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The Experience welcomes Letters to the Editor and Guest Columns. All members of the LMC community — students, faculty and staff — are encouraged to write.

If you are interested in expressing your opinions, bring your submissions to room CC3-301. You may also send them electronically through the [email protected].

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Time to leave the nest (Editorial)

Pete Costanza

February 1, 2013

Everyone who has taken a test at one point or another may have been faced with the temptation to look over at their neighbor’s paper in an attempt to copy their answers.

Cheating comes in all shapes and forms. From peeking over your neighbor’s shoulder to actually paying someone to do the work for you.

In some extreme cases, a cheater may pay someone to take class for them, sending an imposter to a class to be face to face with an unknowing instructor. As the saying goes, cheaters never prosper, and the ones who really get cheated are the cheaters themselves.

Students come to college to learn, a desire that grows from within to better themselves and hopefully the communities they live in. In a world filled with corruption, right from wrong may be blurred with a “just get it done and a move on to the top” attitude. Cutting corners to advance in any situation is ethically wrong and the Experience believes the college should have a zero tolerance policy for those who think they can beat the system.

The Academic Senate is poised to consider the issue of academic fraud at the Feb. 11 meeting. The Los Medanos College of Associated Students should also take an active role in this important discussion, and the Experience encourages them to put this important issue on the upcoming agenda and to send representatives to the Academic Senate meeting to voice their opinions during public comment.

The math department has floated the idea of instituting broader student identification policies for testing. If students are required to show identification, it will bring more frustration to students and more work for teachers. Students should be given the benefit of the doubt until an incident occurs.

The Experience supports the current disciplinary actions that are stated in item 7 of the Student Disciplinary and Suspension section of the College Catalog. But suspension from the college doesn’t go far enough for those who hire others to take exams, or even entire classes for them. For those types of offenses, the Experience recommends expulsion from the district so that the cheating student cannot take their dishonest practices to one of our sister schools.