Watch out for falling grades!

If you talk to most of the third semesters (and a few of the 4th), you'll find that they're in a pretty bad mood right now. The reason for this is that apparently, someone cheated on the Physio exam, and had answers to 28 of the questions. Without going into the details that I don't even know fully, the faculty claim to be certain that someone (or multiple someones) cheated, but cannot prove that any particular person did it. Their solution to this was to throw out all 28 questions and base our grade on only the 20 remaining questions. Why is this so terrible? Well, it's terrible because 40 people had their grade increased, 80 people had their grade decreased, and small number didn't change at all. My grade went from a 96 to a 90. However, others did not fare so well and saw their low B grade drop to a failing grade!

Why am I boiling with anger at this point, despite still having an A? Well, while I EARNED a high A, creating a comfortable buffer to maintain that A throughout the semester (with the two hardest tests of physio yet to come), I now barely have an A, which is not worth much of anything. Since this class is graded strictly by points, with all points being equal, my grade on this exam is now worth less than half what the others will be worth. So, to sum this up, I EARNED a high A, did absolutely nothing wrong, but I have now had my grade decreased 6 percentage points because some person or people decided to cheat. I can only imagine the anger of the people who previously had a B and are now failing.

And, because of the decrease in points, and the fact that the following tests are supposed to be harder, even the people whose grades went up want their old grade back! Those that did increase didn't increase much; it is better to have around 50 points worth of an 83% than 20 points worth of a 85%. Although the people who cheated do not deserve the higher grade and will hopefully be kicked out of AUC if/when they're caught, we do not deserve a lower grade for their screw up! I would bet that nearly every student in the class would prefer those cheaters get a few extra points, than all of us lose points. Hopefully AUC will do something to fix this situation. Because, the current solution sucks...a lot...for a lot of people.

Unfortunately, I'm not really sure what else AUC could do. It's 100% unfair that anyone who did not cheat should be made to suffer for those who did. But, if they were to give us all the points back, or keep grades exactly where they were, I don't know that it would send a good message to people who cheat. The best solution is to find out who cheated and send them packing. Maybe with everyone's grade lowered, someone who knows something will come forward. I'm still trying to figure out how the faculty is 100% certain that cheating occurred, without actually having a single person to show for it.