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Georgia Tech Cracks Down on Learning 979

The Washington Post has an article today on a Georgia Tech student who almost flunked his intro to comp sci course for just discussing his homework with someone else. Note that no one including the faculty accused him of actually copying any code from anyone. However, the "honor code" at Georgia Tech "forbids its introductory computer science students from seeking any help from other students on their homework." The faculty recorded part of his violation on the forms as "He was trying to learn it." This is something that high school seniors might want to keep in mind when selecting which university to attend.
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Georgia Tech Cracks Down on Learning

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  • by Dimensio ( 311070 ) <darkstar@LISPiglou.com minus language> on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @07:48PM (#3354732)
    ...it's for drinking, partying, having casual sex and possibly absusing some illegal substances.

    It must be true, popular culture says so.
  • what? (Score:2, Funny)

    by AnimeFreak ( 223792 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @07:49PM (#3354739) Homepage
    You'd think they'd crack down on drinking, drugs, and cheating first. :P

    If schools ban learning, then I guess the "fun factor" is what College is all about. :)
  • Well Shit (Score:3, Funny)

    by BiggestPOS ( 139071 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @07:52PM (#3354766) Homepage
    Talking about your homework IS cheating. Hell, DOING homework is cheating yourself out of your spare time.

    Who turns someone in for something like this anyway?

  • by ebbomega ( 410207 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @07:57PM (#3354799) Journal
    I would send the following mail:

    To whom it may concern,

    I would like to apologize for my behavior. It was wrong and immoral. I suppose, because of my youth, that I thought it would be justifiable to learn. I now see otherwise, and hope to discontinue this behavior for the rest of my career.

    I thought that it might be a good dodge to spend some of my time in first year learning, and that it might be an investment towards my GPA for me to acquire knowledge from other human beings. Oh well, I guess we all learn our lessons of life somehow. I understand that in discussing in an academic forum setting is wrong and I promise that for the endurement of my University career, I will absolve any attempt at communicating with my peers, as it seems to only decrement my academic standpoint and tarnish the reputation of the University, as well as compromising the institution of Education on the whole.

    I promise I will avoid learning for the rest of my college career and rely only on myself and my own experiences with the natural environment to do so. Furthermore, I resolve to lock myself in my room for the remainder of the semester in hopes that social interaction will not tempt me into deteriorating my Computer Studies goals. As well, I will avoid going to lectures and tutorials, as well as any open labs, since the professors and TAs may accidentally teach me something, in which case I will compromise the goals the University seems to have set forth.

    Sincerely,

    ****

    Glad to know open academic forums (What Universities are intended to be) are still just that.
  • by yellowjacket03 ( 470997 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @07:59PM (#3354823)
    As a Georgia Tech alum, I can tell you that with a 73% male to 27% female student distribution, casual sex is anything but.

    Or maybe it was just me.
  • typo! (Score:3, Funny)

    by jafac ( 1449 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @08:01PM (#3354838) Homepage
    Shouldn't this be:
    "Georgia Tech Cracks Down on Larnin'"?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @08:05PM (#3354880)
    I think I only completed one "major" project by myself, and cheated/copied the rest of the way through. The assignments in most CS programs are bullshit and have no bearing in the business world.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @08:05PM (#3354887)
    It's good that a school is finally standing up against learning. Out of all the things wrong with America right now its education - we need to make it our number one priority and ensure kids of all ages and races are not learning in school. The results of learning could be devistating -- one day a few kids are learning together and helping each other out, next day they form independent thought and do something for the world. Geez.

    Way to find a chisel on a tablet.

    _
    WINDOWS USERS CLICK HERE! [paware.com]
  • by totallygeek ( 263191 ) <sellis@totallygeek.com> on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @08:09PM (#3354933) Homepage
    When I was at Texas A&M [tamu.edu], I was a physics major. To have a better time in college, and because I like to learn, I took many computer programming courses.


    For the bonehead award, Programming I was basically just Pascal on personal computers. Well, I had gotten into "trouble" for not commenting my source code. So, for my final program, I wrote it in Pascal, compiled, disassembled, rewrote the assembler code to Pascal inline assembly statements, and lined up the original Pascal as the assembly inline comments. My prof wasn't amused.


    But, on the other end, I took another programming course which was supposed to be COBOL, c, and FORTRAN. The first day, the prof said that we will not need our FORTRAN book and would not write any FORTRAN programs or be tested on FORTRAN. However, we were instructed to learn FORTRAN on our own. Well, almost no one kept their FORTRAN book or even bothered learning FORTRAN. I was lucky enough to have already learned most FORTRAN working on physics stuff. Our final program was to write a source converter in c to convert FORTRAN programs to c. Not only did we have to know FORTRAN, but we had to KNOW FORTRAN!

