OUR VIEW: Justice should prevail in the classroom

Innocent until proven guilty.

Probable cause.

Due process of law.

In America, that’s how our legal system works. Unless we’re talking about Guantanamo Bay, we usually don’t just slam people on the mere suspicion of a crime. We need some sort of evidence to support any harsh action.

Apparently, when it comes to cheating, USU is more like Guantanamo Bay. Professors have the power to fail students on mere suspicion of cheating. A literal reading of the policy would mean – and this is an extreme example – if a professor merely suspects that a student who is tying their shoe is actually trying to sneak a peek at their neighbor’s quiz, they could fail that student, no questions asked.

Now don’t get all in a huff just yet. The Statesman isn’t condoning cheating. Cheaters deserve to fail. Everyone works hard and when someone cheats, they are cheapening everyone else’s effort.

But we also can’t condone such quick judgment without an examination of the facts – without some scaled-down version of due process of law. We realize a university isn’t set up to be the U.S. justice system. Professors need to be more dictator than Supreme Court Justice in their classrooms and there doesn’t need to be a long, drawn-out legal battle over whether a student was cheating or just yawning.

And maybe it’s just semantics, but the phrase “mere suspicion” doesn’t exactly harken back to what we would consider American traditions of justice. We shouldn’t be comfortable as a nation about getting some severe penalty for the mere suspicion of a wrongdoing. We like to think we have a chance to give our side of the story.

Swift action often leads to false conviction, and in a situation like cheating, a little investigation – which isn’t too much effort – will probably turn up the truth. It’s not like a teacher needs to do DNA testing just to see if two students copied off each other.

In reality, are professors going to abuse this power? Most likely not.

More than anything, this “mere suspicion” policy cultivates an attitude, a feeling, that leads to an atmosphere of distrust – something not particularly conducive to an open learning environment, which is what an institution of higher education is supposed to be like. Right?