a little bit.

If the students were sharing answers during the exam, then the whole “GroupMe” angle might just be sensationalist reporting about a technology that people don’t understand. This wouldn’t surprise me, but I don’t think it’s exactly the case here.

…Ohio State’s Committee on Academic Misconduct charged 83 students over the summer with violations of the student code of conduct, including “unauthorized collaboration on graded assignments.”

So the students were using GroupMe to…help each other with homework? I’m sorry, but this is just a relatively new way of doing something that’s been done since Al Gore invented college in the late ’60s. Are the students potentially fucking themselves over by relying on answers to be posted rather than solving them on their own? Possibly, but that’s just part of the push-pull dynamic that makes college what it is. If you really care about learning the course material, you’ll do what you have to do. If not, you run the risk of failing. Still, justice must be served.

As for the 83 scoundrels who were busted, I hope they rot in a cell for many years. It’ll give them time to think about the severity of their crimes, as well as keeping them from poisoning the impressionable minds of younger students. Hats off to the powers that be at OSU for ensuring that cheating at their institution is a thing of the past..

[via The Washington Post]

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