Cheating has overtaken East classes. Here’s why it needs to stop.

Whether it’s a quick Spanish quiz or the hardest test of the year, students seem to rely on one thing to get through the school week — cheating. 

Sitting in the back of the class, I see plenty of iPhones sticking out of baggy grey sweatpants and the more confident of the students peering over the straight-a kid’s shoulder.

Cheating on tests and assignments may seem like no big deal while partaking, but those habits are harmful in the long term, because although that stats midterm might not seem important students are missing out on valuable knowledge.

According to Oedb.org, Open Education Database, people who cheat average a 3.41 GPA in high school, while people who don’t average a 2.85. Sure, the kids in biology writing the whole study guide on their arm have higher letter grades than the ones who actually did the study guide. But we all know who the successors will be once school’s out. People who choose to put in the effort to earn their grades early on will be more inclined to work hard and earn recognition when they have a job — where it counts even more.

Nobody will have someone next to them all their life, giving them the answers to questions that they don’t know. Developing habits of cheating doesn’t teach you the problem-solving skills that you need for the rest of your life, hurting you in the long run.

Copying someone’s homework could grow into a dangerous habit of fabricating work, resulting in plagiarism. And guess what? That’s a crime that comes with jail time. And not to mention that if a student is caught plagiarizing in college, the punishment is normally an expulsion.

Some students spend more time finding answers from their friends than it would have taken to actually just do the worksheet. I bet they could have read through the four pages of the book to fill in the blanks by the time their friend got home from soccer practice and sent a picture of their paper.

My friends are always asking me to send homework answers — and I mean always. Not only is it annoying, but it’s awkward. I always offer to help them, but it’s not fair that they are getting the easy A when I worked hard to complete the assignment. But hey, it’ll be their test grade that hurts when I go in with the material learned and they show up with nothing.

Some students cheat so much that it becomes routine, causing them to forget they’re even doing something wrong. A study by Caveon Test Security shows that 51% of high school students believe that cheating isn’t wrong. Half of my school thinking cheating is O.K. is like saying that Taco Bell is healthy for you. I’m embarrassed. It’s like half of the school is training to become con artists.

A student’s GPA is a huge factor when applying to college. It isn’t fair to the honest students if their dishonest peers are taking their spots at schools like UCLA, simply because they were simply more sneaky.

Students that might seem hyper intelligent could just as easily be masking it with cheating. Those students may flaunt their grades, but if they got their grade from someone else, does it really count? Some people might be happy with a 95% on their English essay that they didn’t earn, but I’d be content with my high B knowing it was my own work. 

It’s hard for me to think that the cheating rates in high school are so high. Students are starting to care less about their own intelligence and more about the substanceless, falsified grades their parents would be proud of. But if their parents knew how they actually earned that grade, I can guarantee you they wouldn’t be proud.