The Voice of OC interviews trustee candidates REEVE and DACK (Reeve: "I have seen first-hand the bias of the faculty")

Who Should Run Our Community Colleges? Here’s Where Candidates Stand on the Issues (Voice of OC)  

BY NICK GERDA Oct 27, 2022 

… 

   Reporters reached out to all 12 community college board candidates and sent them a list of questions, several of which were submitted by readers in response to a public invitation for questions. 

   Nine of the 12 candidates provided answers. 

   Candidates were allowed up to 350 characters per answer, to keep the total length reasonable. 

[DtB here offers excerpts of the Reeve and Dack interviews {SOCCCD board candidates}; for the FULL INTERVIEWS, go to Reeve and Dack] 

Noted plagiarist Derek Reeve

South Orange County Community College District, Trustee Area 4 

[AREA 4: Terri Whitt Rydell, the incumbent, will be opposed by Derek Reeve:]

What are your thoughts on the curriculum at the colleges in your district? What if any changes would you advocate for? 

Derek Reeve: “As a former Saddleback College professor, I have seen first-hand the bias of the faculty and curriculum at our district. Many professors are openly hostile to students due to their political and religious beliefs. To properly educate students we must obtain a viewpoint balance among our faculty and the textbooks they assign.”

What’s your stance on pandemic measures like masking on campus, including during future waves of COVID-19? Have you supported or opposed the state’s pandemic rules regarding vaccinations, mask wearing and remote learning? 

Reeve: “Unlike the incumbent [Whitt Rydell], I absolutely will NOT vote for a mask mandate. While I have been vaccinated, it doesn’t prevent transmission. Thus, a vaccine mandate is unnecessarily intrusive and a violation of one’s privacy. These mandates created a segregated student population, and are in many cases prohibiting students from attending classes altogether.” 

What’s your stance on the debate about free speech on campus? 

Reeve: “I will push for adoption and enforcement of a distinct wide ‘COLLEGE BILL OF RIGHTS’ that protects students and employees’ freedom of speech, expression and privacy. As a former Saddleback College professor, I have seen first-hand suppression of speech not approved by the union’s political action committee. Many examples are well documented.”

What’s your position on raises for professors? And what is your relationship like with the faculty union(s) in your district? 

Reeve: “The district allocates all curriculum and hiring authority to the faculty. The professors thus hire like-minded professors with no chance of securing viewpoint diversity. I pledge I will never vote for a pay increase without a structural change to this process. My plan brings viewpoint balance to the faculty through the retention of new faculty.” 

Do you support publicly posting meeting agendas earlier? If so, how early? And what if any steps would you take to increase public input in budget decisions? 

Reeve: “I support all agendas being posted two weeks before each meeting. As I did with the city, I will not require residents to complete a speaker slip in order to make public comments and I will not stop a speaker from making unpopular comments. Furthermore, I will facilitate public comments at meetings via the internet or telephone.” 

South Orange County Community College District, Trustee Area 6, Short Term 

[AREA 6: Ryan Dack and Pramod Kunju* are running for the seat vacated by James Wright] 

What are your thoughts on the curriculum at the colleges in your district? What if any changes would you advocate for? 

Ryan Dack: “The curriculum in our community college district is developed by the faculty and their department. New courses can be suggested by any faculty member if the need for the course is justified (eg. is there an equivalent UC Course?). I think the Board’s role should remain limited in this process.” 

What’s your position on raises for professors? And what is your relationship like with the faculty union(s) in your district? 

Dack: “As a teacher in Orange County, I understand the challenges associated with working in education while living in a high-cost-of-living area. Additionally, our district was at one time a top community college district in California, but its ranking has dropped in recent years. Working with the union to increase compensation could reverse this trend.” 

What is your solution for keeping colleges safe? What specific procedures and protocols? 

Dack: “While our culture has improved since the Me Too movement, I do want to ensure that there is accountability when a student comes forward with a safety concern, including sexual harassment. These should always be taken seriously, and every report needs to be thoroughly investigated as a priority.” 

Do you support publicly posting meeting agendas earlier? If so, how early? And what if any steps would you take to increase public input in budget decisions? 

