What is cheating? Cheating could be a lot of different things. Cheating in a relationship, on a test, or in a game. Any form of cheating is wrong, but is in human nature to cheat? 

According to a study by Caveon, 80% of “high-achieving” high school students admit to cheating. If almost everyone is cheating, then what’s the big deal?

It’s inequitable for the kids that genuinely did the work. By cheating, cheaters are stealing something and saying it’s theirs. Additionally, academic dishonesty can spill into other components of life, causing stress and even more troubles.

Cheating defeats Jesuit’s mission to create men of conscience, compassion, and integrity.

“Cheating leads to more cheating,” said Jesuit High School Dean Mr. LaRoddric Theodule. “If you cheat on homework, that means you are more likely to cheat on a quiz, which makes it more likely for you to cheat on a test, which makes it easier to cheat on your taxes, which makes it easier to cheat at your job, which makes it easier to cheat on your wife. Cheating in high school starts to develop a pattern that is not aligned with what Jesuit believes.” 

Christian Service and Theology Teacher Mr. Andrew Shahamiri sees the toll that cheating takes on one’s mental state. 

“Cheating is objectively wrong,” said Christian Service and Theology Teacher Mr. Andrew Shahamiri. “Regardless of its proposed benefits and your justifications for it, your soul knows it is wrong when you do it. That is why when one engages in cheating, he or she makes up so many excuses to block out the soul’s voice, which tells you, deep down inside, that what you are doing is wrong.”

Despite it being morally wrong, students still cheat, and as a few students note, it’s not with a clean conscience. 

“I feel like I need to get ahead and when I have homework piling on top of me each night I have to sometimes because when I finish the assigned homework there’s more assigned the next day,” said an anonymous student. 

“I don’t cheat often, but when I do, it’s because I want to get a good grade on the assignment, but I don’t really want to put in the work,” said another student.

Rarely do most students search for an opportunity to cheat. Usually, they feel pressured into it by a busy schedule, desperation for a good grade, or perhaps from laziness and procrastination. Excuses are not justifications, however, and cheating remains morally and intellectually wrong and, in most cases, just too risky.