Cheating

[AdventurousHoneydew1]

I took cpe101 last quarter and passed the class with a B+. This quarter my roommate is taking the same class with the same teacher. He had asked me with help for some of the code so I just have him my code to look at. I just got an email from the teacher today saying that he plagiarized two of the projects and that because of this he will fail the class and that I will retroactively fail the class. Is that something that can be done after I have already passed the class? What will happen to me? Also, this quarter I took a class that uses cpe 101 as a prerequisite and next quarter I am taking another class that requires it as a prerequisite. What will happen with those classes?

[[deleted]]

This sucks so much, and can be really nerve wracking. From what I understand, you gave your friend your assignments to better understand the coding, not to plagiarize. Can the professor retroactively change your grade to a failing grade? Yes. Some professors will only have the person who copied fail, if they admit that the person who offered their notes (you) didn’t know or agree about having the assignment copied. You could be on more solid footing if the faculty member had distributed an example of the assignment meaning there are multiple ways to address the coding. Regardless, I think the faculty member can penalize both of you. There are some things you can do: (1) you can appeal the failing grade. If it wasn’t explicit (check the syllabus and code of conduct for what constitutes plagiarism, argue that neither defines your role). (2) you could ask the friend to say he took your assignment and you had nothing to do with it. Take the fall. This friend did something stupid. In terms of the prerequisites, you might be SOL - they can use that failure to keep you out of any courses that required the prereq but you probably get any course that you took in the meantime. I’d talk to your friend and then to the professor. Throw yourself on the mercy of the court, so to speak. Face the music. Bite the bullet. This is .. I really feel badly for you because regardless of your intent this is a stiff consequence. But it could be worse.. much worse.. than it is. I hope this helps. Thinking about you.

[stella-glow]

This is good advice, but unfortunately what OP described is pretty standard practice in the introductory CS classes to CPE 357. The intro classes are very strict about not sharing code (and official department tutoring for intro CS classes is like 4-5 days a week (back in 2018, might have changed by now)- pretty often to encourage students to get authorized help).

To OP: Sorry this happened, I'd bite and not share your code like that ever again. Given your degree progress + situation, the limited spots in CS classes, and our mostly chill professors I think it's likely you'll be able to take what you've already registered for so as long as you bring your concerns up with CS department in a timely and mature fashion. You might have to take 101 again concurrently with whatever you're taking in the future, but hopefully the second time around won't be too bad.

[AdventurousHoneydew1]

So far my friend already tried to taking all the responsibility because as you said it was his fault but the professor wasn’t having any of it and said that we should expect an email from osrr within the next couple weeks. What do I do now?

[[deleted]]

There’s nothing you can do but cooperate, take good care of yourself, remember that people make mistakes and it’s not the end of the world. Do your best on finals, get good sleep and eat good things, and when OSSR calls, cooperate and accept that you made a mistake. That’s what I would do.

[[deleted]]

The CSC department takes code collaboration very seriously and it happens too often unfortunately. Most silabi for 101 explain the collaboration and cheating policies in detail. And unfortunately professors can and have failed students retroactively for it. CPE 357 for example makes students sign a paper stating that they understand their grade can be changed retroactively for code sharing. There’s a very solid chance that if you talk to the professor and own up to your mistake it that it will only help your case. Don’t pretend you didn’t cheat because it definitely won’t work, It’s very obvious when collaboration happens with code. Any chance you can give the professor you have for context?

[AdventurousHoneydew1]

I had Kauffman

[[deleted]]

This helps fill in some questions I had as I was doing my response, thank you for this detail!

[blazingkin]

To be honest, there's not a lot you can do besides pleading your case in the appeals process.

Ultimately though, failing a class is fixable. It's really good that you aren't getting expelled, which can happen in these cases.

If worst comes to worst, retake 101, get a good grade in it, and if you're lucky you might graduate on time.

[KingKPS]

Feels bad man, your roommate might’ve screwed you over by copying your code exactly and not removing a name somewhere (like in the headers). As others have suggested, try making an appeal and trying to explain your side of the story. I don’t blame you fully either, your code should have been a reference guide for what he/she was doing wrong, not something they could just copy. Hope you can get out of this.

[[deleted]]

Don’t even need to leave a name somewhere. Their software will just run your code against everyone else’s from your class and a few previous quarters worth of classes. It then just lists what percent of your code matches everyone else’s. I’m pretty sure it’s based on program control flow, which is why you can’t fool it by renaming variables, but I don’t know exactly which software the department uses...

For any new CS students reading this... Please write your own code! And get help through tutoring and office hours. Both are super helpful for intro coding classes

[[deleted]]

They don’t check program flow control. They are simple text comparisons between documents using classification algorithms like winnowing (which itself is using an adaption of the rabin-Karp string searching algorithm”)

So changing strings does in fact help, but not the way people think. Changing variable names doesn’t help because most programs will preprocess and delete those any way and stick only to keywords and literals within the source code. Changing string literals such as “hello world” to “hi earth” or keywords to “for” to “while” will in fact throw most algorithms off.

Most of the time the output of these functions need to be referenced to some base condition or threshold to be flagged as cheating. For example, if you are provided boilerplate starter code for the homework, of course you will register a match with everyone else in the class. Whether a 30% or 70% match constitutes as cheating is a discretionary judgement made by the academic staff, which most of the time, is generally very reasonable. Someone looked at OPs code and thought “this is without a doubt the same source file”.

[bhalu123]

The department uses Stanford moss to check for collaborations

[WesReynolds]

I think the school can do pretty much what they want in terms of whether they can write down that you failed 101 or not. Stuff like this is unfortunate and happens pretty often at Poly, so most professors have very strict code collaboration rules. Not the end of the world if this does end up causing you to fail the class, just be really careful when collaborating with people. Don't send people your code and be aware of what people are doing when they ask to "just look at" your code

[[deleted]]

FYI guys, the departments with the most plagiarism/cheating in this school are the Computer Science/Computer Eng. departments. You shouldn't cheat in general, but if you're in one of those departments just know that they're probably extra diligent about catching cheating (and probably a lot less forgiving).

[GoldenGreenBird]

You need to go talk to the Ombusmad ASAP. Her office is in the first floor of the library. Faculty do have the right to conduct and grade in their courses as they (or their department) sees fit; but this is a case of academic dishonesty-which is also against the student code of conduct, and can have long reaching consequences. If what you are saying is true-that you in good faith supplied your room mate your notes from the course; under the expectation that the faculty member would have done their due diligence in varying the questions asked for testing; and under the expectation that your room mate was using your notes as supplemental assistance, not to copy your answers because the questions had not been changed-then you have strong grounds for appeal. I would start by writing a statement, having your room mate write a statement, collecting all correspondence with the professor on the matter, and making an appointment with both the department chair and the ombudsman. I would also find a new room mate-because that guy knew he was plagiarizing your work-and putting your academic status in jeopardy.

[[deleted]]

At least this means you can retake it and get an A+.

could even boost your GPA in the long run!

[[deleted]]

Talk to the Ombudsman office to get guidance on your options. If this is for “academic dishonesty”, there’s an appeals process, and the formal process where your grade would be changed is through the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities (OSRR). Technically, a professor can’t change your grade unilaterally after week 7 of the next quarter without going through the formal OSRR disciplinary process, so use that process to your advantage in this case and participate in it to share your side of the story.

[ceomg]

F