Here’s the problem: the first step would normally be to calmly explain to your MIL what a huge breach of ethics this is for her as an employee of the school, and that it’s bad both for your sister-in-law and any future patients she has.
Here’s the problem, though: there’s no guarantee that she will care, and once you’ve gone to her it’ll be hard to report her - if you talk to her and then someone anonymous reports her, she’ll probably suspect it was you. As much as she deserves to lose her job, you may not want to be the one responsible for it, particularly if that becomes public knowledge. Maybe you’d be better off talking to other people in your family one by one and trying to get them not to help.
This has been exactly my concern for online courses. I have always wondered how you prevent just this from happening.
I am currently developing an online “hybrid” science course, with online lectures and on site labs. This nails it- the tests will be held on site during lab periods.
How sad that she thinks what she’s doing is not only OK, but funny!
If this girl either has exit exams in psych (like I just took) or has to take the Psych GRE, or taking any classes on learning, or pretty much just any psych class, she will regret not learning Piaget and Vygotsky and Kohlberg, etc from this developmental class. Developmental was a requirement at the 2 colleges I’ve attended. And when you’re going for a psych degree, you relearn the same stuff in different contexts often, so it helps to take a good variety of courses. She’ll be hurting.
But yeah her family doing her work for her is pretty messed up. No matter how hard a class is, I’d never even consider asking someone to do that.
And IMO, developmental is EASY if you can just remember all that Piaget crap. Lots of it is common sense.
College really isn’t that hard in general (not counting technical science/engineering/ medical classes and the like - just the basic liberal arts kinda stuff that most everybody takes) and undergrad psych classes are some of the easiest I’ve taken. Show up, listen to professor geek out about psych theories, maybe read the book, show up and take multiple choice test. Yes it can vary widely, but still. I don’t like cheaters. I work hard because I care about earning my grades and learning. I’m not paying out the ass for mommy to get an education.
But yeah I wouldn’t know what to do. I wouldn’t go to the dean because she’d get fired and the girl booted from school most likely. That’s too much to rest on my back. But I’d tell them they were stupid assholes for doing it, and losers for cheating.
If I were in your shoes, I would make a few well-placed anonymous calls, letters (typed, of course), or whatever to the school. At the very least, they are required to look into any accusation of cheating – but with it being an employee involved, you could rest assured that this will not end well for the MIL. Ethically, yes, you do have a responsibility to do something. Since you say MIL is telling everyone, just continue to act cavalier about it along with everyone else and she won’t know who turned her in, there should be no fallout for you. Do not confront her – it is not worth it to make it a personal thing. Do not tell your spouse that you have turned her in, just be like “yeh, I don’t think what she’s doing is cool, but it’s none of my business.”
I had a situation, when I was in college, where an ex-friend stole some of my disks. Since I tend to look at situations funny, my code is always a little odd – I never do things the way one would expect*, so my code is very unique. When I realised that she had stolen the disks, I immediately informed the professor (I’d already gotten my degree, but didn’t want anything to happen to me) – when she tried to turn in my work as her own, she was busted for cheating and kicked out of the program. I am sure he would have caught it, but since she and I were still friendly when I graduated (and the professor knew this – she and I had a few classes with him together) it was to save my ass, nothing more.
*On one assigment, (I think it was Visual Basic) the professor looked at the code and said “Litoris, there is no way in hell this is going to work the way it needs to.” I told him that it had worked just fine for me, but tell me what I did wrong. He gave me an odd look and decided to run the code before saying anything else. It worked. Perfectly. He just shook his head and laughed and said “Nevermind what I thought was wrong, tell me why this worked!” Hahaha
Well, I’m just going to go ahead and disagree with virtually everyone in this thread.
Not that it isn’t disgraceful, what MIL and SIL are doing here. Of course it is. There’s no justification for it, and it wil ultimately harm SIL more than she realizes.
