Asian students punished more in cheating scandal, attorney says

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

DURHAM
Asian students involved in a cheating scandal at the Duke University
business school were punished more severely than others, their attorney said.

Many of the students involved in the case at the Fuqua School of Business
had been in the United States for less than a year and didn't fully
understand the honor code or judicial proceedings, Durham attorney Robert
Ekstrand said.

A faculty investigator pressured them to admit wrongdoing, so the students
wrote confession letters, sometimes without understanding the specific
accusations, he said.

"There is something else going on here, something that needs to be explained
before we go forward with this, because it doesn't look right," said
Ekstrand, who has filed appeals on behalf of 16 students.

Thirty-four graduate students at the business school were convicted of
cheating on an exam and other assignments. Nine students were expelled, and
15 were suspended for a year and given a failing grade in the class. The
remaining students received failing grades.

The students who were expelled from the university are all from Asian
countries, Ekstrand said. If appeals fail, they'll likely lose student visas
and have to leave the country in the next couple of weeks, he said.

"Somebody has got to look at this. You just wonder how this could have
gotten so far," he said.

The investigation began after a professor found consistencies in answers to
a take-home exam.

Duke officials have said that students involved in the cheating case were
from the U.S. and countries on three other continents. They declined to
comment on the cases until the appeals process is completed next week.

"We must respect the confidentiality that the appeals process requires and
our students deserve," said Mike Hemmerich, a spokesman for the business
school.

In an appeal filed last week, Ekstrand questioned why some possibly
exculpatory evidence was not given to students before the appeals. He said
the possible violations surfaced within four days of the exam, which more
than 400 students completed.

Ekstrand also said that honor code violations were mostly minor and
unintentional. For example, some students shared a template in which data
from the exam questions were typed into a spreadsheet, but no one shared the
analysis or answers, he said.

The fact that the students from countries including China, Korea and Taiwan
confessed instead of fighting the charges had to do with cultural norms,
Ekstrand said.

"Culturally, a confession or an admission of guilt can be a way to apologize
," he said.

Experts said students from other countries often arrive on U.S. campuses
with different understandings about the boundaries on collaboration.

Gary Comstock, a philosophy professor and director of research ethics at N.C
. State University, said it's a huge problem.

"I think the university has a special obligation to those students," he said.

Fuqua international students are required to attend a summer institute
focused on language and culture, but Comstock said students also sometimes
use their international status as an excuse.

"There are two principles at work here. One is fairness. We don't want to
treat them differently. The other is cultural sensitivity and the fact that
they're coming to this country and may not have the kind of training that we
give to U.S. students," Comstock said. "There's also honesty. Some students
aren't honest when they say, 'I didn't know."'