Cheating

I caught one of my students cheating on an exam the other day.

It was not one of those blatant crib sheet moves, where the carefuly printed answers were written on a miniscule piece of paper left behind on the classroom floor for me to discover minutes after the test concluded. You know, like in the movie School Ties. Nor did I suss out the cheater by noting large amounts of suspiciously neat cursive on the bottom of a shoe, or on the inner part of a forearm. In fact, I have no actual concrete proof that the incident occurred.

Except for the fact that I have my own two eyes. And I will tell you what those saucer-like buggers saw: a cheater.

Yet, I oddly found myself in a weird intercultural pickle with regards to what transpired. Strangely enough, even an issue with a clear "right" or "wrong" attached to it has become more complicated now due to the simple fact that I am not in America and therefore I am either confused by or else second-guessing virtually all of my interactions with the "natives."

So you already know the one big point that is dragging me down: I have no actual proof in the way of a cheat sheet, and I (stupidly?) neglected to install a surveillance camera on my classroom of 19 year-olds as they wandered in with their backpacks and pencil cases to sit for the exam. Why would I? Well, for one thing I wouldn't have been able to; technological saavy is not my forte. And for another thing, tomfoolery was not on my agenda for the day.

You know, like it usually is--somewhere between eating breakfast and eating dinner, I usually schedule a little "tomfoolery" time.

But back to the situation at hand: further sullying the case for the prosecution is that the student in question bold-faced denied the situation. I approached her not once, but twice, to tell her that if her eyes could not stay on her own paper that I would take it away and give her a zero. The second time I went up to her, I adopted an incredibly foreboding tone and added the words, in slow emphatic English: "This is your last chance."

It was pretty dramatic, actually. Not as dramatic as the rose ceremonies at the end of The Bachelor, but almost.

Just to rewind a bit: what initially raised the proverbial red flag for me as to the goings-on was actually not my mediocre observational skills. Surprise, surprise. Rather, my revelation was rooted in social dynamics. The girl/"alleged" cheater was sitting between two girls she never sits next to in class. And her two neighbors were amongst the strongest students in the class.

People in their late teens and twenties do not spend an entire semester sitting with the same friends and then, voila!, on the last day, suddenly have a new "bestie." Nope, such a scenario was not in keeping with what I have witnessed with regards to late-adolescent social behavior. So that can be considered "Point 1."

I then proceeded to watch the girl blatantly copy answers from both her neighbors. One of them, God bless her, actually moved her arm so that the little operator could no longer see her paper. The other may have been in cahoots with her, but I will give her the benefit of the doubt as she does not seem the type to cheat. But what do I know? I thought the same thing about Tiger Woods.

Anway, you may be wondering why I gave her two chances. Well here is where the intercultural monster again rears his ugly little head in the life and times of Maggie White. When I first approached her and told her she needed to keep her eyes on her own paper, she stared at me in that manner which only emanates from emboldened youth, and said something along the lines of, "What are you talking about?" This response, utterly devoid of guilt or reproach, was compounded by that air which only emanates from the French, that air that seems to say, "You are a speck of dirt on my white blouse, you are the fly that has landed in my chablis, you are the scum on the sole of my shoe."

So I became confused as my mind registered her words and expression and I felt a sudden urge to apologize for interruppting her test.

What was wrong with me? I had seen her cheat, and yet, just as when someone bumps me aggressively on the metro or when the person in the grocery store glares at me after cutting me in line, I somehow feel I need to express my regret for my non-existant shameful behavior. Seriously, what is wrong with me? Has living in France turned me into a doormat?

And then, not five minutes later, there the little prevaricator goes again! If she had stood up and mooned the room it may have been a tad more discreet than the blatant bamboozling she was pulling as she copied her neighbor's work with slow precision. I somehow managed to clear the cloud of intercultural confusion that had enveloped me and I marched back up to her.

This time, when she "Pfffft"'d me with a big old shrug and a look that said, "Your problem if you think I am cheating, but please leave me alone NOW." I told her, in all my dramatic glory that this was her "last chance."

I then let her complete the test anyway, silently cursing myself all the while for allowing this great miscarriage of justice to flourish under my inept tutelage. When she handed in the test, she gave me a cheerful "Bye!" and I was so shocked by her brazen attitude that I returned the salutation.

The moral of the situation is that if you act like you can get away with something it seems that you actually can get away with it. Temporarily, anyway. Because, I will you this: karma is not a mythical entity designed to coerce people into behaving the "right" way. It is the real deal, mes amis.

Because, as it turns out, I do not even have to correct her paper--a task I was (obviously) not looking forward to agonizing over. The fact is that her attendance record is such that she recieves an automatic zero in the class. Et voila, problem solved.

So here is the golden nugget for the day: don't cheat. Because even if you are able to manipulate your culturally confused teacher temporarily, in the end you will not win. In the meantime, I am going to work on cultivating my gumption because it seems I am suffering from a serious case of intercultural wimpiness. Wish me bonne chance!