Dack: “Currently, board meeting agendas are made public five days before regularly scheduled meetings. The logistics of getting the board agenda out any earlier would be difficult, but again, I do think these agendas can be more easily accessible on the Board of Trustees’ website.”

What are the top three things you want to see get more or less funding as a board member? 

Dack: “I want to see more funding directed toward mental health services, reproductive health services, and college affordability programs.”

AGAIN,  for the FULL INTERVIEWS, go to Reeve and Dack

See also SOCCCD trustee candidates: statements 

*Note: Pramod Kunju, who, like Whitt Rydell, chose not to submit answers to VOC questions, has the endorsement of former SOCCCD trustee and current right wing lunatic Don Wagner, as does Whitt Rydell, another current right wing lunatic, despite union backing

Cheating. A growing problem (and the head-in-sand crowd + obnoxious Woketry)

Covid-19 forced colleges to move teaching online, where there are many opportunities for cheating about which faculty are unfamiliar. It seems to many of us that there's lots of cheating going on in our courses, and we need help to combat it. Some faculty have decided to bury their heads in the sand about the increase in student cheating. Indeed, some concerned faculty who draw attention to the problem are accused by some of their colleagues of undermining equity—or simply teaching badly. Good grief. —RB

* * *

Some Students Use Chegg to Cheat. 

The Site Has Stopped Helping Colleges Catch Them

Chronicle of Higher Education 

By Taylor Swaak 

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022 

Chegg is no longer providing student information to colleges conducting honor-code investigations through the platform. The company, along with competitors such as Course Hero and Bartleby, markets itself as a resource for college students seeking homework help and tutoring. These companies have cultivated reputations, though, as conduits for cheating, as some students misuse the platforms to seek answers to exam questions and other assignments. Faculty members say Chegg, which as of August reported 5.3 million subscribers, used to be an industry outlier in its willingness to share user-level data with institutions on a case-by-case basis — including IP addresses, user names and emails of those who had posted exam questions or even reviewed answers — as an accountability tool to deter cheating. 

“Chegg was the only site that was willing to actually engage with me,” recalled Ajay Shenoy, an associate professor of economics at the University of California at Santa Cruz, who used Chegg’s honor-code investigations process in early 2020 to identify three of his students who’d posted his exam questions on the platform. “It made me feel like Chegg might actually care about academic integrity.” According to Chegg’s honor-code policy, which was updated on August 8, the company cooperates with colleges, but — in the interest of student privacy — is now providing only the date and time stamps of when questions and solutions are posted. Chegg officials declined to outline the company’s past disclosure practices. 

Study: online exam cheating is up 

Inside Higher Ed 

Apr 28, 2022  

Rates of cheating in online examinations have hit a record high, according to proctoring data that show one in 14 students was caught breaking the rules last year. 

A global analysis of data on three million tests that used the ProctorU proctoring platform found that “confirmed breaches” of test regulations—incidents where there was clear evidence of misconduct—were recorded in 6.6 percent of all cases. 

This is nearly 14 times higher than the 0.5 percent misconduct rate detected in the 15 months prior to the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which triggered the widespread adoption of online assessments and, with this, a surge in the use of online proctoring services such as ProctorU. 

. . . .

Confirmed breaches included candidates looking at papers or books they should not have had, other people being present in the room during an assessment, or a student attempting to take a test on behalf of a classmate. 

[ProctorU founder Jarrod] Morgan said rates of cheating would likely be even higher at universities that did not use online proctoring, and he expressed concern that such high levels of rule breaking could devalue students’ qualifications.

. . . .

A report from ProctorU also details misconduct that did not amount to a definite breach of the rules. Nearly two-thirds of higher education students (64.4 percent) arrived at exams last year with “unpermitted resources” such as textbooks or mobile phones, while exam supervisors had to intervene to clarify or enforce rules to prevent potential cheating in nearly one in five cases (19.1 percent).

 

Another problem with shifting education online: A rise in cheating 

The Washington Post 

By Derek Newton 

August 7, 2020 

When universities went online in response to the coronavirus pandemic, so did the tests their students took. But one of the people who logged on to take an exam in a pre-med chemistry class at a well-known Mid-Atlantic university turned out not to be a student at all. 

He was a plant. An impostor. A paid ringer. 

Proctors — remote monitors some schools have hired to watch test-takers through their webcams — discovered by reviewing video recordings that this same person had taken tests for at least a dozen students enrolled at seven universities across the country. 

