Field Trip!

Even though I've been downtown Chicago quite often, it was really fun to go there with new historical knowledge of the city. Taylor street was, as usual, beautiful. All around the UIC campus is the peaceful buzz of learning. Since we were there during school and working hours there weren't many people strolling the sidewalks. Here and there there were students passing between classes or an office worker on his/her lunch-break, but for the most part the streets were quiet. The only disappointment was that our destination, Mario's Italian Ice, was closed for the season. We couldn't figure out why since the temperature was in the upper eighties, but none the less it was closed.

The quaint Little Italy neighborhood is a living example of the history of Chicago. As we've read in the text and talked about in class, ethnic neighborhoods in Chicago have been ever-changing. There were still quite a few Italian restaurants, markets, etc. in the area, but we also noticed that many of the old Italian places had been turned into Thai places. On the end of Taylor Street closest to the UIC campus there was at least one Thai restaurant for every Italian restaurant, if not more. I happen to love Thai food, so for me this was not a problem, but we began to wonder how the Italian people who have lived there for generations feel about this shift in restaurant demographics. My new knowledge of the city has truly brought back to life its history.



Mario's



Jenni, Me (Rachel), and Alex in front of Mario's. There wasn't anyone else around, so we had to take the picture ourselves!



Waiting to catch the Blue Line at UIC-Halsted stop.

Who's to Blame for Academic Dishonesty?

Cheating means something different to everyone, which became clear during the class discussion on Thursday. It was not only the students that had different definitions of cheating, but also the authors of the four articles in question. Furthermore, the authors disagreed quite passionately about who was to blame for the students’ cheating. Bill Puka, author of “Student Cheating,” suggested that professors were to blame for making it too easy to be dishonest. Although I was speaking with a group of students, the consensus was against Puka.
Although my group considered all forms of cheating bad, they also thought that plagiarism transcended the other forms in “badness.” Puka recommended that professors make students hand in multiple copies of essays in order to prevent plagiarism. The group rebutted this by saying, “what if the first copy is plagiarized and the student simply makes a few changes on the second and third drafts?” Throughout the discussion the group was persistent in blaming students for plagiarism.
One group thought that a good way to prevent students from cheating was to make them sign a student contract. Many people felt that students who are willing to cheat would not be suddenly bounded by a contract. The contract, however, is also a protection for the institutions.
One of the articles claimed that institutions were to blame for academic dishonesty. Often times students are viewed as customers who should be satisfied, rather than students who should learn both from the classroom, and from their mistakes. Many of those institutions feel obligated to side with the student in question because of the fear of losing the money the student brings in. So, by making a student sign a legal contract, it safeguards the institution from feeling obligated to keep the customer.
My father is a professor at a small private liberal arts college. He caught two students with the same paper one time, and as a result they both failed the class. The ironic, part, he thought was that one of the students had actually done the work. He had a solid hunch as to which student had chosen to do the material, but felt it was his moral responsibility to punish them both. He also felt that the student who had done the work was blackmailed into sharing his work. So, the question arose, “are both parties always responsible?” Our group decided that, under no circumstances, was it ok to share ones work.
All in all, we decided that there is no one to blame for cheating besides the students. Many of the institutional practices are not fair, but they are not to blame. The only person that can stop a student from plagiarizing is that student. The line of morality in student cheating is not as ambiguous as many think. The students are to blame.