Easy Marks: Cracking a University's Academic Integrity Con

By Catherine Wagner

Every year, millions of students pay enormous sums for a college education. Most have no idea how easily a single false accusation can derail their dreams. Shocked, shamed, and silenced, they watch their futures crumble in the campus kangaroo courts of "academic integrity."

Catherine Wagner was an enthusiastic, top-performing s

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sunlight Works
• Release date: Dec 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9780999862315

Catherine Wagner

Catherine Wagner graduated Phi Beta Kappa from North Carolina State University as a valedictorian in both Chemical Engineering and Spanish Language and Literature. She served as Tau Beta Pi chapter president and enjoys writing in her free time.

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PART ONE: THE JOURNEY BEGINS

1. SMOOTH SAILING

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.¹

–John A. Shedd

A STAND OF TOWERING OAKS welcomed me to North Carolina State University. Their lush branches waved gently over the road behind my dorm, providing a reassuring backdrop to my hectic but happy new life as a college student. I imagined them as steadfast witnesses to the University’s history—from its founding in 1887 to my daily dash to class—and I eagerly anticipated becoming part of that history.

I was surprised by how quickly I came to love NC State, although I had initially been reluctant to attend a school that was about a thirty-minute drive from home. Having worked on research with two NC State chemical engineering professors since my junior year of high school, I was already familiar with the University. Hoping to experience someplace new, I had visited several other universities, but found myself repeatedly comparing them to the warm, down-to-earth feel of NC State—not to mention its nationally-ranked engineering school. I was happy to accept the offer of admission to the NC State College of Engineering in 2015. I planned to major in chemical engineering, with the ultimate goal of becoming a doctor.

August 2015 marked the start of my freshman year at NC State. I soon felt at home both on Main Campus, with its ivy-covered brick buildings sprawled around the iconic Belltower, and on Centennial Campus, home to the College of Engineering and the new, nationally-acclaimed James B. Hunt, Jr. Library. An active buzz pervaded the atmosphere as I dove headfirst into life as a college student. I vividly recall a Midnight Run event on a rainy night during the first week of school, when I slipped and fell in the Brickyard—the first (but certainly not the last) time that I would slip on NC State’s infamous bricks. An unknown student running past helped me up, with a cheerful Welcome to State!

Before NC State, I spent my childhood in the small town of Ogden, New York, near the village of Spencerport on the Erie Canal. My younger brother and I spent countless afternoons and evenings tumbling in the grass and scrambling up the enormous Bradford pear tree in our front yard. Summer days ended in happy exhaustion as my head hit the pillow to the sound of crickets chirping outside my window. I never understood why my parents complained about the long winters—what was not to like about mounds of snow, with their endless possibilities? My kindergarten friends and I grew up together through years of snowball fights, sledding, school plays, soccer practice, and sleepovers.

My family has had a profound impact on who I am. My father grew up with modest means and my mother is an immigrant; both sides of my family were no strangers to hardship. Our family background taught me to take my education seriously; I feel that I have been entrusted with building on the sacrifices of previous generations. Above all, the importance of kindness, conscientiousness, hard work, and persistence were instilled in me from a young age.

My parents filled our home with books. As my dad put it, my brother and I were supposed to just bump into them. Perhaps one of my fondest memories is learning to read with my dad on the living room couch, sounding out a chapter at a time of Nancy Drew and the Mystery at the Ski Jump. As I grew, so did my ravenous hunger for reading; trips to the library couldn’t come fast enough. Inspired by C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and many others, the idea of one day being an author hovered among my distant, long-term dreams. Suffice it to say, this book is not quite how I had pictured my authorial debut.

We moved to North Carolina when I completed seventh grade. The adaptability that came with growing up in a multi-cultural household helped me with the transition, although it didn’t quite ease the pain of leaving behind my lifelong friends. Eighth grade was a tough period of adjustment, but by the end of the school year, I had new friends and was ready for high school. Those years were filled with hard work, punctuated with good times and happy memories. As nerdy as it may sound, I love learning. Mathematics, chemistry, and physics challenge me to think about the world in new, exciting ways; literature, history, and philosophy prompt me to ponder the nature of humanity and our connections with each other. I thrive on overcoming challenges through hard work and determination.

Until recently, only close family and a few friends knew about another fundamental part of my life—the hearing loss I have had since early childhood. This is a deeply personal issue with which I have wrestled for a long time; I did not like to disclose it unless absolutely necessary. Of course, the writing of this book is anything but typical, and my hearing loss will play a role in my story as it unfolds. As I grew up, I struggled to handle deep-seated feelings of shame. I loathed being different from my peers and was desperate to hide what I then perceived as a defect. I was also terrified that, like my beloved grandmother, I might gradually lose more of my hearing, or, like Beethoven, I would eventually be unable to hear the music I loved to play on the piano. For a long time, I kept my hearing loss a secret from classmates and teachers, and I paid the price; I landed myself in a few social scrapes when I didn’t hear important information and responded in ways that led to hurt or confusion. It was only in high school that I began to come to terms with my hearing loss and open up to a select few. In many ways, I am still on that journey.

I have always wanted to pursue my education without assistance for my hearing loss. When I was first diagnosed, my doctor told my parents that I had developed lip-reading skills, even as a young child. Over time, I learned to compensate by carefully choosing seating or standing positions that would optimize my ability to hear and lip-read. When I started college, I did not register with the Disability Services Office (DSO) at NC State or notify my professors of my disability, even though I could have received special accommodations like early course registration or priority seating. Of course, this is a personal decision, and I respect the choices that others with disabilities make for themselves; I know what it feels like to lose that choice. Against my wishes, I later had to register my hearing loss at the NC State DSO. You will understand why as my story unfolds.