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @08:17PM (#3354996)
    You: Dad, I need help on my classpaths.

    Dad: Ok, Where are your punch cards?
  • by molo ( 94384 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @08:17PM (#3354998) Journal
    wouldn't it be good to wait until we hear the school's side of the story?

    You must be new around here..

    :)
  • by btellier ( 126120 ) <btellierNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @08:18PM (#3355007)
    why do you even bother posting these? you're affecting maybe 1 in 20 people who load the page. Christ, you've been getting first posts with this stuff for days now. Don't you have a job? How pathetic is your life that the most enjoyable thing you can do is hit the reload button all day?

    My theory: first posters, goatse trolls and wide posters are all quadraplegics on disability. This would explain why they never type more than a few words because they have to blink in a pre-arranged sequence to get their letters translated to the screen. For this reason, they typically only do copy/paste because it's much easier on the eyes and gives their nursemaids more time to clean the feces out of their shorts.
  • by derinax ( 93566 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @08:23PM (#3355054)
    " ...it's for drinking, partying, having casual sex and possibly absusing some illegal substances."

    Uh, no; it's for drinking, partying, abusing illegal substances and possibly having casual sex.

    What college did you go to, and do they have a graduate program?

  • by tshak ( 173364 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @08:24PM (#3355063) Homepage
    I recall a statics professor

    They actually have a dedicated professor for teaching you about static methods and variables?
  • Re:typo! (Score:3, Funny)

    by rho ( 6063 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @08:26PM (#3355084) Journal

    I'll allow "larnin'", as it might be a regional colloquialism to the GA-Tech area.

    However, as a born and bred Mississippi redneck, I can unequivocably state that the correct spelling/pronunciation is "book larnin'".

    T(H)GSB [slashdot.org]

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @08:29PM (#3355114)
    Getting a job that pays more than Cowboyneal because you graduated.

    Boy, I should hope so! Can you imagine how much it would suck to be payed in Cowboyneal? The exchange rate of Cowboyneals/Dollar can't be very good, and I don't know what you would do with more than a couple of them to keep under the sink and do menial labor for you. You'd be better off being paid in peanuts.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @08:34PM (#3355164)
    You: Dad, I need help on my classpaths.

    Dad: Ask your mother.
  • by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @08:57PM (#3355274)


    > ...it's for drinking, partying, having casual sex and possibly absusing some illegal substances.

    Like... homework assignments that look just like someone else's?

  • by aozilla ( 133143 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @09:01PM (#3355295) Homepage

    "Would you get any partial credit for building the bridge upside down?"

    No, you'd get a career in management.

  • by ShawnDoc ( 572959 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @09:19PM (#3355397) Homepage
    As a Georgia Tech alum, I can tell you that with a 73% male to 27% female student distribution, casual sex is anything but.

    Oh come now, I'm sure there's plenty of casual sex going on. In fact, I'd go so far as to say there's more casual sex at Georgia Tech than just about any other school in Georgia.

    Having a partner is not a prerequisit for casual sex at any tech school (I'm sure whoever operates the coin laundry is making tons of money from cleaning all those socks and towels), and being in Georgia, I know there's plenty of livestock walking around a little bow-legged.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @09:45PM (#3355584)
    Sounds like NJIT, 9 to 1 ratio. (NJIT women are like NJIT parking spaces. All the good ones are taken and the only ones left are handicapped) I hear it's improved slightly, but I doubt by much. There's a Rutgers campus adjacent with a much better ratio, but considering we're right in the middle of Newark, NJ, we usually don't go out much.
  • by Anonymous Bob ( 663 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @10:46PM (#3355933)
    Coming from a dual tech-language arts background, you just don't know how encouraged I am to see such a quality turn of phrase like this posted on slashdot. I feel better about the whole ordeal already. :)

    More seriously, I think the above post is likely much closer to the truth than the "nuanaced" slashdot summary. But that's just my opinion.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17, 2002 @01:05AM (#3356484)
    As a Georgia Tech alum, I can tell you that with a 73% male to 27% female student distribution, casual sex is anything but.

    Joke seen scratched into a table in the GT library: Georgia Tech is like a pretty girl: you can't wait to get in, but 9 months later, you wish you hadn't.

  • by Swix ( 456262 ) <ryandaw@g m a i l .com> on Wednesday April 17, 2002 @01:55AM (#3356617)
    If that was a sheep refrence, I ain't the worst one I've seen.

    In Black & White, one of the first quest is to help these sails with their trip. You get them wood, wheat and meat. Well for meat I gave them a sheep. They respond:

    "Sheeps good for many things, and Its a long voyage." or something like that.

    Poor, Poor Sheep.

"May your future be limited only by your dreams." -- Christa McAuliffe

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