Shortcuts come back to bite you in the end!

It's a sad story, and unfortunately all too common.  I heard of a local kid who stole a goat in order to do some "cool" prom proposal and well he was caught, arrested, kicked off the team and supposedly lost his D1 scholarship.

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news...ask-girl-prom/nkRrR/

Were we that dumb folks?

One of my most fav players, catcher, team leader, decided to pull a Sr prank just before our state playoffs several years ago. Sneak into the school with some friends and roll a teachers class room that they all really liked. They all knew that rarely the alarm was set for the school so they put some tape over a door lock and waited for late that night to pull the prank. Well the alarm was set. The police showed up. They were all caught and charged with B/E. He was kicked out of school just a few weeks from graduating. He was not allowed to play the rest of the season. The headlines in the local papers were not kind. It was so embarrassing for the family and the young man. He had to walk on at a D3 instead of the school he had signed with.

It broke my heart for him and his family. I talk to kids all the time about making good decisions and the consequences for bad one's.

This stuff really ticks me off.  We are trying to use sledgehammers to "teach" lessons.  Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying these two examples should be overlooked and not punished.  These kids need to be punished but why are we destroying their futures for one incidence?  Are these serious offenses - absolutely.  Should they be punished?  Without a doubt but to take away opportunities to better himself over one thing is ridiculous.  When I'm at professional developments and teachers start bragging over how challenging their classes are and how many kids fail it I want to punch them in the mouth.  They are doing this teaching thing WRONG.  We are here to increase what kids know, able to do, understand difficult topics and things like that.  You can do that without making them have to do tons of work.  I had a kid transfer to another school and take the same class he had with me.  He said the other school was much tougher in terms of standards and work than in my class.  But he said he learned more under me.  Granted this is one anecdotal example but I truly believe it could be applied widespread.

So what should have happened to this kid who cheated?  Well he should fail the assignment and let the grades fall where they may.  Have him do some community service hours.  The colleges he was accepted to let him still go to their school but put him on probation from day one for a semester.  He has bad grades, gets caught cheating again or whatever then you kick him out.  If this kid has a track record (which doesn't seem like he does) of cheating then yes I agree don't let him in because he has a history of cheating.  But to blackball him right away is stupid - he's still a kid.

As for the kid who stole a goat - once again have him do some sort of community service and not put this on his record.  Colleges put him on probation.  But to kick him off the team was not the right thing to do.  Suspend him a couple of games - fine.  But you're taking a kid who made a dumb decision and removing him from something that provide guidance, structure and hopefully discipline and letting him have more free time.  Kids have too much free time is usually when bad things happen.  Now the powers that be have created this situation.

Yes punish these kids when they screw up but don't cripple them.

I think that is a severe punishment for a lack of judgment.  I'm wondering if the kid that was caught can prove to the administration that cheating is prevalent in that school? 

My sophomore son told me that most of the class cheats in his public high school.  My two other sons said the same thing.  I believe this is common place in most public schools in our area.  

I personally think cheating is wrong but when you have D1 institutions that allow their stud athletes to pass classes they rarely attend what message is this sending to our kids?  

This is also why many universities look at ACT/SAT scores over GPA because they know what is really going on. 

I think there is no doubt that cheating is prevalent among both high school and college students these days.  Plus it's easier to get away with than ever.   I do think the rise in cheating is partly the adult's fault.  There is so much pressure on these kids.  I felt nothing like this sort of pressure when I was their age.  I was a very strong student and played a D1 sport in college and went onto graduate school afterwards.   And I never felt any temptation to cheat.  But it was a different time.   

The pressure shows up not just in the number of students who routinely cheat,  it shows up far more tragically in the number of suicides among kids in high achieving school districts and schools.  Around here one top local high school had like five kids kill themselves in a short time by jumping in front of trains.    That was a few years ago but there were more suicides this year in that same school district.   

So the whole high pressure, get into the most selective colleges, play for the most dominating programs, and get there anyway you can, is way out of whack and we shouldn't lay the blame primarily on the kids, but on those who have made the system be the way it is. 

