Blue’s Clues Abstract Discussion 10/10/2013

By admin Published October 25, 2013 Public Minutes

Public Portion
1. Mo si
2. Introductions
3. Damon: Let’s begin?
4. Erin: Any questions?
5. Jack: The letter of recommendation was from a professor who was separate from the whole procedure?
6. Erin: Yes.
7. Jack: Confidentiality?
8. Erin: The professor may have been a support-person, in which case it would be fine.
9. Maddy: Did she ever take unproctored exams at Haverford?
10. Damon: to my knowledge she did, since one of the resolutions mentions that she would meet with a jury member to discuss the letter and upcoming exams.
11. Erin: anything else can be asked at any point, but let’s move to the letter from the professor. What do you guys think about the character reference?
12. Naomi: how did they choose the librarian?
13. Damon: the Honor COuncil librarian is not a consenting member of council, and can never serve on a jury, so it’s someone who could never be involved with the case, but is in on confidentiality.
14. Naomi; and probably didn’t know Blue.
15. Erin: the librarian is also an expert on procedure and the constitution, so they’d be the best option to determine if it’s appropriate.
16. Jack: the librarian seems like the best option, but I don’t think the letter should be accepted at all, since most people don’t get letters of reference, and it seems like the support person is already going to be very close to the party, and isn’t supposed to speak to
17. Damon: last night, a juror came, broke confidentiality, and mentioned that the letter was kind of intended to address the jury, because Blue’s english skills were poor, so she had trouble communicating, but wanted the jury to know that she’s still a good student
18. Maddy: circumstantial portion would still cover the fact that she’s a good student, though, so maybe the letter was necessary, but a lot of people who some professors like cheat in other professor’s classes
19. Jack: professors also have a very finite knowledge of their students, and maybe if you’ve taken class after class with them they might get to know you well, but mostly it’s a very small side of you that a professor knows. They don’t know about our private non-student lives, and the self that we present to them in an academic sense is not whole.
20. Damon: she was also a freshman, so didn’t know the professor extremely well
21. Naomi: I wonder how much she even knew the professor, if her language skills were that poor.
22. Erin: I found it interesting that at the time of Professor Steve’s initial confrontation, it seems like he went in with an assumption that one student had copied off of another, and checked the logs to see when each had had access
23. Naomi: i also wondered why he contacted Magenta like that.
24. Dana: it also brings up the fact that he guessed it was Blue, and prejudice is a harsh word, but it was definitely an assumption
25. Jack: an abstract also came out last year in which a professor checked Moodle to see if a student could have cheated, and people were a little upset and felt like the professor had been in the wrong for monitoring so closely, but I disagree. So I wonder if the professor might have felt uncomfortable going to the electronic log before talking to Blue, as if he’d been doing something wrong under the code to look for proof before confronting the student. Generally, i think the Code has a profound affect on professors.
26. Damon: I find ‘proof of innocence’ an interesting terms, too, and i hope that professor Steve was looking at the logs with the mindset of “I hope there’s no way
27. Naomi: Why assume it was Blue, though?
28. Jack: she was the only freshman
29. Maddy: Orgo had proctored exams last year, and the average grades dropped.
30. Erin: there was no proctor, but it was no longer a take-home. i like to think, though, that that could have been due to stress, not cheating.
31. Damon: it does beg the question about the motive of the professors to change the take-home to classroom
32. Erin: i think it’s a matter of convenience for the professor. Each student doing it on their own require professors to be more generally available all week. The abstract that Jack mentioned was a situation in which the professor was already suspicious.
33. Jack: I have a hard time divesting the professor of checking up on us anyway, though. The whole ‘why fear something if you have nothing to hide?’ I think all my professors hold me to a high standard, and I don’t see how their ability to check could defy trust or lower standards.
34. Damon: I’m curious what you guys think about separation for Bryn Mawr students’ separation? The difference between being disallowed to take Haverford classes, versus needing to wholly leave your home institution.
35. Naomi: was she still allowed on campus?
36. Erin: still allowed on campus, like a Haverford student would be.
37. Janela: social separation is a thing
38. Jack: i think it’s opportunistic of the jury. I think there’s been a recognition that if clear plagiarism occurs and there’s no separation people are bothered, and it’s much easier to separate someone when it doesn’t feel like a big deal.