It was easy to immerse myself in college life from the start. I spent many hours during my freshman year with new-found friends—we studied, complained about studying, and more than once found our way to Cook Out for late-night fries. I joined a professional engineering sorority and found camaraderie in other hard-working, motivated engineers-in-the-making like me. Our organization blended professional development with social activities—we followed Robert’s Rules of Order and wore business attire to meetings, but we also arm-knitted scarves together, cleaned up trash at a historic cemetery, grabbed brunch on a Saturday morning, and barricaded ourselves in study rooms at Hunt Library.

My professors were warm and welcoming, challenging yet fair. Their passion for teaching and for their fields of study was invigorating. During my first semester, my calculus professor, Dr. John Griggs, invited the class to dinner at his home. He and his wife wanted his students—especially those from out-of-state—to enjoy a home-cooked meal. I was touched by their hospitality and generosity. We had a wonderful evening eating chili, playing pool, and doting on their golden retriever. My organic chemistry professor, Dr. Kay Sandberg, poured her heart and soul into each lecture; I’ll never forget her favorite refrain, Count your carbons! Leslie Kurtz, another excellent math professor, made even the most unpleasant series and sequences of Calculus II a little more bearable with her sense of humor.

These glimpses of humanity made NC State so special to me. I was delighted to be at a big school with a small-school, personal feel. My dad, pleased to hear of my positive experiences, remarked that my stories were in sharp contrast to his days in engineering school. He recalled his professors being impersonal, demanding and, to put it politely, not terribly pleasant—he’d worried that I might encounter the same. I laughed as I reminded him that cars now had seatbelts; times had changed.

Energized by a great end to my freshman year, I applied and was accepted to become a University tutor in mathematics and chemistry. Preparation for my new job at NC State included a required summer-long training class focused on the ins and outs of tutoring college students. The class discussed the range of potential learning styles among students and how to adapt our tutoring to best meet a student’s individual learning needs. Most importantly, we were taught never to give our students the answer. We learned to direct students to the textbook, class notes, and any other authorized resources, and to model strategies that they could use to find the answers for themselves.

The end of freshman year marked another milestone—my formal application for entry into the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE). At NC State, freshmen are admitted to the First Year Engineering program and take a common curriculum of core prerequisite classes—math, chemistry, and physics—before applying to their desired engineering department. Determined to excel, I earned a 4.0 GPA and applied for admission to the competitive CBE program. But engineering school could get pretty technical, and I enjoyed the humanities, so I also applied for a double major in Spanish Language and Literature. Imagine my delight, early in the summer of 2016, when I opened the emails that read Approved for both Chemical Engineering and Spanish—a fantastic end to freshman year.

On August 18, 2016, I ventured excitedly into the Praxair Lecture Hall for my long-anticipated first real engineering class—Chemical Process Principles (CHE 205), or Chem-E 205 in the vernacular of the NC State chemical engineering student. As we talked about process flow diagrams and mass and energy balances, I couldn’t help but feel that I was in exactly the right place. I was doing work that I loved, at an amazing school, with a great group of friends—what more could I possibly want?

My second year at NC State was off to a promising start. I had a full course load between chemical engineering and Spanish classes. I worked about ten hours per week in a chemical engineering research lab, and a little over six hours per week as a University tutor. I had been elected to chair a committee for my professional engineering sorority. I was both excited and apprehensive about the upcoming year, but I thrived on being busy and challenged.

I was also accepted to the Benjamin Franklin Scholars Program for students who double-major in the Humanities and Engineering. Program director Dr. Ross Bassett and his wife, Debbie, invited all the Benjamin Franklin scholars to their home for brunch at the start of the semester; yet another instance of the personal touches that seemed to abound at NC State.

Then, about a month after the start of my second year, I received an email. It was different from the one that welcomed me into the CBE department. Little did I know that this seemingly-innocuous email would change my life; that it would, bit by bit, drag me into a dark underworld, just beneath the surface of the idyllic college experience, and nearly swallow me whole.

2. THE STRANGE EMAIL

It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.

—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

JUST A GARDEN-VARIETY VIRUS, the doctor at Student Health pronounced, handing me a printout of my appointment confirmation, her prescription for some much-needed rest and relaxation scribbled at the bottom. I grasped the paper like a lifeline—it would excuse my class absences—and trudged back to my dorm to collapse in bed. It was early September, and I had already fallen victim to the inevitable cold that lurks about the dorms at that time of year. Garden-variety or not, I felt exhausted. I was missing classes and struggling to keep up with the packed schedule—studying, homework, tutoring, research, and sorority events—that I had energetically embraced while healthy. Now, I just wanted to curl up and sleep.

Of course, the first tests of the semester were scheduled during that same week. I slept through my classes on Monday and Tuesday and took exams on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Miraculously, I passed them all, but missing so many classes came at a cost. I had to catch up on a lot of course material, not to mention lab work and tutoring appointments. At the end of the week, I gratefully accepted my parents’ offer of homemade chicken soup; a weekend of rest at home was just what I needed. I had no idea that it was to about be my last truly peaceful weekend for years.

I was just about to turn in for the night on Sunday, September 18, 2016, when I saw an email from Dr. Chase Beisel, my CHE 205 professor. I had emailed him earlier in the week with my doctor’s note to excuse my absence from class; he had promptly replied that he was sorry I was sick and hoped that I would feel better soon. But this email was different. Dr. Beisel wrote that he had some questions about Homework 3—an assignment I had submitted on September 8th, well before my illness—and wanted to meet with me outside of class to discuss it.

I wondered what questions Dr. Beisel might have about my homework. I had turned it in on time, but I hadn’t picked up the graded homework because I had missed class that week. My brain was still foggy from my cold, I was exhausted, and it was Sunday night. I decided to reply the next morning.