… 

Universal online testing has created a documented increase in cheating, often because universities, colleges and testing companies were unprepared for the scale of the transformation or unable or unwilling to pay for safeguards, according to faculty members and testing experts. 

Even with trained proctors watching test-takers and checking their IDs, cheating is up. Before the coronavirus forced millions of students online, one of the companies that provides that service, ProctorU, caught people cheating on fewer than 1 percent of the 340,000 exams it administered from January through March. During the height of remote testing, the company says, the number of exams it supervised jumped to 1.3 million from April through June, and the cheating rate rose above 8 percent. 

“We can only imagine what the rate of inappropriate testing activity is when no one is watching,” said Scott McFarland, chief executive of ProctorU. 

… 

Ninety-three percent of instructors think students are more likely to cheat online than in person, according to a survey conducted in May by the publishing and digital education company Wiley. Only a third said they were using some type of proctoring to prevent it. Many colleges and universities moved ahead with online testing without supervision to save money. Others opted instead for less expensive, scaled-down kinds of test security, such as software that can lock a web browser while a student takes a test. 

… 

Online tests have also meant a booming business for companies that sell homework and test answers, including Chegg and Course Hero. Students pay subscription fees to get answers to questions on tests or copies of entire tests with answers already provided. The tests are uploaded by other students who have already taken them, in exchange for credits, or answers are quickly provided by “tutors” who work for the sites. 

Though these sites have been around since before the pandemic, their use appears to have exploded as more tests are given online. Students used Chegg to allegedly cheat on online exams and tests in the spring at schools including Georgia Tech, Boston University, North Carolina State and Purdue, according to faculty at those institutions and news reports. 

At North Carolina State, more than 200 of the 800 students in a single Statistics 311 class were referred for disciplinary action for using “tutor-provided solutions” to exam questions from Chegg, said Tyler Johnson, the course coordinator. 

… 

The number of students who are cheating is almost certainly higher than the number being caught or reported. Research has shown that instructors believe cheating happens much less often than students do, which means they may not be looking for it. When they do find it, many choose to simply give cheaters an F, without reporting the incidents further. 

…

“One student with a pattern of cheating is an ethical problem for that student. Multiple students with a pattern of cheating devalues any grade or degree they might be receiving,” said Steve Saladin, a co-author of a study published in the spring by the Journal of the National College Testing Association. “And when cheating spreads to many students in many programs and schools, degrees and grades cease to provide a measure of an individual’s preparedness for a profession or position. And perhaps even more importantly, it suggests a society that blindly accepts any means to an end as a given.” 

Former Cheater-in-chief

The rise of contract cheating during the COVID-19 pandemic: a qualitative study through the eyes of academics in Kuwait 

Inan Deniz Erguvan 

Language Testing in Asia volume 11, Article number: 34 (2021)  

In recent years, violations of academic integrity by students have increased and received attention from researchers, institutions, journalists, and policy-makers. While these violations vary widely, one emerging problem called ‘contract cheating’ has seen a global rise, across all disciplines. This sinister style of cheating has been aggravated “by the commodification of higher education and the increasingly popular sharing economy” (Williamson, 2019). 

The phrase ‘contract cheating’ was first created by Clarke and Lancaster (2006). Contract cheating occurs when somebody other than the student does the assignment, passes it onto the student who turns it in to gain academic credit. Some argue that contract cheating should involve a monetary transaction between a student and a company (paper mill), whereas others define it as a student outsourcing his or her work, without necessarily having to pay anything for it (Eaton & Turner, 2020). It is worth mentioning that over the last decade, an industry, in which some companies or agencies, also known as paper mills, are paid to undertake this kind of academic work has emerged (The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, 2020). 

Contract cheating can be observed in any kind of written work, such as essay writing, science lab projects, computer-based projects and assignments, or any other technical work. Another point that needs clarifying is the difference between contract cheating and ghostwriting. Although two concepts are sometimes used interchangeably, the intention is not the same. For example, unless the celebrity is a well-known writer, it is presumed that he or she will be getting some assistance with their book. It may be acceptable to some extent to pay someone to ghostwrite a book; however, when contract cheating is involved in an assignment or a test, the instructor is deprived of a valuable tool to evaluate the student’s knowledge and score his or her performance reliably (Bretag, 2018). 

