Hi, Thought some of you would find this report to be of interest, particularly given the recent discussion on student dishonesty. Recently when I spoke (unclearly) about therapy being largely amoral, these are the kinds of students I was thinking about when I made that statement. What can psychology and psychologists do to rectify this kind of problem? ----------------------------- New York Times Tuesday, May 16, 2000 Cheaters Learned a Lesson, Sort Of By DIRK JOHNSON CHICAGO, May 15 -- Five years after shaming their school by cheating to win a statewide academic contest, some of the former Steinmetz High School students on the quiz team now say they have a single regret: being caught. "Apologize for what?" Jolie Fitch, one of those caught cheating asked defiantly. "I would do it again." A fellow former teammate on the academic decathlon team, Tom O'Donnell, said he felt no guilt about using a pilfered test to memorize the answers. That is simply the way the world works, he said. "It wasn't the first time there was cheating," he said, "and it won't be the last." Some of the former Steinmetz students had gathered here for a recent screening of an HBO movie, "Cheaters," which is based on the 1995 cheating scandal that embroiled this city in a debate over ethics. The former teacher of the team, Jerry Plecki, has expressed remorse for his part in the cheating scheme. But the confession rang hollow to Gary Marconi, a Cook County prosecutor who investigated the case. "For years, you denied it and denied it and denied it," said Mr. Marconi, who rose in the audience to grill Mr. Plecki about cheating. "Now that a movie is coming along, now all of a sudden you confess." Mr. Plecki offered little response to the accusation. He is being paid an undisclosed sum by HBO for the rights to his life story. When Steinmetz High School, with an enrollment drawn from working-class neighborhoods, won the statewide academic decathlon championship in 1995, toppling a prestigious magnet school, Whitney Young, the student scholars were hailed in Chicago as heroic underdogs. "The Cinderella team!" the principal at Steinmetz exulted. But when the decathlon board analyzed the extraordinarily high test scores by the Steinmetz students, questions about cheating arose. The Academic Decathlon Association, the sponsor of one of the nation's most prestigious academic championships, had discovered, among other peculiarities, that only 12 students in the nation had posted a score of 900 or better on the math quiz and that 6 of those students were from Steinmetz. After the decathlon board demanded that the Steinmetz scholars take a "validation test," the students and the teacher refused, saying indignantly that they had been victims of snob assumptions that a poorer school could never achieve so brilliantly. The decathlon association stripped Steinmetz of the title. Mr. Plecki, who has a doctoral degree, lost his job. And scholars from Whitney Young went on to win second in the national academic contest. Today, Mr. Plecki offers no excuses for the cheating. "It was wrong, and I take full responsibility," he said. "We did it so we could win." Saying no school would ever hire him as a teacher, Mr. Plecki now runs a business in Chicago. He never faced criminal charges for the cheating. Indeed, he never publicly admitted the cheating until now. After a student on the Steinmetz team stole a copy of the test, the decathlon teammates looked up the answers and memorized them. Mr. Plecki helped plot the cheating and later urged the students to keep the misdeed a secret. In justifying the cheating, some of the former Steinmetz students say the odds in the decathlon competition were stacked in favor of Whitney Young, a selective-enrollment school with highly publicized programs for academically gifted students. Moreover, they say Chicago school officials could scarcely preach to anyone about ethics. In the same year that the Steinmetz teacher and students cheated, the president of the school board, Sharon Grant, was jailed for income tax evasion. Ms. Fitch, 23, said she went on attend Illinois State University, where she majored in chemistry but dropped out of college two months before earning a bachelor's degree. She is now working at a department store in the Chicago suburbs. Mr. O'Donnell, 22, said he now worked for an automotive service and supply store. A third student on the team, who declined to give his name, said the cheating was justified because Steinmetz students had felt "bullied" by the superior attitudes and condescension shown by students from Whitney Young. "Have you ever had somebody come up to your face and tell you how stupid you are?" he asked. "That's what happened to us." The Steinmetz team was composed of nine students, including some of the top scholars in the school and the student body president. Ms. Fitch, who now has a baby, said people sometimes asked how she would react if her own child cheated in school. "It depends," she said, saying that cheating without a good purpose would be unacceptable. "But I couldn't say no, never."
