Thoughts, tips, and reminders for good ways of helping your son navigate the temptation of cheating.

Dear Parents,

As you may have heard through national broadcast news coverage – AI, Bots, ChatGPT, and several other artificial language-based processing tools are rapidly making their way into daily lives. Many of these are now in formats specifically marketed to high school students and have created a whole new world of temptation for students. 

Through no fault of their own, many of your sons recently received spam email solicitations to their Jesuit student email address that appeared to be endorsed by Jesuit High School, inviting them to purchase bots or other artificial intelligence-based programs designed to help them cheat.  The Administration wants to make it clear that these solicitations were in no way associated with Jesuit and certainly are not approved for student use.  In addition to emails, some solicitors are using Instagram, YouTube, and other mediums that students commonly engage with to convince them that there are ways for them to cheat without getting caught. 

The Administration, Faculty, and Staff at Jesuit is very proud of the fact that a large number of our students shared these recent solicitation attempts with us and allowed us to investigate ways to prevent these types of unsolicited scams from reaching our students in the future.  The Assistant Principal of Academics, Mr. Colin O’Connor recently sent an email to all students that we think received the spam email message last weekend to help raise their awareness of the dangers of engaging with this type of phishing scam.  We will work to tighten our email restrictions to hopefully catch these unsolicited emails from reaching their Jesuit email account in the future, we cannot stop students from coming across these platforms in other ways.

This information was shared with your son directly by the Dean’s Office on April 27.  Please take a moment to review the content of this message and discuss it with your son at home.  We hope that this invitation provides an opportunity for your family to have a good and healthy conversation about the value you place on integrity as a family and why that is such an important trait for your son to embody. 

Please do not hesitate to reach out to us if you have questions or concerns.

AMDG

La Roddric C. Theodule, M. Ed.

Dean of Students | Assistant Principal

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The message that your son received via email from the Dean’s Office reads as follows:

Good afternoon gentlemen

As we prepare to enter into the final two weeks of the semester, I wanted to take a moment to re-share some helpful tips and reminders regarding good ways of protecting your academic integrity on the heels of Mr. O’Connor’s message this past weekend.  Please take a moment to review the content of this message.  The Dean’s Office, your counselors, your teachers, or any trusted adult on campus would be happy to discuss any questions you may have regarding your academic work and maintaining your personal and academic integrity.  You are encouraged to stop by to speak with any of us as you continue to prepare for your final projects, papers, and exams of the semester.

Membean Bots, ChatGPT, and several other AI formats marketed to high school students has created a whole new world of temptation for students.  It’s not always easy to do the right thing and refrain from using these tools in unapproved ways, but it is important that you do.  Not just because cheating can lead to you earning a zero on an assignment, a failing grade in a class, or expulsion from school.  More important than that, it is important that you refrain from all forms of academic dishonesty because it violates the trust you have established with your teachers and with your family, all of whom are invested in helping you make progress in learning what it means to be a man of integrity.  As we state in our educational philosophy, Jesuit High School is Catholic and, therefore, it is based on a faith response to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  In response to the Gospel message, all members of the Jesuit High School family – that is parents, faculty, administrators, staff and students – share in the mission of nurturing in each other the social skills and cultural awareness necessary for Christian community.  We commit ourselves to the highest standards including the promotion of academic integrity. Our collective commitment to academic honesty upholds the mutual respect and moral integrity that our school community values and nurtures.

Five recommendations for end-of-year

The following five recommendations are important points of emphasis for students as we prepare for the completion of the 2022-23 school year. These recommendations are also reflective of similar dialogue that the faculty and staff at Jesuit have been engaged in with you throughout the school year as well as in previous school years. I encourage you to spend some time reviewing each of these items as we prepare for the final two weeks of classes and final exams.

1. You should feel comfortable seeking clarity about prohibited and permitted resources from your teachers

Ask questions about what resources you are and are not permitted to use. Class books? All books? Materials posted in Classroom? Your own class notes? The internet? Your classmates? Your friends and family? Your teachers may or may not allow you to use more resources for your final exam than they would in a normal classroom exam, but you should not assume what is permitted. Teachers make deliberate choices about why you are allowed to use certain resources if any. Ask your teacher for ideas about how to get started or any other questions you may have so that you are following your teachers expectations. Rather than assuming you and your teacher have a common understanding, take the steps to create common understanding and avoid any confusion about expectations.

