text: Dartmouth College accused 64 students of cheating in a sports ethics class last semester, the latest in a string of cases of academic dishonesty involving athletes at elite U.S. colleges. 
   
   Students used a hand-held device known as a clicker to answer questions for classmates who were absent, according to Randall Balmer, who teaches the class, “Sports, Ethics and Religion.” 
   
   “I feel pretty burned by the whole thing,” Balmer, chairman of Dartmouth’s religion department, said in a telephone interview. “I’ve never faced anything on this scale before.” 
   
   The class was designed in part to appeal to athletes at Dartmouth, Balmer said. He said he discovered 43 of the almost 300 students in the class were cheating and reported them to Dartmouth’s judicial board as a violation of the school’s honor code. Another 21 then came forward and turned themselves in to the school, he said. 
   
   An appeal process is under way and should be finished by the end of this month to determine how many students will be suspended, said Diana Lawrence, a spokeswoman for the college in Hanover, New Hampshire. The disciplinary action was reported earlier by the local Valley News newspaper. 
   
   Harvard University investigated 125 students in 2012 for inappropriate collaboration on a take-home final exam in a U.S. government course. Half were told to withdraw for a year, including the senior co-captains of the basketball team, while the rest were given probation. 
   
   Paper Classes 
   
   The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last year detailed an academic fraud that spanned 18 years and made it easier for student athletes to maintain eligibility to play. An independent investigation found that 3,100 students took so-called paper classes with no faculty involvement or class attendance. 
   
   Aine Donovan, director of Dartmouth’s ethics institute, said more students are cheating at colleges, reflecting a culture where students are “raised with the notion that they are the best, not with the notions of integrity, responsibility and self-sacrifice.” 
   
   “It’s a difficult notion for an 18-year-old -- self-regulation,” Donovan said. “Our society doesn’t encourage that anymore.” 
   
   To contact the reporter on this story: Michael McDonald in Boston at mmcdonald10@bloomberg.net 
   
   To contact the editors responsible for this story: John Hechinger at jhechinger@bloomberg.net Stephen West ||||| According to the Valley News, 64 Dartmouth students have been charged with honor code violations after the school discovered widespread cheating in an ethics course designed to help struggling student-athletes. 
   
   Almost a quarter of those enrolled in "Sports, Ethics and Religion" this fall are said to have participated in the scheme, which involved students answering questions for absent classmates on electronic devices designed to record attendance. 
   
   "I feel pretty burned by the whole thing," religion professor Randall Balmer told Bloomberg. "I've never faced anything on this scale before." 
   
   Rather than flunk the accused students, Balmer ultimately decided dropping their scores by a letter grade was the right thing to do, not that any of them would know it. ||||| Department of Religion Chairman Randall Balmer, who in November accused some of his students of misrepresenting their class attendance, said that “with a few exceptions, most of the students were suspended for a term.” 
   
   The college’s head of judicial affairs, Leigh Remy, declined to comment, though spokeswoman Diana Lawrence confirmed the number of students facing possible sanctions. 
   
   Lawrence said that the college would not make detailed comments on the judicial proceedings until the appeals process ends in mid-January. 
   
   According to Balmer, in late October, students who failed to attend class passed off handheld devices known as “clickers” to classmates. Those students then used the gadgets to answer questions on the absent students’ behalf to make it appear as though they were present in class, Balmer said. 
   
   Though Balmer said that 43 students — less than the total number of students facing sanctions — handed off their clickers to their peers, some others confessed to him that they had helped their friends cheat. 
   
   The course in question was originally intended to help student-athletes, who sometimes had trouble with the coursework at Dartmouth, Balmer said. After a popular first run last year, the fall term’s class swelled to more than 280 students, and attendance and cheating became a problem. 
   
   Balmer left Columbia University to teach at Dartmouth in 2012. He also contributes regular essays to the Valley News’ Perspectives section. 
   
   In the Dec. 7 Valley News piece “Whatever Happened to Honor at College?”, Balmer argued that the college’s 53-year-old academic honor principle was out of touch with the mores of current-day society, where he said personal advancement outranks abstract moral principles. 
   
   “The whole affair is sad and regrettable,” he wrote. “Dozens of students will very likely have a stain on their college transcripts. A level of trust between professor and student, so necessary for effective teaching and learning, has been broken. Dartmouth’s reputation as a first-class educational institution (which it is) has taken a hit, at least in the short term.” 
   
   He said that he had first sought to resolve the matter outside of the college judicial process, but that academic regulations forced him to report the students. 
   
   Dartmouth’s student handbook outlines the potential sanctions a student faces for honor code violations. 
   
   “Given the fundamental nature of the Academic Honor Principle in an academic community, students should expect to be suspended if they engage in acts of academic dishonesty,” it says. “Any student who submits work which is not his or her own, or commits other acts of academic dishonesty, violates the purposes of the College and is subject to disciplinary action, up to and including suspension or separation.” 
   
   Additionally, faculty members “may reserve the right to fail the student for the exercise, the course, or both.” 
   
   Balmer said in an email Wednesday night that “after many sleepless nights,” he had decided to drop the marks of the accused students by a full letter grade, rather than fail them. 
   
   Dartmouth runs on 10-week terms, and as part of the “D-Plan” schedule, students may be away from campus during the year for internships, foreign study programs or other reasons. The college judicial affairs website says that suspended students may not participate in any of Dartmouth’s academic or extracurricular activities, nor may they obtain course credits elsewhere during their punishment. 
   
   A spokesman for the athletic department could not be reached for comment Wednesday on whether sports players could see additional sanctions from their coaches. 
   
   Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.
target: – One might expect students taking a class called "Sports, Ethics, and Religion" to know better, but Dartmouth College says that it's uncovered widespread cheating in a class with that title, reports Bloomberg. "I feel pretty burned by the whole thing," says class professor Randall Balmer, who says he found 43 kids were using a clicker to answer questions for absent students. "I’ve never faced anything on this scale before." After he made the bust, and reported it as an honor code violation, another 21 students came forward. The class was aimed at jocks, and many of those accused are student athletes, notes the Valley News. Laments Dartmouth's ethics institute director, the current generation was "raised with the notion that they are the best, not with the notions of integrity, responsibility, and self-sacrifice. It’s a difficult notion for an 18-year-old—self-regulation." Balmer opted to drop students by a letter grade rather than flunk them, in what Gawker says is "the right thing to do, not that any of them would know it."