A recent trend developing among both high school and college students is the use of digital audio devices, such as iPods, to cheat on tests. One common cheating method is taking digital pictures of study notes and storing them on the iPods. Another idea is to just download voice recordings of solutions to play on the iPods. I’m actually surprised that this type of cheating is not more prevalent, since there are websites devoted to teaching students how to cheat with their music players. Consequently, digital media players are banned at schools across the country and in Canada.

However, it seems doubtful that the ban will stop cheating with these devices. Their small size allows them to be concealed very discreetly from teachers and other students. Most students agree that banning iPods from schools will not curb cheating, since a student who is desperate enough to cheat will probably find a way. The new technology available will, however, expand cheaters’ options.

The real question to be asked is: why do students cheat in the first place? Is receiving an A through cheating really better than getting a B or C (or even an A) through hard work or studying? Of course, cheating is not a recent phenomenon, but it seems to me that cheating is discussed more often in the media than in past years. Whether in academics, sports, or politics, cheating manages to find its way in every form of competition. Barry Bonds is a prime example of this recent phenomenon: as of printing time, he is just eleven home runs away from breaking Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record. But, when he does break it, there will be no shortage of controversy surrounding his achievement due to his “unintentional” usage of outlawed anabolic steroids. In other words, his success, unlike Babe Ruth’s or Aaron’s, was due in essence to cheating. Meanwhile, with 18,000-plus lost ballots from electronic touch screen voting machines in Florida’s 13^th Congressional district, the question of election swindles reemerged in 2006. However, I do not understand how people can be complacent enough to think that their egregious cheating or abuse will not be uncovered. Admittedly, a celebrity cheating in the national spotlight is different from the average Joe cheating on his midterm, but the principle holds the same. How can one be proud of his or her accomplishment if it was achieved dishonestly? I am pretty sure that the pleasure of acing that hard final is not that sweet if you cheated your way to that grade.

Maybe students just don’t care about the consequences of cheating. Most students hate school, but are forced to attend seven hours a day cramming nonessential information just so that they can pass the state’s exams and SATs in the hopes of getting into a good college. In college, the cycle of uselessness continues as we take irrelevant courses that have nothing to do with our majors or minors, but that fulfill the long list of distribution requirements. So, maybe students cheat to ease the pain of flunking courses they already have no interest in. This is an unfortunate reality considering the presence of the Honor Code, which, at most colleges, allows for exams to be given without a proctor present. I do not think that most students would report their classmates if they saw them cheating on an exam here at Dartmouth. A few of my friends have witnessed some form of cheating occurring on campus and didn’t act. Now, according to many, my friends are also breaking the Honor Code by not reporting these cheaters. But there are others who agree that monitoring others’ integrity is not their responsibility. And there’s always the hope that they’ll endure the consequences later.

But why is cheating so often in the headlines nowadays? Did people not cheat in previous generations? Or were they just smart enough not to get caught? I find it ironic that as we incorporate sophisticated technology into our cheating we are actually making it more perceptible to the masses. Maybe this new technology is just dumbing us down and forcing us to cheat because we do not have the brainpower to learn the material the apparently old-fashioned way. If that’s the case, the technology is certainly a double-edged sword: it is not only helping people cheat, but also simultaneously broadcasting our lack of morals to the public.