Although students have been documented to pay third parties to carry out academic work in their name since the 1970s, with the advent of the Internet there has been a surge in contract cheating. Globally, universities are literally struggling to combat contract cheating. According to Lee (2019), in Australia, 16 universities were shocked by almost 1000 students utilizing a website to ghostwrite essays. The New York Times highlighted the rise of contract cheating in North America, in 2019. The Varsity Blues Scandal also clearly displayed that student were cheating to gain admissions into reputable universities and thus hiring others to complete assignments on their behalf (Lee, 2019). Bretag et al. (2019) stated that 5.8% of university students take part in one or more types of cheating; however, a high percentage of students participate in ‘sharing’ behaviors, such as buying, selling, or trading assignments for others. Studies from various countries have found the prevalence of contract cheating to range from 3.5% in Australia (Curtis & Clare, 2017) to 18.9% in Turkey (Eret & Ok, 2014). Also, a study in Czechia found 34% of students knew someone who got engaged in contract cheating, and 87% of students were aware of paper mills (Foltynek & Kralikova, 2018). 

There are some strong indications that the potential for academic cheating has become even worse during the COVID-19 pandemic when universities all over the world had to shift to online learning. This shift has allowed more opportunities for students to complete assignments with online assistance; as a result, contract cheating has emerged as a real threat to academic integrity. Students believed that cheating in online exams was easier than the ones held in person; therefore, they tend to cheat more during online (King et al. 2009) 

… Contract cheating is a serious academic misconduct that threatens the academic integrity of the student’s grades and their qualifications. The consequences are not limited to individuals, as contract cheating also raises suspicion about all the degrees awarded by an institution. The effects of plagiarism and cheating continue even after formal education is completed (Williamson, 2019). Some studies demonstrated that undergraduate students, who engage in academic misconduct, are more likely to display inappropriate behaviors during their work life and there is a strong correlation between self-reported academic dishonesty and the level of corruption of a country (Guerrero-Dib et.al. 2020; Orosz et al. 2018). According to Bretag (2019), contract cheating is a threat to public safety as future doctors, engineers, and social workers who have outsourced their learning could pose a serious risk for the society. When researchers and scientists purchase their theses, publications, and qualifications, they will even endanger the credibility of science. 

Cheating on the rise in UK universities during Covid, say researchers 

The Guardian UK

Call for student essay-writing services to be outlawed to preserve academic integrity 

10 Feb 2021

UK researchers are warning of an alarming rise in cheating in universities since the Covid pandemic hit, after detecting a tripling of requests to a major “homework help” website and an increase in the number of “essay mills” as courses and assessments have moved online. 

Researchers at Imperial College London (ICL) studied requests to Chegg, a US-based homework support website, and found students were using the site to ask for help with exam-style questions and receiving answers live, potentially within exam time limits, raising concerns about the credibility of online assessment. The warning came as the former universities minister Chris Skidmore introduced a 10-minute rule bill in the Commons seeking to outlaw essay-writing services in the UK, saying they threaten to “damage academic integrity beyond repair”.

… Skidmore also cited the ICL research, which focused on requests submitted to Chegg by students in five subjects – computer science, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, physics and chemistry – and compared the number of requests between April and August 2019 with the same period in 2020. 

The analysis found the number of requests had increased by 196.25%. “This increase corresponds with the time when many courses moved to be delivered and assessed online,” the paper said. “The growing number of requests indicates that students are using Chegg for assessment and exam help frequently and in a way that is not considered permissible by universities.” 

The paper, written by Prof Thomas Lancaster and Codrin Cotarlan and published in the International Journal for Educational Integrity, calls for academic institutions to put interventions in place “to minimise the risk to educational standards posed by sites such as Chegg, particularly since increased online teaching and assessment may continue after the pandemic”.

… 

Essay mills have been a growing source of concern in the UK higher education sector in recent years, but the threat has been magnified by the pandemic as students reach out for their services on “a mass scale”.