In my response to Dr. Beisel’s email, I wrote that I was still sick and attempting to recuperate at my parents’ home. Since I hadn’t yet picked up the graded homework, I explained, I did not know what questions he might have. I also told him that I was struggling to make up a mountain of missed work and asked if he could please let me know his questions; if I could answer them via email, it would save me the time it would take to meet with him.

I did not know Dr. Beisel, and had no previous experience with him, other than sitting in his CHE 205 class for a few lectures since the start of the semester. From his faculty webpage, I knew that he researched CRISPR, a novel gene-editing technique. In his autobiography, which he shared with the class at the beginning of the semester, he told us in considerable detail about his young family, hobbies, and religious affiliation.

CHE 205 is a large gateway class for chemical engineering. There were 189 students in the Fall 2016 semester, in four sections co-taught by four professors. The lead professor, Dr. Lisa Bullard, a Teaching Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the CBE department, had taught and coordinated CHE 205 for many years. My professor, Dr. Beisel, taught one section; the remaining two sections were taught by Dr. Lilian Hsiao and Dr. Milad Abolhasani, brand-new assistant professors who had just arrived at NC State.

Dr. Lisa Bullard was, to many, the face of chemical engineering at NC State. Well-known by virtue of her role as the Director of Undergraduate Studies, and generally regarded by students as a motherly figure, I had first met her four years earlier, when my parents and I visited the NC State Engineering Open House during my junior year of high school. Dr. Bullard took the time to talk to us in-depth about the chemical engineering program. She mailed a detailed information packet to me soon afterwards, and replied promptly and enthusiastically to my follow-up questions via email. She even arranged for me to spend a day shadowing a student in the CBE program some months later. My parents and I were thoroughly impressed by her.

The following year, I applied to NC State, and, in the Spring of 2015, I was selected as a finalist for the Park Scholarship, the highly-competitive full-ride to NC State. The rigorous interview-filled weekend included a banquet dinner for finalists and their parents in a beautiful ballroom in the newly-renovated Talley Student Union. To my surprise, Dr. Bullard remembered me and my parents by name when we unexpectedly met her at the dinner. She even emailed me later to say that she was glad to meet us, and that the CBE department would be excited to have me as a student at NC State.²

While I wasn’t eventually selected to be a Park Scholar, I was awarded the Park Finalist Scholarship to NC State. Given the interest Dr. Bullard had shown in me, I sent her a quick email to let her know that I had accepted admission to NC State. She replied, just two minutes later, Catherine, that totally makes my day!³ I was excited to be personally welcomed by Dr. Bullard; her kindness reassured me that NC State was the right place for me.

Dr. Bullard seemed to run a well-coordinated CHE 205 class. All four sections had the same curriculum and the same homework each week, and took the same exams. In addition to the four professors, there were three undergraduate graders, who graded homework, and three graduate teaching assistants (TAs), who led the problem sessions (class meetings outside of lecture to help students work through example problems).

The semester started off with the usual review of the syllabus and course expectations, but I noticed that CHE 205 had some idiosyncrasies that I had not yet encountered at NC State. My previous professors had emphasized academic integrity expectations in their classes, but CHE 205 took a lengthy and, it seemed, unusual approach compared to other courses. On the first day of class, Dr. Beisel passed out a paper clip to each student. He told us that the paper clip represented our integrity—once we bent it, it would never quite be the same. He asked us to attach the paper clip to our notebooks so that it would be visible while we did our homework, to remind us to stay true to our integrity.

We were also required to watch Dr. Bullard’s academic integrity videos, a series of vignettes in which student actors role-played several examples of cheating, such as fishing discarded homework out of the trash, photocopying another student’s homework, and peering at the solution key when the TA stepped out of the room. Cheating, or not?⁴ Dr. Bullard’s narration prompted the viewer at the end of the scenarios. I had never before watched a series of videos dedicated to cheating. The videos themselves were a bit cheesy, and the examples rather obvious. I remember thinking to myself, Wouldn’t any college student recognize these scenarios as cheating?

One of the videos portrayed Examples of Appropriate Assistance. Dr. Bullard narrated while actors demonstrated that students were permitted to work together on individual assignments, as long as their work fell within the guidelines for authorized aid. The videos defined authorized aid as discussing the interpretation of the problem statement, sharing ideas or approaches for solving the problem, and explaining concepts involved in the problem⁵ (this definition also appeared in the class syllabus). At the end of this video, Dr. Bullard stated, All of these are acceptable, and, in fact, they’re desirable ways to help your classmates.⁶

After watching the series of videos, we were required to read the NC State Code of Student Conduct and complete an Academic Integrity Reflection Assignment, which presented hypothetical cheating scenarios and asked us to identify which parts of the Code had been violated. Additionally, we had to answer several free-response questions about the impact of cheating on ourselves, other students, and the University, as well as identify steps that we, personally, could take to avoid cheating in this class. I read the Code, completed the Reflection Assignment, and felt that I had a reasonable understanding of the rules and expectations of the class and how to apply them.

Another unusual feature of CHE 205 was the big tented notecard that all students were required to place on their desks, with their names written large enough for the professor to read from the front of the room. The name-and-face pairing of the notecards extended to the homework assignments, too. Every homework assignment had to be submitted with a cover sheet, which contained the student’s photograph and signature beneath the handwritten Pack Pledge: I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this test or assignment.⁷ In my previous classes, professors had only asked us to sign the Pack Pledge for exams or papers, not for everyday homework, and we were not asked to write it out by hand.