Still,  I think taking shortcuts is a very bad way to go.  Why does a kid with a 4.x GPA need to cheat?  Even if he's about to take a C, heaven forbid, on some major assignment, even if his grade ends up being a B or even a C,  what's the big deal?    

We need to teach these kids some perspective and stop putting so much darned pressure on them.    

What should happen to cheaters -- especially when you know the ones you catch are the tip of the iceberg -- is a harder issue.   You gotta come down heavy, lest the students just do a cost benefit analysis.   How heavy is heavy enough?  I don't know.  Above my pay grade, I guess. 

Where would you have admin draw the line?  They have a zero tolerance policy because they don't want to be sued by allowing some indiscretions to be okay while others got the full ramifications. If you are arrested you are off any and all extra curricular teams.

What if he was arrested for a violent act?  Non violent?  White collar crime?  Cyber crime?  Could the argument be made that more frequently females got away with these crimes and that males were unfairly persecuted?  Could a case be made for gender bias, race bias, sexual orientation?.....how can the school draw a line other than at square one and say ZERO tolerance?

As for the cheating student...how can the school be certain he really attained his 4.0 on skill and not by cheating?  It calls into question his entire academic career, and students talk....so and so got into Yale even though I know he cheated on every test and the school even caught him, meanwhile I got wait listed for my one B...I'm going to sue that school for being unfair!

The reason why zero tolerance exists is because it's easy.  No muss no fuss put up with angry parents / people for a couple of days then you move on.  You hope that everyone else learns to fear a rule / law instead of understanding why it's there.  What's worse is nobody is there teaching them what good decisions are and how to make them.  That is the outcome of zero tolerance - more problems.

Where should the admin draw the line?  The line needs to be drawn on individual cases.  If it's a violent crime then drop a hammer and have severe consequences. The powers that be need to look at all aspects of the case and even the history of that person before handing out punishment.  If the person has a history of trouble them don't let there be any doubt as to what the punishment is.  But still teach what right from wrong is.  People don't want to do case by case because it's too hard to make decisions.  Plus it does open up people to criticism but at the end of the day what is best for that kid in that situation to learn right from wrong while being punished.

Today I helped our asst. principal investigate how a window got broken in a door to our gym.  We watched video and talked to some people and figured out who did it.  He supposedly told one of our coaches and the coach told him to tell the principal this morning.  Well I verify with our coach that he did come to him and that conversation happened.  We pulled the kid in and he admitted to it and the reason he hadn't old the principal is because he hadn't found him yet.  The principal was off campus at a meeting.  So this kid comes in and admits to it, said he would pay for the replacement and would accept being suspended if that would the punishment.  We asked him what happened (we already knew) and he told us exactly what we already knew - he was racing another kid and couldn't stop in time and hit the door.  Complete accident and no harm was intended on his part although he destroyed school property.  By definition of the law we could have had him arrested. So what did we do?

I asked him what did he learn from this.  He said not to goof off around the school buildings and if he wanted to race then to go to the football field where it's meant to have people run.  Then we asked him what could have been possible bad outcomes of this.  We got him to realize if his hand / arm had went through the window he could have been in some serious trouble with cutting his wrist where major blood vessels are.  The kid got it and understood.  He was scared and nervous.  He learned a lesson and we let him walk out of the office with nothing else to happen.  We aren't going to make him pay for it, he's not going to be suspended or anything else.  Will he make more mistakes of course but he's going to start putting more thought into what decisions he makes.

What good would it have been to suspend him and make him pay the $250 to replace the window?  Now if he had come in with attitude, lied, did it on purpose or had a history of things like this then the outcome would have been much different.  Suspension and paid for it because he hadn't got it yet.

Zero tolerance is lazy.  Do what's right for these kids and treat each situation on their own merits.

WAY too much legal actions taking place.  WAY too much legal repercussions for harmless pranks taking place as well.  Society has gotten out of hand.  Everybody is taking things to the extreme in fear of getting sued.  As coach2709 said, kids lives are getting ruined for doing nothing more than a prank.  