But unless you are an employee of the same school, you have no obligation to report this, anonymously or otherwise. Getting involved in this, in any way, is going to hurt you way more than it will hurt MIL and SIL. If it ever gets back to them that you turned them in - and if that costs MIL her job - you will find yourself facing an absolute shitstorm of family strife. Your marriage will suffer, your husband’s relationship with his family will be destroyed, your holiday will be uncomfortable at best and rancorous at worst for years to come. Even just “having a little chat” with either of the parties involved is bad idea: it won’t help, because if either one thought there was anything wrong with this they’d not be doing it, and it will lead to interfamilial conflict.
And to what end? You won’t be able to stop the behavior. I’d say it’s unlikely that you could even get either one punished, because they’d simply both deny having cheated.
This is one of those situations that has big, flashing, “NOT YOUR BUSINESS, SHAKE YOUR HEAD AND MOVE ON, DEFINITELY DO NOT ENTER” signs plastered all over it. Heed their advice.
I checked into it a little bit, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to submit an anonymous tip. Even if I could, I know my MIL would suspect me, since I have been outright appalled since the beginning. She told my husband not to tell me that she was writing the paper.
Another layer to this that I just found out – she has actually had help writing the paper from a tenured professor in her department. She is close with him, and she asked him to read/edit her paper. She wanted to make sure it wasn’t “too good” so that the professor of the class would catch on.
Now, tell me how a long-term, tenured, highly respected professor IN THE SAME DEPARTMENT has no problem with this? He told her “well, you’ve come this far, you might as well write the paper.” Insane.
Yuck, sounds like the whole institution is mired in corruption. Are they accredited? If they offer online courses and don’t do anything to discourage cheating, surely the degrees they hand out can’t be worth much.
What the hell? I haven’t been in college or grad school in the last seven years, but have things changed so much that it’s now okay to have everyone at the freaking university to be in on the cheating as long as you’re not forced to decry it via public scandal? That’s absolutely revolting. Fuck - hearing this kind of crap makes me feel like I’ve entered a parallel universe.
My brother teaches online English. They caught a cheater last year. Apparently dude was paying another student to do his on-line work. Eventually he had to come in and take a regular class, and he got the same professor:
So, in the case of your SIL, is it possible that the prof she has for the on-line class will turn up as prof of a regular class? That will tell the tale - and you need do nothing.
In other words, give 'em enough rope and they’ll hang themselves.
Yeah, of course their behavior is fucked up, but I tend to side with those who suggest you MYOB. I know many folk who do all kinds of schoolwork and such for their kids, and clearly believe it does more harm than good to the kids. But I’m a pretty firm believer in keeping my nose out of other families’ household dynamics whenever possible - same way I insist they do the same to me and my family.
Of course it is difficult if they insist on bringing something like this up at family gatherings. I could imagine something like on one occasion clearly saying “I really disagree with that practice and would prefer that we discuss something else.” Same way you might respond if they made bigotted comments, insisted on discussing politics or religion, or something else you strongly disagreed with.
I’d probably mention it to my spouse ahead of time - it is important that the 2 of you present a united front on such matters, and agree on such things if you plan on having kids yourself. But I’m having a hard time imagining myself turning them in or anything.
I disagree. An institution’s first priority is to cover its own ass, and it will bury an anonymous complaint, with no credible investigation. Someone will ask MIL, “Are you helping your daughter cheat?” She will reply, “No”. They will say “Ok then, some kook says you are.” The MIL will come to have a chat with you.
If you’re not willing to stand up and attach your name to the complaint, you may as well leave it alone.
Here in Alberta, there is an extensive support framework for parents who chose to home-school their kids: curriculum, lists of materials, online networking sites, even cash subsidies for supplies and field-trips. for All well & good.
However, we are acquainted with a Mom, who has shown evidence of other psychological problems not discussed here, who is quite proud of home schooling her kids who are now 10 and 15. Problem is, she corrects all their assignments and tests before they submit them, even to the point of coaching/advising during online exams, so their results are always excellent, much to Mom’s very overt delight.
However, those kids are about to get a massive dose of RealWorldReality™; I hope it won’t be an overdose. Here you can’t home-school past junior high. Kids have to GO to high-school, which the oldest is about to undertake, if not already there. Witnessing this is a bit like watching a plane crash, wondering if the pilot will eject in time…
Oh dear. In my last three years as a student at the University of Alberta, where I have become acquainted with various admissions officers (owing to my age; they and other university staff are closer to me in age than my classmates, so naturally, I gravitate towards those who are my age peers), I can tell you that these children will be eaten alive at university, assuming they are even admitted.