Sometimes, you begin a project believing you understand the expectations for that assignment. As you progress, you find new questions arise. Before you begin an exam or a project, ask your teacher in what ways they prefers that you seek clarification during the project or exam (i.e. email, visits to office hours, questions in class, etc).

2. Remember the importance of equality and equity in the classroom environment and take steps to preserve it.

Our teachers strive to create an inclusive learning environment for all course materials including final exams and other assessments. We know you place a high value on equality and equity too. So, for example, your teacher might allow everyone to use class notes, but prohibit everyone from consulting other students. These sorts of boundaries create a more equitable academic assessment for all students. The faculty, staff, and administration rely on you as partners in this pursuit of equity for all members of our learning environment.

3. Students should plan ahead to avoid pressure and confusion

Many of the academic integrity cases we see occur when students are rushed and/or take shortcuts to complete an assignment.  Sometimes you are confused about the expectations and don’t have time to seek clarification. This often leads to asking a friend to see their work to “get ideas to get started,” which then opens both you and your friend up to potentially serious academic and disciplinary consequences. Using an online calendar, hand-written planner, Google Classroom, or other tools designed to help you keep assignments and due dates organized will help you chart out a plan for timely completion of your assignments.  In addition, consulting your teacher and seeking ideas to get started, clarification about the directions, or any other questions about the assignment as opposed to relying on friends or other students in the class to share their ideas is an important step to avoid a potential incidence of cheating or plagiarism.

4. To the best of your ability, students should attempt to anticipate roadblocks and share those with their teachers and their counselor.

At Jesuit, we seek to actively practice Cura Personalis or care for the whole person.  One piece of feedback that we have heard from many families is that what makes Jesuit a special community is the commitment to and care for each individual student that our faculty and staff regularly exhibit.  While we may not be perfect, we are constantly discussing the ways in which we can meet you where you are and seek to be a support system to all of you both in the classroom and in life.  Faculty may or may not be able to modify the learning environment or an individual assessment, but in all cases, we encourage you to share whatever challenges you are facing and seek support resources. If you’re not sure where to go to seek assistance, you can always contact your counselor or the Dean’s Office.

5. All students must understand the school’s Academic Integrity policy

Remember that the Academic Integrity policy (see pg. 15 of the Student-Parent Handbook) is an important tool for ensuring the value of everyone’s work. You are encouraged to review the definitions of cheating and plagiarism, which are described briefly below as well. Students and faculty all come to Jesuit from different academic, cultural, and professional backgrounds, so being explicit in reviewing these important definitions and policies is important.

Key definitions regarding Academic Integrity include

• Cheating – intentionally or knowingly using or attempting to use unauthorized materials, information, or study aids in any academic exercise; engaging in unauthorized collaboration in any academic exercise; violating rules governing administration of examinations.
   
• Fabrication – intentionally or knowingly, or unauthorized falsification or invention of any data, information, or citation in an academic exercise; giving false or misleading information regarding an academic matter.
   
• Plagiarism – intentionally or knowingly representing the words, ideas, or sequence of ideas of another as one’s own in any academic exercise; failure to provide the appropriate credit or citation to the original author by any of the following: missing quotations, paraphrasing the author’s words, rewording a passage, or failure to submit a complete and accurate works cited page; submitting the same or substantially the same work in more than one class without prior permission of both teachers; 
  
  This also includes submitting work created using ChatGPT and other AI resources as well as all other paper writing services.  All work that is not originally your own must be properly cited to correctly assign credit and avoid plagiarism.
   
• Facilitating academic dishonesty – intentionally or knowingly helping or attempting to help another to commit an act of academic dishonesty, including but not limited to sharing your work with another student without permission from your teacher.

Again, if you have any questions or concerns, please stop by to see us over the last couple of weeks of the semester.  We are very happy to provide any clarification you need to help you avoid an academic integrity violation.

Dean Theodule and Dean Smith