On behalf of all of us who do not live in the United States -- an
academic discussion about Greek Sweaters is truly bizarre. I am  having
little fantasies of Socrates and the boys sitting around knitting.  Or
maybe it is Sweaty Greeks and I just missed the point. As a Sweaty Kiwi,
I remain shocked and appalled.

Sally

Michael O'Hara wrote:

>      Sometimes when I am try to be gentle I do not succeed in being clear.
>
>      Different students have different advantages.  Some advantages are
>fair and some are not fair.  For example, in an academic enterprise I see a
>genetic predisposition to intellectual ability as a fair advantage.  In
>contrast, in an academic enterprise I see as an unfair advantage a genetic
>advantage that is unrelated academic achievement and instead is purely
>physical and the academic enterprise requires as a condition for graduation
>exhibiting of that physical ability.
>
>      Money is an advantage that takes many forms.  A predisposition
>towards extroversion when coupled with money often manifests itself in the
>academic enterprise by spontaneous or planned social collectives.  One
>ought to expect durable social collectives to seek to optimize socially
>validated achievement while simultaneously minimizing explicit costs (e.g.,
>high grades with minimal studying in an academic enterprise).
>
>      When greek houses, as durable social collectives, encourage their
>members to see value for future generations in the trash of the current
>generation (e.g., feed the house's test bank) there are both immediate and
>distant benefits and costs that might spring from that tradition.  More
>efficient studying is a benefit all professors urge on their students.
>Mere pattern recognition (e.g., the answer sequence on QuizTwo is A, B, B,
>B, C, D, D, C, A, C) is not.
>
>      Fraud cuts both ways.
>
>      A student knowing and intentionally misrepresents a material fact
>(i.e., "I have read the question and based upon my actual knowledge I
>believe the answer to question 1 on Quiz Two is A.") when the student
>merely regurgitates a memorized answer pattern on an exam that is repeated
>from semester to semester, that is known by the students to be repeated
>from semester to semester, and the professor does not make available to
>-all- students copies of the exam that is repeated from semester to
>semester when the professor has a reasonable basis to believe that -some-
>students are collecting those old exams (via any method of collection).
>The student knows the professor unreasonably, but actually, believes the
>old exam is secure and the old exam is not to be read by a student taking
>the "new" exam.  The new exam identical to the old exam can not pass trade
>secret muster relative to the new student, only relative to the old
>student.
>
>      The student commits fraud by reading the old exam knowing that the
>old exam will be the new exam.  If the student does not commit fraud it is
>because the reliance of the professor is not justifiable.  The duties of
>academic responsibility in play at all universities, however, tend to err
>on the side of minimal security efforts by professors equating with
>justifiable reliance by professors.
>
>      However, I also believe the professor commits fraud by using the old
>exam as the new exam.  The fraud of the professor is to, with no less than
>objective knowledge, knowingly evaluate similarly situated students using
>fundamentally discriminatory methods where the discrimination has nothing
>to do with academic achievement.
>
>      When everyone wearing a greek sweater finishes an exam in half the
>time as those not so clothed, and when everyone wearing a greek sweater
>"earns" a higher grade than those not so clothed, then the professor's
>reliance is not justified:  which might excuse the student, but only
>further damns the professor.  Of course, it is feasible that correlation is
>causation and the greek sweater only is worn by intellectually superior and
>extraordinarily diligent students.  Such, however, is not my experience
>once that clothing exits the classroom.
>
>Michael
>
>Professor Michael J. O'Hara, J.D., Ph.D.
>Finance, Banking, & Law Department
>College of Business Administration
>Roskens Hall 502
>University of Nebraska at Omaha
>Omaha  NE  68182
>[log in to unmask]
>(402) 554 - 2823 voice  fax (402) 554 - 2680
>http://cba.unomaha.edu/faculty/mohara/web/ohara.htm
>
>
>