Thursday, August 30, 2012

Best And Brightest Cheat Once Again: Harvard Edition

Earlier this year, seventy of the "Best and Brightest" students this city has to offer were implicated in a test cheating scandal at Stuyvesant High School.

Now comes word that the college many of those kids would love to go to - Harvard - has a cheating scandal of its own:

Harvard College’s disciplinary board is investigating nearly half of the 279 students who enrolled in Government 1310: "Introduction to Congress" last spring for allegedly plagiarizing answers or inappropriately collaborating on the class’ final take-home exam.

Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris said the magnitude of the case was “unprecedented in anyone’s living memory.”

Harris declined to name the course, but several students familiar with the investigation confirmed that Professor Matthew B. Platt's spring government lecture course was the class in question.


The exam was a take home and students were allowed to use their notes, books, Internet, etc. to respond to the questions, but they weren't supposed to collaborate with anybody else - not classmates, dorm mates, tutors, etc.

It seems half of the students enrolled did collaborate, however, since many of the test reponses were similar.

If found guilty of academic dishonesty, these students could be forced to withdraw from the college for a year.

But since they are the "Best and Brightest' this country has to offer, no doubt what happened at Stuyvesant is what will happen here - a pat on the wrist and a stern admonition not to cheat again.

No wonder these "Best and Brightest" go into government, finance, business, or whatever and cheat their asses off.

They've learned their lessons well from childhood.

They're special and nothing bad happens to them, no matter how badly they act.

The Best and Brightest indeed.

4 comments:

  1. They all no doubt have jobs already lined up with either Goldman Sachs or TFA, the hybrid cult/scab agency.

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  2. Yup - and they know it. That's why they're so smarmy about this stuff.

    Meanwhile you and I go back to work next week with the accountability-meisters looking to fire us for any alleged scandal or impropriety. Indeed, even an allegation will get you fired if Walcott and Bloomberg have their way. No need for guilt when it comes to the peons. And the Nest and Brightest are never held accountable, even when they're guilty.

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  3. Yes, they are just practicing for life after Harvard, for their careers in law, or as government policy experts, as aides to Congressional leaders, as clerks for Supreme Court justices, as apprentices for the executive branch of government, as Wall Street neophytes, or just ordinary , lame-brained, conceited TFA ideologues. They are being carefully groomed to collaborate with lobbyists, to kowtow to well heeled political contributors and to transact secretly in collaboration with networks of insider trading gurus. They are part of a culture where cheating is commonplace and thinking out of the box is mocked. They walk and talk like lemmings as they move with haste into the spiritual abyss. But theyaey aspire to live in places like Bloomberg's Eastside Manhattan and Greenwich, Connecticut isolated and coddled from the realities of the accountable life. As they seek out and hobnob with the elect, the .1 % they connect with the leadership of our unique American plutocracy. Who are these Harvard men? Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Joel Klein to just name a few of their ilk. Notice the pattern and the inbred sociology becomes self-evident. All good men and women of America must now unite as brothers and sisters and in a spirit of justice speak out, "We are tired of you, we are tired of you blowhards ...you selfish, greedy Harvard men.

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