Among the admissions officers that I know, very few would tolerate “special” children. That is, those who are something that their parent claims to be the truth but is unverifiable otherwise. Mind, the admissions officers will bend over backwards to do what’s fair for kids who genuinely do have some sort of challenge: those who come from a disadvantaged background, or are traditionally discriminated against due to race or sexual orientation, or are verifiably handicapped, or are otherwise somehow outside the mainstream. They know that such kids deserve a chance, and they try to ensure that these kids get one.
But the parent who says that their kid deserves more consideration than others because he or she has “overcome challenges” that only the parent can substantiate will be laughed out of consideration. Got some proof? Let’s see it. Can’t prove it? Gee, that’s tough. Unfortunately, my acquaintances in admissions deal with every excuse under the sun as to why Amber, Britney, Troy, Kyle, Dylan, and so on absolutely MUST go to university that they are numb to entreaties and persuasions. So how can these kids go to university?
Easy, according to my admissions friends. Work hard at high school and get admitted to university on merit. There is no other way.
It’s appalling. I think you are getting good advice, though. Stay out of it.
I know a woman who does her 13 year old son’s homework, she sits in the car and does it while he’s at baseball practice. (She and her husband fondly imagine that this boy is going to MLB.) It’s particularly awful because this is a very, very bright boy. How 2 such stupid people produced him is beyond me. Alien abduction or something, I expect.
I supervise my boys’ homework, check the answers, help them edit an essay, etc. by pointing out errors. But no way have I ever done any of the work! What a dreadful thing to do.
Your ethical warning bells are going off just as they should, but you need to turn a blind eye to the situation. Nothing you do will make them change their ways, and it’s unlikely that anything punitive will happen. If they do ask your opinion, you can obviously disagree.
If I were you, though, I’d forget I ever saw anything.
Turning them in is simply not an option. There are cops enough in this world as it is – the virtue of family bonds is that your family can be a safe, trusted community. There needs to be a class of people in our lives that tries to correct our misdeeds with compassion and logic, rather than coercion. We need some people who will tell us (kindly) to our faces that we’ve screwed up, but will leave it to us to change course (or not) voluntarily. Because you’re family, Emmy, your ethical responsibility in this case is to be one of those people.
Butting out entirely may well be the best course. If you must get involved, though, you’ve got to do it by means of a conversation (not a scolding) with your MIL and/or SIL.
Well, you said you probably shouldn’t get involved in it. That’s the best course. And as for your ethical responsibilities you might ask—who made you the sheriff?
You never mentioned how you feel about your mother and sister in laws. Like them? Hate them? Indifferent? Because you are thinking about this at all, I would guess that you are not close.
How would you react if this was someone you cared about, like your own mother or sister? (I’m making an assumption here.) Better yet, how about if it was your husband that would lose his job? Would you turn him in? If not, it wouldn’t be an ethical situation, would it?
There are those who recommend anonymous ratting out. I wouldn’t agree with that. That’s underhanded and cowardly. It’s a sucker punch. Anyone who is a whistleblower should have the cajones to admit what they did and stand by it.
And the school won’t take those anonymous complaints because they know their mailbox would be overflowing every day if they did.
I would go to the MIL with a message of concern. I’d say that I didn’t think it was right because the daughter needed to do her own work. But I was also worried that if she talks about it so openly that the wrong person would hear it and then there would be trouble. And nobody wants that.
And I would leave it at that.
You know, be a friend.
I knew a woman who got a degree in social work. She worked and had a 10 year old daughter and didn’t have enough time for school. So she had her daughter do her reports and papers. They were awful. Sounded like a dim witted 10 year old wrote them. Yet she passed.
I asked her once if she wasn’t worried about getting an education? She told me, “What kind of bullshit education do you think I’d be getting if a 10 year old writes papers that pass?” I thought that was a good point.
So now she is a counselor for youthful offenders. Does a pretty good job of it, or so I hear.