I was intrigued by what seemed to be an intense focus on academic integrity. It seemed a bit excessive—perhaps even obsessive—but I did agree that academic integrity was important. I knew I wasn’t going to cheat anyway, so I shrugged off my curiosity by dismissing these measures as quirks of CHE 205.

We were also required to provide an "Autobiography." The instructors apparently wanted to know our personal information such as hometown, childhood experiences, and family members. In addition, we had to provide a one-page response to questions like, What are the brick walls you’ve faced in your life? How did you get over them? Who has been a mentor to you? What lessons have they taught you?⁸ It struck me as a little invasive for a chemical engineering class, but my professors also shared their autobiographies with us. Becoming part of a community sometimes meant giving up privacy—right? Perhaps the process would help build camaraderie with my classmates.

There was one other thing. Because of the rule you’re about to read, I have to paraphrase this part of the course syllabus:

It is forbidden to provide any course material to anyone not currently enrolled in CHE 205, including news or any other organizations, or to disseminate the material via the Internet.

News organizations? This was an engineering class on mass and energy balances—interesting and useful to me, yes, but probably not to many others. To my knowledge, this was not a clandestine space program with a super-secret payload. What would we learn in this course that couldn’t be shared with news organizations and the like?

I felt confused, since I had purchased the textbook on the recommendation of Dr. Bullard, who had recently been added as its third author.⁹ She had emailed all CHE 205 students in August 2016, promoting its enduring value as a resource and claiming that owning the hardcover version would serve us well in future engineering classes and in our careers. It was the more expensive option, but I reasoned that I would be making an investment in my future, as Dr. Bullard had encouraged. Except the course syllabus now explicitly prohibited sharing any course material with anyone not currently enrolled in the class. If I took that at its most literal meaning, would I not be allowed to consult my own textbook, notes, or homework from CHE 205 after I had completed the class and was no longer enrolled? I laughed off this train of thought; that would be nonsensical. I decided that the statement must be part of some routine template for course syllabi, or something of the sort, even though I could not recall reading it in any other course syllabus. CHE 205 certainly had plenty of oddities, but I didn’t have the time or the inclination to ponder them too deeply.

In class, I chose to sit near the front of the room, in order to better hear and lip-read Dr. Beisel, as this would help me compensate for my hearing loss. Another student, to whom I will refer as Student Z, also happened to be in my professional engineering sorority and sat next to me. Throughout each lecture, Dr. Beisel posed questions to the class and allowed and encouraged us to collaborate with students around us to figure out the answers. Naturally, I worked with Student Z. We sometimes inadvertently wore identical sorority apparel on the same day, and we had our large, tented name cards prominently displayed in front of us, so we were easily identifiable. I suppose we must have stood out. But I had not yet learned to worry about such things.

Getting back to Dr. Beisel’s email, I wondered what he wanted to know about my homework. His brief response to my questions stated only that we would need to meet in person to discuss Homework 3; he did not give me any information about his specific questions, as I had requested. I found that unsettling, since my interactions with faculty were typically pleasant and straightforward. What questions could he have for me that he couldn’t discuss via email? Had I missed something important he said in lecture, and made huge or silly mistakes on my homework? His vagueness and secrecy raised red flags for me. As a young female student, I felt uneasy about meeting alone with an unfamiliar male professor for unknown reasons. Since I was still at home, recuperating, I shared my discomfort about Dr. Beisel’s emails with my parents. They agreed that the emails seemed mysterious, and that I should trust my instincts if something seemed amiss.

Though the weekend had been a much-needed respite, I was frantically trying to catch up with a backlog of missed lectures and homework. With little time to focus on my uneasiness about this new issue, I emailed Dr. Beisel that I would let him know when I returned to campus so we could set up a time to meet. A few days later, I scheduled my meeting with Dr. Beisel for September 27, 2016.

Cut to the Chase

September 23, 2016. Hoping I was over the worst of my cold, I was back on campus, single-mindedly focused on catching up on missed work. That sense of purpose was shattered when I got a phone call from Student Z, who often sat next to me in Dr. Beisel’s class. I was alarmed to hear her crying. Between tears, she said that Dr. Beisel had asked her to meet him in his office. He hadn’t told her much about the meeting beforehand—just that he had some questions about her homework. To her surprise, he had confronted her with copies of her Homework 3 and my Homework 3 and asked her to explain why they were so similar.

I struggled to grasp the implications. It couldn’t be a coincidence; this must be why Dr. Beisel wanted to meet with me, too. Was this much more serious than I had thought? I racked my brains for reasons why Dr. Beisel might think Student Z’s homework and mine were so similar. I recalled that Student Z and I had talked briefly about one subpart of one of the five questions on Homework 3—but that was over two weeks ago, before I was sick. She had asked a question about something she found confusing, and I had pointed her in the right direction, following the authorized aid guidelines for the class and the University tutor training mantra I had heard so often over the summer: Never give the answer. It had been an insignificant event. Nonetheless, a chill went down my spine. What was Dr. Beisel implying?

My sense of foreboding deepened as Student Z kept talking. She said she had described to Dr. Beisel the extent of our brief discussion of Question 3 (of Homework 3), explained that it fell within the guidelines of authorized aid, and said that we had not discussed any other problems. According to Student Z, Dr. Beisel seemed unwilling to accept her explanation, stating, This doesn’t clear up anything. He kept pressing her to explain, as if her answer was not the one that he wanted to hear. Student Z’s voice shook as she told me that Dr. Beisel’s repeated demands for a different explanation had rattled her greatly. She had told him the truth, and she had no other account to give. She couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t accept her answer and was afraid of what he was implying. Feeling a surge of panic, she had asked him for a break just to breathe. Dr. Beisel had dismissed her, but not before issuing a very specific warning—he told Student Z that she must not talk to me about their meeting.

