Dartmouth Medical School accused 17 students of cheating after the Ivy League school secretly monitored their online activity – they then defended themselves on Zoom.
The Geissel School of Medicine claimed that students took the online course platform Canvas while taking virtual exams, giving themselves an unauthorized book test.
But the prestigious New Hampshire school is now claiming that the investigation was flawed.
Students at the school staged a protest at a campus and some accused came forward in theaters to claim that they were advised to accept the charges to get lesser punishment.
“What has happened to me in the last year, despite not being cheated on, is one of the most horrible, isolated experiences of my life,” first-year student Cyrie Zhang Told The New York Times.
The fraud investigation was launched in January when a faculty member spotted students accessing the online learning platform Canvas while giving exams, the school said in a statement sent to The Post on Monday.
Dartmouth said the New Hampshire school went back to looking at online activity for the entire school year. In the midst of the COVID-19 epidemic, students were virtually taking the test.
“Past exam activity was involved to ensure fairness for all students who were not suspected of violations, but whose grades could be affected by any change in their peers’ scores,” the statement said in the statement. Having said.
Some groups accused New Hampshire College of possible misuse of data. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have sent a joint letter to the college stating that students can be logged onto cellphones or other computers and not actually cheated.
The groups said in a March letter, “Dartmouth has turned false positives into allegations of educational misconduct as an enforcement action based on inaccurate technical evidence.”
But using the data page view and not the canvas log, the school said it was able to determine in advance that most of the cases were not intentional and did not violate the school’s honor policy.
Some 17 students were still charged with possible violations of the code and were to attend school student demonstrations and hearings with the Student Hijacking Committee in March.
The school said seven charges against them were dismissed. On 16 April, the remaining 10 were informed of the recommended sanctions against them, according to the school.
According to a petition signed by 160 students obtained by Valley News, three have been expelled and others are facing suspension and other discipline.
The letter stated that some students admitted the allegations because they were advised by the Office of Student Affairs that students who do so receive less severe penalties.
“The students felt that they were choosing between accepting crime and their future as a physician,” the letter said.
“Confused and weak, many students accepted advice from the leadership of Student Affairs and apologized for the alleged violation,” it went on. “These are not valid admissions of crime and should be disregarded.”
The letter stated that the accused students had shared their experiences of “suicide attacks, panic attacks, and inability to eat or sleep” through a now-deleted Instagram account.
Students protested outside the dean’s office last month to deal with the fraud investigation at Dartmouth, News reported.
Students can now appeal if the information was not available when the initial decision was made, or if there is any evidence the school committee did not properly follow its own guidelines.
If an appeal is found to be valid, an appeals committee has four weeks for another hearing.
“We are working to ensure that any relevant concerns are addressed in a fair and timely manner,” the college statement said.
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