Cheating on your SATs is serious business, but in this controversial case, dianamer994 thinks the punishment doesn't fit the crime.—Sparkitors
As you may or may not have heard, Sparklers, 11 teens were recently charged with felonies after cheating on the SATs. I’ll give you a moment to get back onto the chair from which you undoubtedly just fell off in shock.
All better? Good. My first thought about this whole scenario was obviously, "Yep, that’s totally reasonable. I definitely think that kids deserve to be handcuffed, face time in prison, and have a criminal mark on their records for the rest of their adult lives for cheating on a test." (Sarcasm hand raised so high I fear shoulder dislocation.)
I’m sorry, but since when does cheating on a test warrant a felony charge? I understand that the SATs are important, trust me, I understand, in a deep, somewhat depressing way, but even so—last I heard, cheating deserved suspension, maybe, and a zero on the test. Plus, aren’t the SAT’s run by College Board, a private, and might I add, for-profit, corporation? The United States government doesn’t oversee testing; why it so involved in the cheating?
But aside from the ridiculous blowing-out-of-proportion that is occurring here, can we step back for a minute and think about implications here? No, I do NOT mean that you should go start an illegal test-taking business, even though security at SATs are apparently impressively lax (a boy was able to take the test for a girl, using a girl’s ID. *Wow.*) I mean, since when are test scores that important to us—to us students, now willing to pay thousands of dollars for them, for officials, willing to press charges over them, to the media, willing to write headlines on them?
To illustrate my point, allow me to give you a brief glance into my AP Psyche class, before the bell rings and class starts.
Class: Indistinct talking, conversations, ect.
Sally: So then I blah blah blah… SATS… blah blah blah…
Class: Huh? What? Did you just say SATs? DID YOU?!?
Jimmy: My life Is RUINED. I had tuberculosis, the flu and whooping cough all on the test day and it messed with my scores. Ahhhhh….. (trails off in despair)
Julie (twitching in a nervous, KStew type way and speaking super-fast): Omg-my-scores-aren’t-out-yet-I’m-freaking-out-please-please-please-let-me-have-done-well…
Sam: I dunno, I guess I did ok… I only got a 2320…
Class: *seriously considers the idea of Sam’s murder*
Anyway, I think y’all get the idea. College, testing, all the rest of this hoopla dominates our lives for a good four years, so we’re a little…stressed… now that it’s crunch time. But does anyone else think that this whole cheating incident kinda shows some flaws in the system? I mean, yes, college is important. But a few hundred points on the SATs should not be worth a criminal record. So let's take a step back, people and try to relax. In the vast majority of cases, the whole college thing ends up working out. CHILL.
Do you think cheating on the SATs should result in a felony charge? Do high school students take SATs too seriously—and is society at fault for pushing them to this breaking point?
Read more about this event right here!
Related post: How to Handle Cheaters
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