I felt sick as I pictured the scene in his office: A powerful professor trying to pressure a distressed student into giving the explanation he wanted. I couldn’t understand why Dr. Beisel would refuse to accept Student Z’s account or give her the benefit of the doubt. It was as if he had already decided she was guilty of something, and was looking only to confirm his predetermined belief.

It was quite disturbing to learn that Dr. Beisel told Student Z not to talk to me about their meeting. I felt certain that our upcoming meeting would involve whatever unnamed offense he thought Student Z and I had apparently committed. I feared he would try to surprise and intimidate me, as well. Picturing myself in the same scene unnerved me.

My experiences with NC State faculty since high school had been consistently positive. I had worked closely with two CBE faculty members for over three years. What Student Z had described was a complete departure from everything I knew about NC State. But it meshed with the unease I’d felt when I received Dr. Beisel’s cryptic email, and with his refusal to provide more information about his questions before meeting with me.

My meeting with Dr. Beisel was three days away. Swamped with work and still recovering from my cold, this added stress was the last thing I needed on my plate. I knew that Student Z and I had done nothing wrong, but I didn’t know if I would be any more successful in explaining that to Dr. Beisel.

What Really Happened

Let’s return to the night of September 7, 2016. Student Z asked me for help. I provided her with authorized aid—as defined and encouraged in the CHE 205 course syllabus and in Dr. Bullard’s academic integrity videos—on a single sub-part of a single question on a single homework assignment.

Neither of us had any incentive to break the course rules. There were ten homework sets given throughout the semester, each worth 1% of the final course grade and containing about ten questions total. This meant that each question was worth 0.1% of the final course grade, and each sub-part even less. The question at issue was worth about 0.03% of Student Z’s final course grade, and I had nothing to gain, since I was helping her. It would have been easier for Student Z to leave the question blank than to do the extra work of asking me for help. But Student Z wanted to learn, and the trained University tutor in me naturally wanted to help. With a reasonable understanding of the authorized aid guidelines, I pointed her in the right direction.

Thinking back, it was a typical week in my life as a sophomore engineering student. I had started working on CHE 205 Homework 3 about a week before it was due. Question 3 had three sub-parts: 3a, 3b, and 3c. I found Question 3b a bit confusing and decided that I needed some help to figure it out. Rather than consult with other students, I decided to take the bus to Centennial Campus to attend Dr. Bullard’s office hours. I checked my schedule and saw that I could fit in the one-hour round trip the next morning, after my Spanish class on Main Campus.

On Wednesday, September 7, 2016, I traveled to Centennial Campus exclusively to seek Dr. Bullard’s help on Question 3b on Homework 3. I arrived to find several people queued up outside her door; a pair of female students seemed to be discussing the CHE 205 homework. As I waited for my turn, I chatted with another student in line, whom I will call Student B. He mentioned that he was also struggling with Question 3b.

Dr. Bullard emerged from her office and remarked, glancing at the two female students, that she was pleased to see students working to help each other on the homework. To save time, Student B and I asked Dr. Bullard if we could come into her office together, since we were both struggling with Question 3b. She agreed as she smiled and said something to the effect of, Oh, everybody’s having trouble with this one! I felt better that other students had also had found it challenging; I’d been worried that I had missed important information in class due to my hearing loss. Question 3b asked about an integral balance, a term I didn’t recall hearing in class. I had found it in the textbook, but didn’t really understand the concept.

Dr. Bullard proceeded to her white board. With her back to us, she drew a diagram and an arrow on the board, and then gave us guidance on how to set up the equations to solve the problem. While she drew, Dr. Bullard verbally clarified the meaning of the term integral balance, which apparently everybody had been confused about. She then explained that once we set up the integral balance correctly, the calculations that followed for Question 3a and Question 3b would be similar. It was starting to make sense now.

I couldn’t see Dr. Bullard’s face or lip-read her as she wrote on her white board with her back to me, so I was concerned about missing information. But I didn’t want to interrupt her or disclose my hearing loss in front of Student B, so I did my best to scribble down as much information as I could. Since there were other students still waiting for Dr. Bullard, I didn’t want to waste time.

Dr. Bullard finished explaining the problem setup. I realized that, from that point on, I simply needed to apply middle-school algebra to complete the problem. The calculations would flow logically and simultaneously in two columns beneath the column headings that Dr. Bullard had provided. I left office hours feeling glad—Dr. Bullard was so kind and helpful, as always.

Later that evening, I saw Student Z at a professional engineering sorority event. As it was wrapping up, a few of us decided to go out for ice cream. Student Z gave me a ride back to my dorm; on the drive back, we spontaneously decided to study together for the rest of the evening. Since we lived at different ends of the campus, this was the first and only time that Student Z and I had ever studied or worked near each other outside of class.

Study together is a bit of a misnomer. Student Z and I did not intend to work together on common homework; rather, we decided to work near each other, on separate assignments for different classes, simply for companionship and motivation. Many college students commonly study in this manner, and I often did so with my roommate and other dorm mates.

We went to the Honors Village Commons Room, adjacent to my dorm, so that we had ample space to spread out our work on the large tables. Students from the Honors Village and nearby dorms often study in this room, which is equipped with security camera surveillance.

At some point in the evening, Student Z mentioned that she was having trouble with Question 3 on CHE 205 Homework 3. She said she had been working on it for a while but couldn’t figure it out. I inferred that she was talking about Question 3b, since I had also been stumped by it, and Dr. Bullard’s remark at office hours indicated that many students were having difficulty with it. I told Student Z that I had also struggled with Question 3b, but that I had gone to office hours with Dr. Bullard, and she had helped me understand it.

