We, the students of UCSD know cheating is a problem and are trying to do something about it. National surveys tell us, for example, that 42% of students collaborate on independent assignments , 38% of students plagiarize, and 33% get test answers from someone who has already taken the test . In addition, the majority of students who have been reported for cheating at UCSD think that most UCSD students cheat sometimes or frequently! To help us in efforts to create a culture of academic integrity on campus, we want to let our professors know how many students DO in fact care about academic integrity violations and ask them to help us by doing the following 3 things:
    
     1. Educate Us – there ARE different understandings of academic integrity so we ask Faculty to fold academic integrity education into their classes. For example-- clarify what you consider to be cheating in your syllabus, talk about academic integrity the first day of class and before assignments and exams, and distribute our Academic Integrity Syllabus Supplement.
    
     2. Reduce Opportunities – much of the cheating at UCSD is opportunistic – so, cheating can be reduced with the implementation of simple things such as alternate versions of exams, assigning seats for exams, not returning exams, not grading/assignment textbook homework questions.

     3. Report all Suspected Cheating - only 3% of the UCSD student body is reported for cheating every year. This means that as many as 39% of students cheat but do not experience consequences. This creates an unfair environment and undermines the integrity of our education.

We know that the professors already do a lot for us but we hope that you can help us even more by instituting these three simple ideas. For more information, visit http://academicintegrity.ucsd.edu.

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