The students today…
Cheating is up, sex is down. College students’ ethics, in many
areas of life, have changed over the years.
Ethically and morally speaking college students today are more
likely to use the easily-accessible Internet for their term paper
while becoming less likely to be passive in a society more prone to
sexual diseases, according to Ernie Chavez, head of CSU psychology
department.
“Many more people are choosing to be celibate, but there are
probably more people cheating and shoplifting, so it depends how
you define morality,” Chavez said. “The temptation is greater to
cheat because we didn’t have access to a resource like the
Internet.”
With his own students Chavez initially trusts their intentions
until he is given reason to doubt them. However, according to a
1999 study by the Center for Academic Integrity 69 percent of
professors discover one or more cases of plagiarism a year.
Some students do make a concerted effort to earn an honest
education. Ethan Norris, graduate student in bio-chemistry, has
worked hard to go through CSU without cheating, false excuses and
Internet-bought term papers when others have left their morals
behind.
“They’re just trying to get through for right now and not
thinking of the long-term,” Norris said. “I’ve always felt like I
needed to do it for myself.”
Norris has become skeptical of life after graduation because of
students that will be entering the world with him.
“There comes a time when they’ll all be stuck,” Norris said.
“All this slowly leads to a decline in productivity and
intelligence in the workplace.”
Although cheating may be on the rise, professors are quickly
developing ways to combat students plagiarizing. Web sites like
Turnitin.com can scan a suspicious paper to see if a student could
have possibly purchased it from the Internet. Chavez knows at the
beginning of a semester he is likely to have a student try to bend
the system.
“I trust that somebody will try to manipulate the system,”
Chavez said. “Last semester was a really bad time for grandmothers
— I must have had five or six of them go down, now did they all
really die, I don’t know, I didn’t ask for death certificates or
anything.”
However, Chavez still believes his students are honest with few
exceptions. Bob Chaffee, captain of CSU Police Department agrees
with Chavez.
“I’m in very high hopes that it’s not a moral decline and that
it is something that students will grow through,” Chaffee said. “I
am very hopeful that in the process that they don’t hurt anyone
while they are growing up.”
Chaffee who has been with CSUPD since 1977, said he has seen
more students lately use crude language with less thought, that
drugs and crime have always been an issue and that risqu�
fashion has alternated back and forth from extreme to more
conservative.
“I get fearful for people’s safety, in general it seems like
there is less respect for individuals today,” Chaffee said.
“Personally it worries me because anytime we weaken the things that
give us character and our accountability it worries me.”
Even though students may be more likely to cheat, they may be
using more caution in other areas of their lives, the rise of STDs
has led some students to think more cautiously about sexual
partners.
“Sexual behavior is much more dangerous than my generation
thought it was,” Chavez said. “Students today are more conservative
in the sexual area, my generation was trying to sleep with everyone
and anyone they could, anytime they could.”
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