The course’s unusual emphasis on academic integrity was fresh in my mind. I had watched the academic integrity videos only a few weeks before and had noted that I should strictly follow the course guidelines for authorized aid, which includes discussing the interpretation of the problem statement, sharing ideas or approaches for solving the problem, and explaining concepts involved in the problem.¹⁰

Consistent with my training as a University tutor, and the course guidelines, I pulled out my CHE 205 textbook and my notes from Dr. Bullard’s office hours. Student Z expressed confusion about the term integral balance, the same concept that had confused me. I used what I had learned from Dr. Bullard during office hours to explain the concept of an integral balance to Student Z as it related to this problem. I’m certain Dr. Bullard explained it better and more thoroughly than I did. Unlike Dr. Bullard, I did not draw any diagrams or arrows for Student Z—these were fairly standard procedure, so I knew she would be able to do those on her own. Once that was clarified, Student Z seemed like she understood how to tackle the problem. Our discussion took only a few minutes—less time than Dr. Bullard had spent discussing the problem with me. After that, we did not discuss the problem any further, nor did we discuss any other problem; we simply continued working separately.

That’s it. That’s what happened. Our interaction was very similar to those shown in the CHE 205 video titled Examples of Appropriate Assistance. As Dr. Bullard said in the video, "All of these are acceptable, and in fact, they’re desirable ways to help your classmates" [emphasis added].

Student Z said she had told Dr. Beisel about the nature and extent of our discussion. Why wouldn’t he accept her explanation? I searched the crevices of my memory for possibilities. Could it be that I got something wrong because I could not lip-read Dr. Bullard when she was writing on the board with her back to me? Did I convey to Student Z something so outlandishly mistaken that it stood out to Dr. Beisel? But what I had learned during Dr. Bullard’s office hours made sense and had allowed me to solve the problem with simple algebra. So that couldn’t be it. I was at a loss.

Confused and shaken, I called my parents to discuss Student Z’s call. They reassured me that this was likely just a misunderstanding. After all, I was a trained University tutor; I knew what crossed the line when it came to helping other students, and I had followed my training and the course rules diligently.

Still, I could tell that it was unsettling to them. They commented on the obvious power differential between Dr. Beisel and Student Z, which would have been greatly compounded when Dr. Beisel abruptly demanded an explanation from Student Z with no forewarning. My parents remarked that it was telling that Student Z stood firm in her statement that she and I had followed the authorized aid guidelines, despite being caught off-guard and placed under such pressure. It might have been easier for her to confess to an offense in such a high-stress situation, when she felt panicked. I could see that even innocent students might admit to something they didn’t do just to end the interrogation.

Worried that Dr. Beisel might try to apply similar pressure on me, I asked my parents for suggestions. I explained that Dr. Beisel’s accusations were apparently based on similarities between Student Z’s homework and mine. My dad—the calm, collected engineer—cut to the heart of the matter immediately.

Did he compare your homework with the homework of the rest of the class? he asked.

I listened with growing relief as my dad clarified why this was so important. It would be invalid, he explained, to conclude that two papers in a class were similar without first comparing them to the papers of all the 189 students in the class, to determine whether or not our papers were more similar than those of the rest of the class.

My dad said this was a basic statistical concept that he had learned in engineering school. It was called Bayes’ Theorem, also known as the base rate fallacy or base rate neglect. He explained that the concept is common knowledge in the field, and that Dr. Beisel most likely knew it well. My mom, whose background is in the behavioral sciences, agreed. Although I lack my parents’ and Dr. Beisel’s depth of training, I quickly grasped the importance of the base rate fallacy. Dr. Beisel’s faulty logic was just that—faulty—because he could probably pick any two papers and claim that they were similar if he didn’t conduct a base-rate comparison.

I was nervous about meeting with Dr. Beisel in just a few days. It seemed likely that he would try to pressure me using the same confrontation tactics he had used on Student Z. I wanted to bring up the base rate fallacy, but wasn’t sure I knew enough about it to discuss it with an intelligent and accomplished professor. I also didn’t want to offend him by reminding him of such a basic concept. My hearing loss added another dimension to my worries—Dr. Beisel had intimidated and overwhelmed Student Z, and I could see myself missing a lot of information under such duress. I might even say something incorrectly if I misunderstood the situation. I had asked Dr. Beisel to tell me why he wanted to meet with me, and he had ignored my request. Was I being set up to walk into a trap?

Eventually, my parents and I agreed that it might be best for them to accompany me to my meeting with Dr. Beisel. The four of us could discuss the situation calmly and resolve any misunderstandings. Dr. Beisel and my dad could discuss statistics, engineer-to-engineer, if I needed any help. I’m not one to hide behind my parents, and I had no intention of starting then. But unlike Student Z, I thought I had some idea of what the meeting would be about, and I would come in prepared.

I began jotting down questions I would ask Dr. Beisel if he did, in fact, accuse me of some as-yet-unnamed offense. For instance, I wanted to ask why he thought our homework was similar, how he had selected our two papers out of the rest of class, and if he had conducted base-rate comparisons to justify his claim. I resolved to be calm and level-headed and to ask factual and science-based questions. I reviewed Dr. Bullard’s Examples of Appropriate Assistance video and the CHE 205 academic integrity guidelines once again to confirm that I had not missed anything. I was confident that my actions in discussing Question 3 with Student Z were well within the guidelines of authorized aid provided in the videos and the syllabus. I was glad my parents would be there, but hoped I wouldn’t really need their involvement.

As it turned out, taking my parents to that meeting was undoubtedly the right call.

3. MEETING WITH DR. BEISEL

Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.¹¹

—C.S. Lewis

THE TRUTH WAS ON MY SIDE. I had followed the authorized aid guidelines, and I would explain the details of my brief interaction with Student Z to Dr. Beisel. With my questions in hand, I was a little nervous, but I felt prepared to handle the surprise and pressure tactics he had used on Student Z.

