School Needs Policy to Curb Cheating : Properly written rules, perhaps based on the three strikes concept, would not punish the innocent, a possibility that some at North Hollywood magnet fear.

Late in January, some faculty, students and parents decided cheating was a serious problem in the North Hollywood High School magnet for highly gifted students. A School Leadership Council subcommittee asked two students to write a proposal for addressing it.

It sounds like letting the fox guard the henhouse. But the magnet is no ordinary chicken coop. Students must have an IQ of 145 or higher to apply to the school, which provides some college-level courses. The writers, Kevin Shapiro, a junior, and Melissa Harwitt, a senior, drafted their own version of California’s “three strikes” law. After a few revisions, the committee dropped the proposal on student and faculty desks one spring morning.

It went like this: The first time a student is caught cheating, she or he fails the assignment and the teacher may phone the student’s parent or guardian. A second offense brings an unsatisfactory report card mark, and the student must meet with the magnet coordinator “to discuss the serious consequences” of Strike Three.

That’s what sent a large number of the students into a tizzy. After a third offense: 1. The school sends a letter detailing the student’s cheating to all the colleges to which the student has applied. 2. No teacher may write a letter of recommendation for the student.

Within minutes of reading the proposal, a fellow student approached Shapiro and told him, “You’re stabbing us in the back.” Students called a meeting where some argued that the rule would either hurt student-teacher relations, dehumanize the school or be unfairly administered by dishonest teachers.

“People were upset that the punishment wouldn’t just affect you in the magnet, but that it would affect your future in life, too,” Harwitt says.

Yes, it’s an awful punishment, in one sense stricter than the law, which wipes out criminal records at 18 years of age. But it would be a wonderful deterrent, stressing the belief that honor in our academic system is worthy of defending.

Non scholae sed vitae discimus.

Translated from Latin, that is “We learn not for school, but for life.” It’s a phrase I stumbled upon a few weeks ago when I was trying to figure out why, without sounding too sanctimonious, cheating is so wrong.

Cheating, unfortunately, is a subject I know a little something about. Although I was never caught, I spent entirely too much time in high school scribbling out crib notes on nights before big tests. My favorite trick was to hide the crib notes in my retainer case.

To be perfectly honest, the fact that I cheated didn’t really bother me for a few years. I figured I was just playing the grade-point-average game and that most of the material I should be learning would be irrelevant in my life as a rock guitarist god.

A few years ago, as I stumbled my way through the real world, I discovered that despite 17 years of education, I really didn’t know much. One day a friend’s child asked, “What are clouds?” and my answer was, “Big white fluffy things.” Deep down, I told myself I should know that. Years earlier I had cheated my way through Earth Science.

I promised myself that one day, when my kid asked the same question, I’d know the answer. Understanding how the world works and affects you is not a part of life, it is life. So, in the language of Beavis and Butt-head, not Latin, here’s why cheating is wrong: Being ignorant sucks.

However, they won’t be punishing cheating with a three-strikes law at North Hollywood High.

After more meetings, the proposal was tabled indefinitely 10 days ago by the School Leadership Council. Resistance came from students, teachers and administrators, including Principal Catherine Lum.

Lum says that the rule’s lack of due process would violate district policies, that the process of writing it was not open to other students and that there is no proof that a cheating problem exists in the school--all disputed by Harwitt and Shapiro.

But the heart of the issue for Lum and many others is that the third strike is punitive rather than remedial and leaves no room to take account of the special circumstance of the cheating episode.

“Every single situation is very individualized,” Lum says. “This is why we treat students on an individual basis.”

In my view the proposal needs to be amended to give due process so an accused student could offer her or his side of the story. But that wouldn’t eliminate the widespread objections and save the policy.

What seems largely forgotten is that with a properly drafted rule, a non-cheater wouldn’t be punished. I’m not a student, parent or teacher at the school, so my view of the issue tends to be along the lines of what seems clearly right and clearly wrong. To me it’s about personal responsibility.

Lum is certainly against cheating by students, but is her approach pragmatic to the point of leniency? She wonders if a ninth-grader caught cheating three times should be punished so severely.

As we were talking, I wondered if the idea that cheating is against the rules and wrong is so complex that a ninth-grader with an IQ of 145 can’t grasp it. Unfortunately, as Harwitt and Shapiro have learned in their best social studies lesson yet, the answer at their school is, in effect, yes.