Reports Of Cheating At Colleges Soar During The Pandemic 

NPR 

August 27, 2021 

As college moved online in the COVID-19 crisis, many universities are reporting increases, sometimes dramatic ones, in academic misconduct. At Virginia Commonwealth University, reports of academic misconduct soared during the 2020-21 school year, to 1,077 — more than three times the previous year's number. At the University of Georgia, cases more than doubled; from 228 in the fall of 2019 to more than 600 last fall. And, at The Ohio State University, reported incidents of cheating were up more than 50% over the year before. 

. . . .

Unauthorized collaboration was a big factor in reports of misconduct at Virginia Commonwealth, says Karen Belanger, the university's director of student conduct and academic integrity. "They were so desperate to connect that they were using — or in some courses being encouraged to create — group chats," she says. 

"Those chats then became a place where they may talk about homework or talk about exam questions."

Students Cheat. How Much Does It Matter? 

Chronicle of Higher Education 

OCTOBER 21, 2020 

As the pandemic continues, the debate grows louder....

 

Cheating, Inc.: How Writing Papers for American College Students Has Become a Lucrative Profession Overseas 
New York Times
Sep 7, 2019

Amid the college admissions scandal, another type of cheating was overlooked: Students already in college who pay others to write their papers.

President Biden visits IVC - along with OC's Iranian community!

Rebel Girl's favorite sign of the day - carried by another rebel girl.

By Wednesday, the little college in the orange groves was buzzing with the news: President  Joe Biden would be visiting the campus, along with Congresswoman Katie Porter, "to deliver remarks on lowering costs for American families." Access will be strictly limited," advised the notification email. And indeed it was as this was not a rally but part of Biden's swing through the west to stump for candidates.

Rebel Girl didn't make the cut and so had no plans to be on campus except that while on her way to a doctor's appointment, she decided to swing by to pick up a student paper she had left behind. She expected fans of the former president would turn out as they did, in numbers smaller than she expected:

Their flags were big but numbers few.

 Then she saw this:

The angry Iranian community clearly outnumbered the Trumpers. Hundred at first, then over a thousand stood on the corners waiting for the presidential mortorcade.  It was so moving to see the turn-out that Rebel Girl decided to return after the exam and x-rays and diagnosis—and she was so glad she did.

Nothing quite like people turning out to demand justice.  Here are some highlights from both where she rambled and from her lucky pals inside. Was Rebel Girl sad she didn't make the cut? Initially just a bit, but then she realized she was where she usually was, at the barricades. It felt like home.

"Take a photo of my sign, but not me," this woman said.

"Me too," said her friend.

So many women in attendance! When she stopped by the Writing Center, the student aide behind the counter bragged that his mother was out there somewhere in the crowd.

This Secret Service agent calmly explained to an irate Iranian woman that
the Trump supporters had the First Amendment right to be stupid and annoying.  

Were the protesters heard?  Friends inside confirm what others and CNN reports that "Biden made brief comments on the ongoing protests in Iran following ahead of his formal speech, saying that the US stands with the women of Iran."

“Iran has to end the violence against its own citizens simply exercising their fundamental rights,” Biden said. “I’ve been doing foreign policy a long, long time. It stunned me what [the death of Mahsa Amini] awakened in Iran. I want to thank you all for speaking out.”

The Register reports that: "Demonstrators stood sentry around Irvine Valley College, where the president spoke from a small courtyard under a cloudy sky, imploring him to be more forceful in his condemnation of the current Iranian regime. An organizer for the demonstrators estimated there were at least 1,000 in attendance; 'It’s in the thousands,' Irvine Police Department spokesperson Kyle Oldoerp said."

At the special event, local elected officials Supervisor Katrina Foely and State Senator David Min were in attendance among others. Here they are with Desiree Ortiz and Rebecca Beck. Supervisor Don Wagner was spotted as well, scowling in the one photo Rebel Girl saw.

SOCCCD board president Marcia Milchiker (at right).

Toward the end, the red cap crew descended on IVC's vending machines to buy Cheetos.

Dr. Oz visits OC and gives speech in front of Hitler's car!

As usual we can't make this stuff up though we sure wish we could.

Rebel Girl recalls attending a couple IVC Foundation events at the Lyon Air Museum but doesn't remember seeing Hitler's car. She thinks she would remember that. So she called and spoke with a cheerful employee who assured her that Hitler's car had been there a long, time time but also added that "the general has another one at his home for private viewing." 