It was September 27, 2016 at 9:30 a.m. When Dr. Beisel opened his office door, he seemed surprised to see that I was not alone. I explained that I had brought my parents to the meeting due to my hearing loss, since I sometimes have difficulty following dialogue in unknown situations.

There was an awkward silence. Dr. Beisel hesitantly let us in and asked us to sit at the table in his office. My parents and I waited respectfully for him to start the meeting, but Dr. Beisel seemed nonplussed; his hands trembled a little. I was puzzled. He seemed so flustered by my parents’ presence, even though I had explained why I had brought them. This did not strike me as the demeanor of a professor who wanted to simply resolve a few questions. Why wasn’t he saying anything?

I finally broke the silence and asked about the purpose of our meeting. Dr. Beisel stumbled for words, saying that he just wanted to get a general idea of how Student Z and I did our homework together. He seemed to assume that we regularly did homework together. We did not, so I wondered where he would get that idea. Later, it struck me that he had probably noticed us working together on the in-class questions. We sat together, towards the front, so he could easily match our faces and names from the tented note cards we were required to place on our desks. He might have read my autobiography—a very unusual course requirement that I had brushed off as a quirk of the class—in which I stated my sorority affiliation, and he might have noticed that Student and Z and I sometimes wore the same sorority apparel.

Dr. Beisel asked me if I had brought my Homework 3 to the meeting; I replied that I had not. He claimed that, in his email, he had asked me to bring it with me (I later re-read his email of September 18, 2016, and verified that he did not). Dr. Beisel then went to his desk and brought back two black and white photocopies of Homework 3, which appeared to be mine and Student Z’s. If he already had copies of our homework, why did he ask if I had brought mine?

Dr. Beisel then placed the black and white photocopies on the table in front of me and my parents and made the very serious accusation that copying—cheating—had occurred. My breath caught in my throat; there was the ugly word that had been hovering in the background of this whole affair. I’d feared Dr. Beisel might accuse me of cheating, but I hadn’t quite believed it until the word came out of his mouth.

My parents and I looked at the photocopies that Dr. Beisel had placed in front of us. Immediately, we saw Student Z’s name, photograph, and grade. You couldn’t miss them; they were prominently displayed on the front of her homework. Student Z later confirmed that she had not given permission for her homework, with its identifying information, to be shown to others, especially not in the context of a cheating allegation. Moreover, during Student Z’s meeting with Dr. Beisel, he had shown her my homework and my name, photograph, and grade were visible to her. I had not given Dr. Beisel permission for my Homework 3 to be photocopied, or for my personal information to be shared with anyone.

This may seem like a side note, but it isn’t. As my story unfolds, you will see just how important it is, and just how disturbing its ramifications are. In disclosing Student Z’s name, grade, and photograph to me and my parents—and exposing my own to her—Dr. Beisel had likely violated a federal law, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).¹² University faculty and staff are prohibited from disclosing students’ personally identifiable information (PII) to others, unless specifically given permission by the student. As I will discuss in later chapters, there are some rights you do not just sign away when you become a college student—rights that are so fundamental that they cut to the very heart of ethical behavior.

My parents, who are calm and courteous by nature, expressed concern that Student Z and potentially others had likewise seen my personal information, thereby violating my confidentiality and privacy under the cloud of this serious allegation. Dr. Beisel sighed loudly, rolled his eyes, and looked annoyed that my parents had voiced this concern. Surely, he knew that in the age of technology and social media, the damage to my reputation from a cheating allegation could be lifelong.

I asked Dr. Beisel who else had seen these copies of my homework. He paused for a while.

Just me and the TAs, he said quietly.

I waited for Dr. Beisel to recover his voice and lead the meeting that he had requested, but another awkward silence yawned between us. Yet again, I had to speak first. I asked him on which question or questions, specifically, he was alleging that cheating had occurred.

Question 3, he replied.

To clarify the scope of our discussion, I asked if he believed that cheating took place on any other problems on this homework.

No, just Question 3, he responded.

Which part of Question 3? I persisted, since there were three parts to Question 3: a, b, and c.

All of it, Dr. Beisel answered, waving his hands. I was struck by how vague and unprepared he seemed, given that he had insisted on meeting with me. When Dr. Beisel made no further comment, I questioned what, specifically, made him believe that cheating had occurred. Again, he waved his hands over the paper without verbalizing any particulars. The situation was becoming surreal. I needed to know what he thought I had done. I asked again. He finally said that the columns, the arrows, and the formatting were similar.

I was taken aback. The columns, arrows, and formatting style I had used on Question 3 are common ways in which math and engineering problems are solved. They were present in the CHE 205 course textbook and coursepack (a spiral-bound packet of fill-in-the-blank notes that students were required to purchase and use in CHE 205). Moreover, we were explicitly taught—by Dr. Beisel himself, no less—how to draw, format, and label flowcharts in the first few CHE 205 classes.

I politely explained to Dr. Beisel that I had simply followed the rules for formatting that he had taught in class, and that it was highly likely that Student Z, as well as many other students in CHE 205, had done the same. I said that I would expect correctly-solved engineering problems to look largely similar, because the textbook, coursepack, notes, and instructors specifically showed us how to structure our answers with boxes, arrows, and specific labels. We were beginners in the field and relied on what we had been taught. I surmised that the homework of all the 189 students in our class might look quite similar to Student Z’s and mine, because they would presumably complete it in the manner taught by our instructors, and because authorized collaboration between students was allowed and specifically encouraged.

