Around 1,000 students at DHS go to school five days a week with the purpose of learning. A growing amount of these students try to find the easy way out when faced with difficult tasks in challenging classes. When people cheat, they put their grade on the line, along with their educational credibility.

Why bother in the first place? Even though cheating serves as an easy way out, no one’s intellect actually improves from this deceit. Rather than cheating, students need to communicate with their teachers. Students need to utilize their peers and resources online in a way that keeps their academic integrity intact.

Who wants a surgeon who cheated their way through college to operate on anyone’s brain anyway? In many different industries people fail to maintain ethical work practices and dependability. This cheating stems from high school (or even earlier) and carries on throughout college.

Before it gets too out of hand, students need to step back and assess their situation. Young people need to determine whether they need to focus on the fun time they experience in high school or the education they stand to accumulate from a tenure of good choices made.

More awareness around campus needs to be raised to help students know how cheating affects their grades in the long run. If students want to excel in college, they need to know zeroes and plagiarized papers will never cut it. As a campus, students and staff need to push together for a more fair and respectable campus.