Cheating and its Discontents

The first thing that needs to be said about the never-ending Hanover High School cheating scandal is that everyone involved should get over it, and themselves. If you are a parent of a high school student who has become embroiled in this controversy at any level, you should thank whatever force you think guides the universe for giving you an offspring that has actually been around long enough to get to high school and cheat. There are families around you who are not as lucky.

(People who have the N1303K mutation know that pretty well, I note in the margin.)

But if you truly have nothing to do than obsess about this teapot tempest, consider the latest developments, as reported in the Valley News:

An investigation by Hanover High School officials into the cheating scandal that roiled the school community last year has ended with disciplinary action against 14 students, of whom 10 had already been criminally charged in connection with the incident, school administrators said yesterday.

Hanover High School Principal Deb Gillespie said school officials had identified more than 30 students suspected of cheating, including the 10 facing criminal charges.

But in the end, she said, lacking hard evidence with which to pursue many of those students, the high school was able to identify and punish only those willing to confess.

Four in addition to the 10 charged did so.

What was interesting about the article was the divergent reactions of two parents whose kids were both charged criminally and disciplined academically.

First there's Valley News columnist Jim Kenyon, who characterized his son and the 9 other criminally prosecuted students as "scapegoats."

“The message that Hanover High School has sent is that cheating is perfectly fine as long as you get someone else to steal the test for you,” Kenyon told his colleague who wrote the Valley News story. He was alluding to the widely assumed (and highly plausible) assertion that, although ten students did the actual breaking into the school and stealing the exams, many more students thereby obtained the exams and thus are guilty of cheating. Kenyon is peeved the school didn't go after more of them.

Contrast that reaction to that of Nancy Formella, co-president of Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and thus at least as prominent in the local community as Jim Kenyon is. Formella has simply declined politely to issue any public comment about the cheating scandal whatsoever. Her son is appealing his conviction to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, which suggests that the Formella family shares with the Kenyon family the view that an injustice has been visited upon them.

But, unlike Jim Kenyon, Nancy Formella has the good judgment to realize that any public comment she might make on this subject would be self-defeating. The "I blame society" approach Jim Kenyon has taken -- he's been previously quoted as attributing the whole mess to what he characterized as the school's high-pressure academic culture -- comes across as whiny and hypocritical. Maybe that's because it is whiny and hypocritical, coming from a man who makes his living in significant part by holding others accountable for what he perceives to be their moral lapses.

As for the merits of Kenyon's assertions about the school's decision to go after only some of the students involved in the scandal: His lament is particularly preposterous coming from a news reporter. A journalist who works for a daily newspaper should understand as well as anyone that prosecution (whether of the criminal or disciplinary variety) is always a matter of discretion. Sometimes a guilty person gets away with something because the authorities see extenuating circumstances, but more often than not the decision has a lot to do with a lack of admissible evidence. Next time there's a bank robbery and the cops catch some but not all of the perpetrators, is Kenyon going to use his column to argue that the criminals nabbed by the authorities should be released scot-free?

In fairness, one has to be willing to indulge the possibility that the police and the school are making examples of young Mr. Kenyon and young Mr. Formella in part because they are sons of prominent people in the community. Well . . . as suggested in Luke 12:48, "to whom much is given, much is required." It's not irrational for the authorities to determine that if they go after the offspring of the high and mighty, then everyone will understand that the rules apply to all. I am guessing that this, too, informs Nancy Formella's laudable public silence.

Speaking of fairness, the Valley News ought to consider the ethical implications of letting their beloved Jim Kenyon use the paper as a platform for spreading his controversial take on the cheating scandal. Presumably, the editors justify quoting him on the ground that they would quote any parent of one of the cheaters if that parent chose to be interviewed.

There's at least two things wrong with that rationale. First, as anyone who has ever been quoted in the newspaper knows, context is everything and no reporter ever gets it exactly right. So, an interviewee who is a stranger to the reporter, and has no access to that reporter in the newsroom during the writing process or thereafter, is in a much less advantageous position than Jim Kenyon is when quoted by one of his colleagues. Second, Kenyon's take on the scandal is awfully close to the views of the controversy as expressed on the Valley News editorial page.

It's probably a coincidence. But this is one of those situations in which it is not enough to avoid impropriety -- it's also necessary to avoid the appearance of impropriety.