Cheating in Florida

There were enough hints that something was wrong. Two students had argued in class about the exact wording of questions on a final exam--even before the exam was handed out. Another student had complained to his professor that he could not have made a mistake on some math problems on a test because an accounting major had worked out the answers for him in advance. But now the cheating scandal at the University of Florida is out in the open, and the campus is in a furor.

As many as 200 students--most of them from the school of business administration--are involved, and some of them have already appeared at secret hearings by a student honor court. Innocent students, afraid that the reputations of everyone now enrolled will be tarnished unless the guilty are identified, have sued the university to make the hearings public. As a result, the secret hearings have been temporarily suspended, amid general confusion.

Formal Charges. The scandal broke when an undergraduate told her professor that other students had bought stolen exams. (Under the university's honor code--dating to 1914--students are supposed to report cheating.) The professor checked his records, found that some D students were inexplicably getting A's, and went to the honor court. Paul Marmish, a third-year law student and the honor-court prosecutor, started an investigation; within two weeks he had filed formal charges against 63 students and said that many more might be guilty.

Marmish discovered that five student dealers, who each offered 16 to 18 different finals for as much as $200 apiece, were the center of the cheating network. Says Marmish: "We called them exam supermarketeers. If one didn't have what you wanted, he could refer you to someone in the ring who did." To get the tests, the dealers had rummaged through trash bins outside classroom buildings, looking for ditto copies; they also broke into locked rooms, and at least one bribed a janitor (with an ounce of marijuana).

As the investigation widened, David Smith, editor of the Independent Florida Alligator, the student paper, demanded open hearings to protect the innocent students: "What of next June's graduates, who will carry through life a business degree whose mere date taints their character with suspicion?" Smith joined a law student and the editor of the Gainesville Sun in filing suit against the university under the state's Sunshine Law, which requires public agencies to hold open meetings when they take official action. Circuit Court Judge Robert Green Jr. then issued a preliminary injunction to stop the student honor court from holding secret proceedings.

The university is appealing the injunction, insisting that the hearings should remain secret because "the disgrace of being convicted publicly by the honor court is too overwhelming." Whatever the outcome of the legal battle, Student Prosecutor Marmish is anxious to renew the investigation. Says he: "We want to get them all."

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