A Professor Thinks His Students Cheated, So He’s Suing Them

A professor at Chapman College in Orange, California, goes the additional size to search out out if his college students cheated after he found that his midterm and last exams from final yr had been uploaded to a well-liked web site.

Enterprise Regulation Professor David Berkovitz filed a federal lawsuit in opposition to a bunch of his college students, accusing them of copyright infringement, The New York Instances reported. Berkovitz needs to make the web site Course Hero to show over the names of the scholars in his class who uploaded his previous exams which additionally contained pattern solutions, his lawyer Mark Hankin mentioned, in response to The Instances.

“If profitable, Professor Berkovitz plans to show over the names to Chapman’s honor board, Mr. Hankin mentioned,” the report states. “As a result of Chapman’s enterprise faculty requires grading on a curve, Professor Berkovitz is anxious that college students who cheated could have unfairly prompted their classmates who performed by the principles to obtain grades decrease down on the curve.”

Berkovitz got here throughout the uploads of his outdated exams on-line in January and surmised that the exams had been uploaded and utilized by a few of his college students to cheat on this yr’s exams. He was primarily involved that the unnamed group of scholars he believes used the uploaded materials to review for exams are “hurting their fellow classmates.” Hankin assured that Berkovitz is “definitely not on this for the cash” and in addition mentioned Berkovitz won’t even pursue additional authorized motion so long as he will get the names of the scholars he believes cheated via the web site.

“Course Hero, which isn’t named as a defendant within the go well with, mentioned it might adjust to a subpoena, which Mr. Hankin mentioned he anticipated to serve within the subsequent day or two,” The Instances reported.

Sean Morris, Course Hero’s vp of lecturers commented on the lawsuit, stating, “Our response is all the time consistent with the legislation, so in the event that they produce a subpoena, we’ll assist them with their investigation.” Morris instructed The Instances that Course Hero is a platform that helps college students and academics add and share paperwork with one another “nearly like a library.”

Course Hero permits free entry for college students to some paperwork, however to realize extra entry, customers must pay a $9.95 subscription price. This isn’t the primary time the web site has been the middle of debate. In 2009, a piece by Steve Kolowich for Inside Increased Ed requested if Course Hero was serving to college students steal others’ info and cheat. “Some professors and directors … have chafed on the thought of a website that encourages college students to take professors’ mental output, publish it with out permission, after which permit an organization to promote entry to it for revenue,” Kolowich wrote, later including, “For some, the query of whether or not such a website violates mental property protections is secondary; some officers have expressed issues over whether or not Course Hero’s efforts to create a neighborhood of shared info would possibly really allow dishonest.”

The web site, nonetheless, claims it “doesn’t tolerate copyright infringement, plagiarism, or dishonest of any variety.” Course Hero instructed Berkovitz’s lawyer Hankin that the corporate would require a courtroom subpoena to disclose the names of scholars importing paperwork to its website.

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