39. Maddy: I agree. the separation from HC seems more symbolic, and doesn’t have much retribution.
40. Naomi: my main question would be about how people were concerned that she had other finals at Haverford, but they didn’t do anything.
41. Damon: we have no jurisdiction, so separation from BMC would only ever be a recommendation
42. Erin: everyone knows that the schools have different Codes, but cheating isn’t allowed at either places
43. Jack: also, ThinkingChair just kind of pops up with the search history, and that seems like an obvious temptation which maybe could be eliminated. Trust is good, but let’s not be reckless. If you can remove things that make it especially easy to cheat without adding inconvenience or harm, why wouldn’t you?
44. Damon: it’s kind of like dangling the answers in front of you
45. Erin: So, if you are taking an exam and someone forces an answer upon you in a way you can’t avoid, what should you do? Tell your professor?
46. Naomi: this is tricky because Blue said she didn’t think it was the wrong thing to do at the time, but…
47. Jack: I think it’s also just another problem with education regarding the Code. Especially with Bryn Mawr students, there’s no way to ensure that they’re getting the same Code education that we are. And being an international student only exacerbates that.
48. Dana: before i moved in, taking the Code tutorial did seem clear, and i was more attentive to it, and I think you just kind of accumulate knowledge over time
49. Damon: Bryn Mawr also doesn’t have the same education that HC does.
50. Janela: how many people here have read the BMC code?
51. No one.
52. Janela: me either. And i think that’s a real problem
53. Damon: we talked last night about ways to alleviate the problem of having different codes at different codes.
54. Jack: it would be interesting to see the stats on violations from each school
55. Janela: we are kind of working on those stats.
56. Erin: someone last night mentioned that Bionic could force you to read the opposite school’s code before registering
57. Naomi: i think people would just skim
58. Jack: it would be great if professors had to hand out preferred style of citation and references and collaboration policies along with their syllabus in the beginning of each semester. Some professors are great about that, but some are very inconsistent.
59. Damon: it could also allow people who are trying to put int the effort to have the resource available, rather than not being able to find it.
60. Maddy: does MBC have an academic integrity tutorial? it would eliminate the scrolling threat
61. Jack: BMC is thinking of making one. it’s nice to hear that you liked it.
62. Dana: I wonder if there would be a way to summarize, like a ten commandments thing. It could be shorter, and less dense, and you could get the main points and explore further if you needed to.
63. Erin: Or having simply the differences highlighted. So, just the policies that are relevant and different in a nuts and bolts format
64. Damon: What do you guys think about the letter, and shendu?
65. Maddy: I’d have liked to read her own experience, rather than this abstract theory which I’m not even sure she believes in.
66. Jack: I also read a part of this letter as an excuse. The competing for few resources idea, and it troubles me that it sounded like she was thinking about competition when she took Magenta’s work. Which is very anti-HC, and does not fit in line with the ideal Haverford type of person. I want to say “Conform!” but at the same time I want to be accepting. So… those two things are at odds.
67. Damon: I read the letter and thought it was talking about why it was important not to cheat and plagiarize, but not putting it into any kind of personal light. And I wonder if that’s a language or cultural difference. Maybe “I am so sorry; I did this and it was wrong” might simply not mean the same thing to her as it does to us
68. Jack: generally, though, I usually read abstracts and come to discussions with a laundry list of the terrible things they’ve done wrong, but here I think they handled things very well, in general. Considering the language and letter and everything, I think they made generally good calls. Which is rare, for me.
69. Erin: It’s getting close to 8:30, but does anyone have any final thoughts?
70. Janela: since Blue and her partner always handed in Blue’s partner’s sheet, I think maybe Steve suspected her because she wasn’t doing so well, and he was more confident in Magenta’s work, so he didn’t think she’d have a reason to cheat.
71. Dana: I think separation is also interesting because a Haverford student could be in a class with Blue over at Bryn Mawr, so she’s still in contact with the Haverford community even though she’s been separated from it.