I agree, if the kid was caught cheating, he fails the test and leave it at that.  Why should his life be ruined for one indiscretion?  These kids stole a goat.  I'm sure they would have brought the goat back afterwards.  What the cop should have done is brought the kids back to the house they took the goat from, given the goat back and made the kids apologize.  If they guy wanted to press charges, the cop should have talked him out of it, then made the parents of the kids come pick them up.  Lesson learned, no one's life ruined.  Ridiculous.

Every year around here, kids have what they call Junior-Senior wars.  The kids basically go around rolling other kid's houses.  My younger son and his friends had the cops called on them for doing this and they all got arrested.  Spent almost 12 hours in jail waiting to get bailed out - for toilet papering someone's house!!!  

This society is out of control in my opinion.  It's one thing to receive consequences for actual criminal behavior, but another to have your life altered for simple adolescent pranks.  Authorities are scared to use any common sense to discern between the two in fear that they will be sued.  Come on people, grow a backbone and do the right thing.  Quit worrying about being sued or being politically correct.  

This about sums it up in my opinion.  Well said coach!!

How does the school know he has cheated more than just this one time?  What happened to innocent until proven guilty.  What does it matter if other kids talk?  They are going to talk if it's true or even if it's not true.  That's the nature of being in high school is people always talking.  I would hope that person from Yale would be smart enough to actually not get caught up in gossip.  Plus let's think about this - colleges get thousands of applications each year.  So how do they know for certain all of them never cheated?  Besides what is cheating?  I had out a review packet with 50 multiple choice questions to take home and work on.  If Suzie calls up Cindy to ask what she got for number 33 - is that cheating?  Suzie isn't doing her own work and Cindy is providing an answer to another student.  That's textbook definition of cheating.  Let's fail them for the assignment and keep them out of college due to lack of integrity.  But what if they talk it over and Cindy explains to Suzie why number 33 is letter B?  That's still providing an answer to another student so do we fail them and eliminate chance at college?  

I have no doubt my kids do the first situation because the grades on assignments are the same for some people.  I'm too busy to try and stop this.  Plus, if they do this at home on a cell phone then how do I stop that from happening?  I tell my kids I know what they are doing and to do the second example because they are learning.  Isn't that what we want?  I do everything I can to not stress grades because I want them to learn but grades become so important they don't learn and stress goes up so much that they tend to forget the one thing they are there for - to learn.

We need to back up and take a deep breath.  It's not the end of the world if a kid cheats on a test or something.  Trust me - I cheated on several things in high school and college.  If I would have gotten caught then what happens is what happens I will accept it.  But I still turned out fine.

I am in no way trying to defend these actions in this thread. But I sat in rookie school and had a wise old man tell us "The only difference between you and many of those people you will chase down and put cuffs on is they got caught and you didn't. So remember that. Do your job. But have compassion. And never lose sight of the big picture."

Let me add one other thing while I'm on my soap box today.    Just because other kids are doing something doesn't make it right.  That is not an excuse!!  I'm not taking away from the point of individual accountability, but saying something is done by everyone else all the time does not justify poor behavior.  Consequences?  Yes.  Life altering consequences because of "zero tolerance"?  Emphatic No.

Should mention that the kid was actually suspend from school over the incident. I gather it was regarded as a very big deal and the school came down very heavy on the kid.

 The trouble for him with respect to getting into colleges is that (A) you are asked about whether you have ever been subject to academic discipline in your applications; (b)  instances of academic discipline are reported in counselor's reports I believe.   But you are also giving a chance to explain yourself.   Not sure what a kid can say, except to be very, very contrite, and talk about lessons learned, that would make a highly selective college or university of the sort this kid was aiming at even want to overlook this kind of thing.  The kinds of schools we are talking about turn down just about everybody who applies anyway.  So there pretty likely to turn down a kid caught cheating.

(The parents, by the way, were floored by this.  But they aren't mad at the school.  I gather they are furious at the son -- especially his "but everybody does it attitude.")

