Revised honor code enacts sterner policies for cheating

By: Izzy Bellinghausen

After numerous cheating scandals emerged this school year, a stricter Scholastic Honesty Policy went into effect during the second semester.

The new policy enforces a one-day in house suspension, a referral to the counselors, a parent conference, and a week- long suspension from extracurricular activities for the first offense. Junior Melissa Brown believes the harsher measures will prove beneficial towards solving this problem.

“It will be more effective if people know they’re going to written up about it,” Brown said. “Kids need rules; they’re not going to magically realize it’s bad if they didn’t think it was bad before.”

The second offense includes a three-day suspension and the third offense forces a five-day suspension. The fourth offense removes the student from school for ten days. When junior Angeline Dones learned of the new policy, the first item that caught her attention was how severe the new penalties have become.

“The punishment shouldn’t be suspension because that’s just another free ticket out of school,” Dones said. “Detention is less desirable, so it’s a better punishment.”

Odell sees the fortification of the new cheating policy as a preventative measure against plagiarizing and copying once students get into college.

“Part of the problem (for students) is they don’t know what cheating is or they don’t realize the consequences,” Odell said. “A lot of students feel it’s not any different from studying to- gether.”

Odell believes that spending at least one class period on this serious topic is crucial for her students’ future wellbeing.

“A lot of my students are college bound, so we studied a lot of University level cheating so they could see the real life consequences,” Odell said. “I wanted to make sure they know what they’re getting into.” Odell feels that this policy did not change as drastically as students believe it has, but it emphasizes the penalties more clearly. “It will take teachers following through and students learning to respect themselves to stop cheating and be effective,” Odell said.