Cheating is going on all around campus and whether any students or teachers like to admit it, just about everyone has been a part of cheating.
According to a recent survey by the website plagiarism.org, 59% of high school students admitted cheating on a test during the last year, while  34% self-reported doing it more than two times. How many students actually get caught cheating? One CHS student interviewed for this story (who asked to remain anonymous) said, “No, I’ve never been caught and I cheat a lot.”
           Dr. Denise Pope, senior lecturer at the Stanford University School of Education, says that between 80 and 95 percent of high school students admitted to cheating at least once in the past year and 75 percent admitted to cheating four or more times.
Students’ views on cheating are even worse than the statistics of teens cheating. Another anonymous sophomore admits that she believes cheating is not wrong whatsoever.
“Everyone does it even though it’s wrong,” says senior Matthew Perez. Most students say they cheat on bigger tests rather than smaller assignments.
Who does all this cheating? The misconception is that that it’s usually the struggling student. In fact studies show that high-achieving students cheat almost as much as other students.
One anonymous sophomore here at CHS admitted to cheating on the 4^th grade GATE test, and passed. Some strategies used by teens are simple things such as looking at the classmate next to them, using hand gestures, and mouthing the answers, even writing answers on the water bottle label. Technology, while seemingly all over the place, hasn’t seemed to crack the cheating barrier in any significant way just yet, according to national studies.
Believe it or not, teachers were once students, and some of them have cheated at one time or another. Some may feel that teachers are hypocrites for being so strict on cheating when they at one time have cheated. Biology teacher Jonathan Le says,   “I realized I was only cheating myself, it didn’t do me any good.” He wants his students to be better than what he was.
Senior AVID teacher Peter Goldkorn says he’s only cheated once and he regrets it until this day. Teachers can tell a student has cheated by previous test scores and they know each student’s patterns.
What makes a student cheat? The answer is not simple, of course, and is as varied as there are students. Dr. Pope from Stanford has some answers: “Students cheat for a number of reasons. They cheat because everybody else is doing it, they cheat because they have too much work to do and not enough time to do it. They’re under pressure and they see cheating around them everywhere – sports stars, movie stars, Wall Street. These are very powerful cultural factors that influence students’ behavior. So the culture of cheating in our society is formidable even if you took one single factor out of the equation. “
When teachers are so strict about cheating realize it’s because they want you to be better than they were, and when students cheat remember how it was at their age.