I waited for Dr. Beisel to reply, but he did not. He didn’t refute my statements. Dr. Beisel was probably a gifted academic, so I cannot imagine I told him anything new that day. If he objected to my analysis in any way, he could have easily crushed me in a debate. But he simply sat there, silent.

The Base Rate Question

I then asked Dr. Beisel the obvious question: Had he compared Student Z’s and my homework to the homework of the rest of the class of 189 students, to determine if our answers for Question 3 were so uniquely similar as to merit an accusation of cheating?

No, he replied.

The meeting had moved well past the surreal. If Dr. Beisel had not seen the answers of the rest of the class, how could he know that my homework was more similar to Student Z’s homework than to any other student’s homework? How could he claim our homework indicated cheating in the first place? Furthermore, what standard or rule said that similarity was equivalent to cheating? What was that threshold, and how was it measured?

It had become clear that if I wanted answers—or even a dialogue—I would have to keep talking. So, I described to Dr. Beisel exactly what had occurred the night that Student Z and I had briefly discussed a single sub-part of Question 3 on Homework 3. She had asked me for help and I had followed the authorized aid guidelines to help her understand the best way to approach the problem, as permitted by the course rules. I clarified that this was the first time that Student Z and I had done homework near each other. We had not planned to work together on any homework, and apart from that short exchange, we had worked separately on different assignments. I did not know that she was going to ask me about Question 3. I told Dr. Beisel that I had received help for Question 3b from Dr. Bullard during office hours, and that nothing I shared with Student Z went beyond the CHE 205 definition of authorized aid.

More silence. Grasping for any clarification, I asked Dr. Beisel if Student B (who had attended Dr. Bullard’s office hours with me on September 7th), was also being questioned about his answer to Question 3. He had seen and listened to the same explanation from Dr. Bullard as I did on Question 3b. Dr. Beisel said that I did not need to be concerned about Student B.

I brought out a list of relevant quotes with time stamps from Dr. Bullard’s CHE 205 academic integrity videos, which I had re-watched before the meeting to confirm that my interactions with Student Z had indeed fallen within the guidelines. Handing it to Dr. Beisel, I asked him which of the CHE 205 cheating guidelines he believed I had violated. Dr. Beisel took the copy but did not point to a single guideline. He seemed upset.

I was running out of things to say, but I had one more question. Since Dr. Beisel had likely already violated FERPA by showing my un-redacted homework to other NC State students (the TAs and Student Z) without my permission, under the serious allegation of cheating, and since he did not cite any specific evidence or reason why he should keep my homework, I asked him to return all copies of my work to me.

I’m feeling a little cornered, Dr. Beisel replied, looking flustered. My parents and I had remained polite and respectful throughout the meeting; Dr. Beisel had called the meeting and refused to tell me what it was about; I expected that he would have been better prepared for it.

Dr. Beisel asked for the meeting to end, but did not return the black and white photocopy of my homework to me. My parents and I acquiesced and left, feeling far more perplexed than when we’d arrived. We didn’t understand why Dr. Beisel had been so nervous, and why he had claimed to feel cornered. Perhaps it was because he had launched an accusation that he was unable to justify—that much was clear enough. Student Z’s description of her meeting with him flashed into my mind. Perhaps Dr. Beisel had planned to use the same tactics to pressure me into a confession, and was caught off-guard when I arrived prepared to advocate for myself. Perhaps it was because, when he couldn’t abuse the faculty-student power differential with my parents present, he had nothing on which to fall back.

The meeting had answered none of my questions and raised many more. Why was Dr. Beisel accusing me of cheating without providing a shred of evidence to back up his allegations? He had made a very serious charge about cheating on a question that had virtually no impact on our grades. It didn’t make sense. With a PhD in chemical engineering from Caltech, Dr. Beisel should have known Bayes’ Theorem and the base rate fallacy. It was ridiculous—even insulting to him—to suggest otherwise. But I did not recall hearing of it before my father explained it, and Student Z (like most rookie engineering students) had probably never heard of it, either. Had I not known about the base rate fallacy, it would not have even occurred to me to ask Dr. Beisel to defend the logic of his accusation, especially if he had surprised me with the kind of incessant pressure that he had used on Student Z.

Later, as my parents and I discussed the meeting, we started to piece together just how flimsy Dr. Beisel’s allegation really was. It became clear that there was a stack of several factors in CHE 205 which would make it quite natural for innocent similarities to pop up between students’ homework without any cheating taking place:

The Similarities Stack

Most STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) students learn to use a common style of formatting and abbreviations for math and science problems in prerequisite classes, well before they enter CHE 205. It would not be uncommon for STEM students to use arrows or columns in their work.

CHE 205 instructors teach CHE 205 students to use a specific formatting and labeling style, which is reinforced during lecture and problem sessions, as well as in the textbook and coursepack. Specific pages in the textbook and coursepack teach students how to completely label problems. For example, students are instructed to depict reactors or tanks in a chemical process as large boxes; to use arrows to show the flow of chemicals from one box to the next; and to write notations about chemical types, amounts, or percentages above or below the arrows representing those chemicals. Additionally, in each week’s problem session, the graduate TAs reinforce the labeling and formatting conventions taught in the class.

CHE 205 students are allowed and encouraged to work together on individual assignments, within the guidelines of authorized aid; Dr. Bullard calls this collaboration desirable in her videos. The homework of students who use authorized aid guidelines can be expected to share some additional degree of similarity, even when they strictly follow all instructions and act with complete academic integrity.

It seemed absurd that Dr. Beisel was accusing Student Z and me of cheating by saying our homework looked similar. The homework of the rest of the class of 189 students probably looked just as similar! Furthermore, why should similarities on homework indicate cheating?

Something strange seemed to be going on in CHE 205. Dr. Beisel had taught us, the students, what to do; when we followed