Zero tolerance may not be exactly the right answer -- kids do make mistakes, exercise poor judgment, are too often immature.  We should use every opportunity we can to help them overcome mistakes, mature, exercise better judgments.  But I think schools and universities really do need to come down very hard on cheating.  They can't possibly allow themselves to send the message that a little bit of cheating is alright now and then. I If they do that, they will have an awfully hard time drawing a line.   Plus it is utterly at odds with what they stand for and the values they espouse -- especially university, where the integrity of scholarly and scientific work is their stock in trade.  They can't allow a culture in which that integrity is undermined even one bit. And I don't think it's nearly enough to say if you get caught cheating on an assignment, you take your F and you let the grade fall where it may.  That's pretty minimal and probably not nearly enough to discourage students who simply do a cost-benefit analysis.   The point is that cheating isn't just a "local" offense against a particular teacher, it's a violation of the fundamental values that govern all academic institutions at all levels. 

I admit it's a very delicate issue -- especially when you throw in the propensity of some big time athletic schools to grease the skids for the athletes the way UNC Chapel Hill did.    But that's a whole other can of worms.

So what if he could prove that cheating was prevalent? That's a defense for his own blatantly cheating??

The OP mentions that the kid was a "4.something" student.  Well no, he apparently wasn't. I hate to see a young man's future prospects diminished like this. But... I feel a lot worse for all those kids who bust their tails for their 3.85 GPA... Only to lose a spot at a selective academic program to another guy who cheated his way to a "4.0".

I agree that academic cheating is rampant... and it certainly isn't just in public schools. I think if anything, it may be even worse at high pressure private schools.  It's apparently just as bad at the nation's top universities as well... eg the issues that have surfaced at Harvard and UNC among others.

I really like this quote!  Thanks for posting!  I think many of us lose sight of the fact that we have done stupid things in the past also.

apparently Stanford too.  Poker friend who teaches there, tells me it is especially bad in Computer Science, of all things.   

Back in the day, I had a cheating experience.  English class.  Someone got a copy of a test and passed it around.  I never got it.  I ended up with a  D on the test because I wasn't really reading the book - so obviously I didn't cheat.  After the test, teacher comes in.  Now the guy was a draft pick of the Minn. Vikings -- large and in charge.  Starts expressing his displeasure about the incident.  I had never been so scared in my life.  I almost crapped my pants.  He made us all retake a different test -- essay.  I got C -- probably because he knew I didn't read the book but I also didn't cheat. 

Today, they want to railroad kids for the slightest indiscretion.  Zero tolerance is for mindless blobs of protoplasm.   

Zero tolerance is indeed the easy way out. Those that advocate for it quickly change their minds when their kids are in need of common sense. 

Update on this kid.  No baseball in his future, but he did get into college.  Was heavily recruited by a number of high academic schools until the cheating came to light.  Had interest from both Ivy league places and top academic D3's early on.  Ended up not getting into any of them, in the end.  Will be going to a large out of state state school.   Don't know if he intends to try to play club ball there. 

I do feel very bad for the kid.  Apparently great student (assuming all those A's weren't entirely ill-gotten),  Big and strong lefty pitcher with nasty stuff.  Probably could have gone far.

I think it shows how much pressure kids are under today to be and do so much.  Don't know what prompted him to cheat.  But not a wise decision.  Huge repercussions. 

Could have gone the JC route too.  Unless the family was not open to that from an academic standpoint, which is silly. 

I met a kid several years ago at a JC game (very good wood bat JC league) who was supposed to get drafted as a pitcher and had a couple of standing big D1 offers.  He got caught with some weed a couple of months before graduating.  D1 offers gone, off of the radar for the draft.  So he sought out this very good JC.  Informed the coach what happened and went there to play and get the first two years of school out of the way.  

No more trouble, good grades good performance the field he had no issue finding a good school after that.  

Don't think a JC at all appealed to either the parents or the kid academically.   The kid is one of those 4.0+ kids.  Sure he would have felt under-challenged at a JC. From the beginning was always looking to play a very high academic school, whether it was Ivy League or highly selective D3. JC would have been a very big change in focus. They were thrilled when this all got started and the kid was getting very serious looks from the likes of Harvard, Yale,Amherst, etc.