Did you know that perhaps one out of every other student you pass by in the halls of Colton High School is probably a cheater?

The Pepper Bough surveyed a random sample of 30 CHS students and asked if they have ever cheated in school before, and half of the 30 people admitted that they had.

Now, as we all know, there’s cheating, and there’s cheating. Cheating can run the gamut from copying a friends’s work (“Say, dog, did you do the math homework? Let me see that.”) to outright tying to “beat” a standardized test or final.

Some of the cheaters admitted to copying homework and some of them said they have cheated on a test. But there are also other ways to cheat:  there are also quizzes and classwork.

Many of the respondents felt it was no big deal, simply a matter of what one student labeled “friends helping friends.”

“If we’re doing group work, and one or two people do all the work, is that cheating?” one student asked.

A good question.

Has anyone ever been caught? A few admitted they had, but most indicated they’d gotten away with cheating many times. Some students did mention that the tests nowadays are different: somebody sitting next to you may  not have the same test as you. One student gave a simple answer to staying out of trouble: “Skillz.”

And he is probably right: maybe these people are really good at cheating. But it will not take them anywhere in life, because dishonesty creates a pattern of behavior that can hurt one down the line.

Cheating will probably exist as long as there are students pressured to get good grades. But as my third grade teacher always said, “You’re only cheating yourself.”

Think about it, and stay classy, Yellowjackets.