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Comment by wly_cdgr | Hacker News Reader

The author has a responsibility to out the cheaters. It's unacceptably unfair to the students in his course who didn't cheat, and cheaters should be shamed publicly and have their career prospects severely damaged. I really don't give a shit what excuses or justifications someone might have had for cheating, if you had to run away from home sleep under the bridge and suck dick for wifi after your dad killed your mom or whatever. I literally do not give one flying fuck. Cheating is not acceptable or excusable, ever, period.

I'll go further and say that if you're not ready to out cheaters in your classes, you have no business teaching

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I think it is pretty standard practice to keep cheating confidential (indeed, I think for a lot of universities professors aren't allowed to publicize student names in incidents of cheating). I understand where you're coming from, but college can be an extremely stressful place that can lead students to do actions they otherwise wouldn't have done (or so goes the typical reasoning from universities).

"Shamed publicly and have their career prospects severely damaged..."

The prefontal cortex does not finish developing until age 25 or thereabouts. This is why it is logical and necessary to punish young people differently from the way we punish adults.

"Cheating is not acceptable or excusable, ever, period."

Children develop the ability to lie and cheat around 3 or 4 years of age, although they are very unskilled at it and initially tell lies that are not believable. I think we agree that we can accept and excuse 4-year-olds who lie and cheat, because it will take much longer for them to develop ethics and morals.

The question then is, how do we taper off the acceptance and excuses? Perhaps we agree that it's acceptable at age 4 and unacceptable at age 25, but what about 18? Perhaps people at age 18 still need to learn ethics and morals?

It seems like such a shame to destroy somebody's academic career if there are ways to save it.

What if the test is not great at evaluating the capabilities of a person to do their future job.

Maybe preventing a person that does not understand differential equations from being a doctor, English teacher, event manager ...

„I literally do not give one flying fuck.“

The person who cheats, will give no f** about your opinion either.

Unfortunately, life does not have a responsibility to be fair. Although we would sure like it to be, it is not universally possible.

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