Over the past week or so, much has been said about the cheating scandal involving players on the Mississippi State football and men’s basketball team, almost all of it in the context of how it affects the university’s athletic teams.
The penalties are widespread and include game suspensions for the 10 football players and one men’s basketball player who were found to have had exam and coursework for an online chemistry class done by an athletics department tutor during the 2018-19 academic year. This wasn’t isolated to one assignment or test. The cheating went on for much, if not all, of the year.
There is much hand-wringing on how the penalties will impact the teams, particularly football, which opens its season Saturday in New Orleans against the University of Louisiana.
Far less attention appears to be devoted to the implications the scandal has on the university’s academic reputation.
While it’s difficult to ascertain if the athletes were treated differently than other students — MSU spokesman Sid Salter insists that the university draws no distinction between athletes and non-athletes when it comes to violation of the university’s honor code — the episode does shed some light on how the university generally regards these violations.
MSU may have a zero tolerance policy on some issues.
Sadly, academic fraud is not among them.
Since 2007-08, the university has expelled just two students for violation of its honor code — one was a Ph.D. student who plagiarized work on a dissertation, the other was found to have violated the honor code on more than one occasion. Over that period, there have been hundreds of students who have been determined to have violated the honor code. That just two students have been expelled is a statistical out-lier.
You could justify the university’s restraint in withholding the ultimate punishment in many, perhaps most, cases. Not all transgressions are created equal and the punishment should fit the crime.
The university’s honor code characterizes academic misconduct in seven categories: cheating, fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, complicity, academic fraud and violation of rules.
All of these are serious offenses, to be sure, but nothing strikes at the heart of academic integrity worse than fraud: It is a premeditated, calculated effort. It’s not a matter of a momentary lapse of judgment or decision made in a panicked state. It’s not a spur of the moment decision.
In its honor code, the university defines academic fraud as “the deliberate effort to deceive and is distinguished from an honest mistake and honest differences in judgment or interpretation.”
We don’t see any other way to classify this particular scandal; it is a betrayal of the highest degree.
Based on university records, from 2016 to 2018 there were 223 students found to have committed academic fraud. While surely some punishment was levied in these cases, as far as can be determined, not a single one of those students were expelled.
So, while folks are worrying about the possibility of a linebacker being out of the lineup Saturday, the broader implications of the scandal in exposing the university’s milquetoast honor code should be a much greater concern to anyone who takes seriously the university’s greater mission.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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