Jananas

I’ve had cause to be disappointed in people over this past week. It breaks me down a little more every time something like this happens. I’d like to believe that people are inherently good; that they are trustworthy. Except that not everyone is.

We spent the last five days running an online simulation for one of this quarter’s classes. Someone/some people at school hacked into at least three team’s simulations and made changes to reduce the revenues, and therefore our overall standing in the game.  The teams that were sabotagued were all doing well (i.e. in the top 15). Admittedly, we all had very obvious passwords. But there comes a point in time where you do not (and should not have to) expect that your peers will try to harm you. This portion of the assignment is worth 25% of the 15% assignment (or 3.75% of our final grade) – so really, why are you being so petty? Especially for something so small?

What makes this particularly poignant for me is that we took Ethics last quarter. You would think that it might have taught us something. Instead, the main lesson for an already reactionary class appears to be “don’t get caught” (or if you do get caught, be the first to turn yourself in. The jail sentence is lighter that way…). To reinforce this, the current view from the school is that this isn’t a big deal. The final impact to our grade will be marginal. Its not really the point though – by not looking into this you are tacitly enforcing the belief that it is okay to cheat. An attempt to hack into another student’s account and maliciously change their settings to reduce their final grade is cheating. It is academic dishonesty. It should be looked into and the student(s) responsible should be held accountable.

As students we put significant amounts of effort into our assignments. To have our work rendered meaningless by your double standards is disheartening. In the end, all we really wanted was the bragging rights for a job well done. Instead what we learned was that you can’t teach morals, but you can reinforce dishonest behaviour.

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