Michaela Tolpin | Cheating the student body

One-fifth of Wharton's sophomore class could be in serious trouble.

For those of you who, like me, are not lucky enough to inhabit the hallowed halls of Huntsman or Steinberg-Dietrich, OPIM 101 (short for Operations and Information Management) is a required first-year introductory course for all Wharton students.

In the spring 2007 semester, 30 percent of a student's OPIM 101 grade was based off of two equally weighted "cases," the second, more notorious, of which required extensive knowledge of Visual Basic for Applications. Students were allowed to work on the case with up to two partners, but collaboration between groups was not permitted. To ensure adherence to this rule, OPIM 101 professors ran a statistical model over the class's final codes.

The outcome? Roughly 15-20 percent of Wharton's Class of 2010 was brought under investigation by the Office of Student Conduct for having a 60-plus percent overlap with another group's case. Wharton doled out incompletes to all implicated students, although the school refuses to comment on or acknowledge any of this.

But while the students are being investigated, the course, at least officially, is not.

Indeed, according to OPIM professor Thomas Lee, students have a wealth of extra help resources available, ranging from professorial office hours, teaching assistants associated with the course, satellite hours held by the Penn Tutoring Center and an active mentoring program.

You wouldn't think that students would need to copy each other's work. At first glance, it seems that the OSC is dealing with a simple case of academic dishonesty.

Simple cases, however, do not take four months to resolve.

"People didn't understand [the case material]. You could spend hours looking in a book and still not understand it. . The [second] case went well above and beyond what we were taught," said Wharton sophomore Erica Nachamkin.

Extra help was also hard to come by. "The outside help options weren't useful, and there were about 30 kids at office hours," said a Wharton sophomore, who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of being called in to the OSC.

"My friends and I took turns waiting in line ... but had to leave before getting to the professor because we had class."

"I felt like I had nowhere to turn," said another student.

With insufficient teaching and inadequate extra-help resources to turn to for assistance, the blame surely cannot be completely assigned to the students.

The new OPIM 101 syllabus does state, after all, that the course now "represents a significant departure from the past, including . somewhat less in-depth treatment of the use of .Visual Basic[.]"

Professor Lee would not acknowledge the ongoing investigation or that any cheating took place, and did not attribute the syllabus change to this fiasco. "None of the changes were made in response to that situation ... or lack thereof," Lee said.

If Professor Lee's silence is in following with standard OSC policy, Wharton and the OSC should officially recognize that the adjective "standard" has no bearing in this case. For some, official recognition may seem superfluous. After all, the course has already been restructured. Why put Wharton's reputation on the line by bringing the case into the limelight?

One word: students.

According to U.S. News & World Report's latest rankings, Penn is the fifth-best university in the country. This is no small feat, and our school jealously guards its due place on the upper echelon. But while prestige is valuable in attracting the young creme de la creme, it should not be gained at the expense of students.

In a case as unorthodox as this one, student treatment is not an irrelevant issue.Not to say Penn students are treated poorly, but Wharton's refusal to acknowledge the existence of last semester's OPIM scandal makes one wonder.

While cheating should not go unpunished, it would be unfair for the students' resumes, which will soon be used in internship applications, to bear the mark of disciplinary action without qualification. Prospective employers should know that implicated students were partially victims of circumstance and that their indictments weren't isolated incidents.

Although it might inconvenience Wharton's reputation to admit that a significant percentage of its sophomore class could have cheated, Wharton's reputation is strong enough to take an occasional bump in the road.

A single student's, however, is not.

Michaela Tolpin is a College sophomore from North Caldwell, N.J. Her e-mail address is tolpin@dailypennsylvanian.com. Tuesdays with Michaela appears on Tuesdays.

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