What's next? Mussolini's Vespa? Franco's yacht?

Anyway, here's Jezebel on the fundraiser that was with a cameo by Jordan Peterson:

Dr. Oz Stood in Front of One of Hitler's Cars at a Fundraiser and Had Jordan Peterson Call In

Excerpt: 

In what continues to be an incredibly puzzling campaign, Dr. Mehmet Oz attended a $5,000-a-plate fundraiser hosted by sex pest Matt Gaetz’s in-laws on Thursday night at the Lyon Air Museum and stood in front of one of Adolf Hitler’s cars, which made it into the background of attendees’ photos.

The museum is full of WWII memorabilia, and yes, it is just a museum. But a campaign allowing their candidate to be photographed at a fundraiser with a car that literally has a swastika on it is quite a choice.

Photos from the event, of course, surfaced on social media, and Twitter user Larry Tenney shared a screenshot from Instagram stories showing Oz standing on a small podium next to a TV monitor showing the logo for the National Republican Senatorial Committee and a hashtag #TheOzShow. Jezebel confirmed the image as coming from the account of Shane Mitchell, who attended the event. Behind Oz is a dark colored wagon that matches photos on the museum’s website of a 1939 Mercedes-Benz Model G4 Offener Touring Wagon. The museum’s own website says:

“This particular G4, 440875, was originally delivered to Adolph Hitler in late 1939 and was used by the Fuhrer in Ober Salzberg, Berlin and Poland until seized by the French Army at Berchtesgaden.”

Let's not go there again.

The new status quo: "Students were not studying and [they] seemingly did not know how to." (yep)

[I couldn't access the original NYT story; so I went with 2nd best:]

Daily Mail, Oct. 3, 2022 

NYU organic chemistry professor is fired after 82 students sign petition to get rid of him for making the subject 'too hard' - as the leading academic defends his teaching methods and blames quality of intake 

• Maitland Jones Jr., 84, was fired from New York University after 82 of his 350 students signed a petition against him 

• Students claimed course materials for his organic chemistry class were too hard and blamed Jones for their poor test scores 

• Jones previously taught at Princeton before moving to a yearly contract teaching at NYU, and later wrote a 1,300-page textbook on the subject he taught 

• Jones said he noticed students struggling to reintegrate to in-person classes post-COVID-19 - a decade after he noticed a loss of focus among his students 

• Former students and NYU faculty defended Jones, citing poor conduct from students 

A New York University professor has been fired after a group of students signed a petition against him suggesting his course was too difficult. 

Maitland Jones Jr., 84, had 82 of his 350 organic chemistry students sign the petition citing Jones' teaching methods and course outline as reasons for their poor grades. 

'We are very concerned about our scores, and find that they are not an accurate reflection of the time and effort put into this class,' the petition said, according to a New York Times report. 

. . . 

[Jones] said the problem with students emerged a decade ago, just a couple years after he moved from Princeton to NYU in 2007, as he noticed a loss of focus in his students. 

As students returned from virtual learning as a result of the pandemic, that problem only got worse. Students were not studying and, Jones said, students seemingly did not know how to. 

'We now see single digit scores and even zeros,' he said. 

. . . 

Jones was not alone in the pushback from students in the return from pandemic learning. 

Kent Kirshenbaum, another organic chemistry professor, discovered students cheating during online tests. Citing poor conduct in his decision to reduce grades, students protested by saying 'they were not given grades that would allow them to get into medical school.' 

Entering 2022, Jones said students were increasingly disengaged. 

'They weren't coming to class, that's for sure, because I can count the house,' Jones said. 'They weren't watching the videos, and they weren't able to answer the questions.' 

Following the course's second midterm - a test which resulted in an average score of 30 - several students began to panic about the course as it was a prerequisite for applying to medical schools. 

Zacharia Benslimane, a Ph.D student at Harvard and former teaching assistant for Jones, emailed NYU in his defense. 

'I think this petition was written more out of unhappiness with exam scores than an actual feeling of being treated unfairly,' he wrote. 'I have noticed that many of the students who consistently complained about the class did not use the resources we afforded to them.' 

Jones said he fears for other professors at the university who may face the same response from faculty. 

'I don't want my job back,' he said. 'I just want to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else.'

They care