The UVa Honor Committee has found the first of the 122 accused cheaters guilty. The students were charged with cheating after Professor Louis Bloomfield analyzed their term papers and discovered that many of them had been copied from others. 30 investigations have been completed, with 20 cases dropped and 9 destined for trial. The rest of the cases will be investigated over the summer. The Cavalier Daily has the full story.
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
Sideblog
Police announced this afternoon that their investigation into what was initially believed to be a fatal fire on Rugby Avenue is now a homicide investigation. #
The Virginia Supreme Court has denied George Huguely’s appeal. His second-degree murder conviction will stand, WRIC reports. #
In a carefully worded story, and not citing specific sources, WTVR reports that forensic evidence belonging to Jesse Matthew Jr., the main suspect in the disappearance of Hannah Graham, matches forensic evidence collected during the investigation of Morgan Harrington’s 2009 murder. #
In the wake of Hannah Graham’s disappearance, and the evidence that came from private security footage, city officials are revisiting the question of installing security cameras on the downtown mall. #
Both Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta and former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander have turned themselves in to the police on
foursix and four felony counts of embezzlement, respectively. #Ten years ago, the National Institutes of Health budget doubled and schools like the University of Virginia built massive new research facilities. A decade later, those buildings remain largely underutilized. NPR visits UVA in this story on the effect of federal binge and spurge spending in the sciences. #
In 2012, Council approved a new student housing complex on West Main—now some council members are questioning whether what they were shown matches what was built. #
The Architectural Review Board has approved a bike-themed mural on West Market, below the McGuffey Art Center, although at least one member expressed concerns that it might look like the bicyclists were riding away from Charlottesville’s downtown. #
City Police Chief Tim Longo is meeting with city leaders to work on protocols regarding the use of military surplus police weapons in Charlottesville. #
A 100-year-old Colonnades resident received military honors for her service in the WWII Women’s Army Corps #
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It will be interesting to see the eventual percentage of students that are found guilty. I’m betting that less than 10% will be found guilty. At the current rate, about 33% will be found guilty. I think what bugs me is that, rather than feeling like “hey, they were wrongly charged and got let off,” I feel like “hey, that damned honor council’s letting people off again.” There goes innocent until proven guilty, eh?
Even if every one of the 122 papers was almost identical, someone had the original and probably didnt realize anyone was cheating with it. I wonder how many innocent people will be found guilty.
The sad part, is that the class they were in was a FUN CLASS. Something people want to take, not a cheesy english 101 requirement. They should have enjoyed writing those papers. Thats probably why the professor didnt check for this before.
It would be even more interesting to compare this with papers written at different schools. What is an acceptable number of duplicates of what number of words in a row? I mean if you’re looking at 3 words
in a row, you’ll probably find the same words in a cheap romance novel as you would in a term paper.
Ahh, the algorithms for finding cheaters are interesting indeed. At my alma mater the T.A.s had to feed our C code into a program that checked for statistically interesting syntatical similarities. And it caught a few people, too…