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Show Tuesday, Page 8 v 2012 ei 0 Sept. 25, =Free Speech Zone ini Opinions on this page (columns, letters unless otherwise identified are not from Utah Statesman staff, but from a wide variety of members of the campus community who have strong opinions, just like you do! This is an open forum. Want to write something? Contact: statesman@aggiemaiLusu.edu Utah State University • Logan, Utah • www.utahstatesnnan.com Canvas error not exactly a scandal A software glitch giving students power to change their grades sounds like a sure-fire disaster. The result? A handful of students made changes to grades during the Instructure Canvas glitch earlier this month — a far cry from chaos and pandemonium. Of the 30 students across the state who changed grades, three were from USU. Of the three, two lowered their scores. As ingrained as cheatAn Editorial Opinion ing is in American education, this does not seem like students' best attempt to cheat. It doesn't even agree with trends. Researchers estimate 70 percent of college students cheat. A couple of weeks before the Canvas glitch, a different college made headlines for a cheating scandal. Half the students in a roughly 250-student Harvard course are under investigation for cheating on an openbook, open-notes, open-Internet take-home final exam. On first glance, cheating on an open-Internet exam doesn't even seem possible, but The Chronicle of Higher Education reports the students are under suspicion of plagiarism and inappropriate collaboration. At least some of the blame in the Harvard scandal belongs to the instructors — an openeverything test doesn't seem designed to prevent cheating. Collaborating seems to be the one thing that wasn't allowed, but if a group of students studied together for the test, their answers would seem like collaboration. And sad though it seems, when students are faced with the choice between 15 minutes of their own work and five seconds of clicking to copy and paste an answer, many will choose the latter. Students in Utah schools aren't all saints, regardless of religious affiliation. It's clear that most (if not all) who changed scores during the Canvas glitch had no idea what they were doing. If they did, however, we might be looking at a bona-fide scandal. If all college students in Utah knew exactly when and how they could have changed their grades, we'd see a different picture of our academic integrity. Doing thorough legwork in the copy-andpaste era calls for grit and personal conviction. In large classrooms, it's easy to rationalize that one plagiarized answer will be lost in the crowd. The Canvas glitch may help students realize that cheating can be detected in some instances. Instructure should be commended for a quick and transparent disclosure of a mistake the programmers could easily have brushed under the rug. Though the Canvas glitch didn't turn into a scandal, instructors and students should reexamine their academic practices. Are we taking shortcuts, or are we part of the 30 percent? I FOUND THE TURGID PLOT RIFE WITH HOLES THAT NO AMOUNT OF CGI COULD FILL„, "I* i di 11- 40 i '(, '4 1 ro i , P R r" -rme.tomsprspegc44_ i, , _ , ■s., ?, ''`■ OVERALI .., II i GIVE THE YOUTUI3E CUP THREE ' !, , Q.IT! ! n 4, , 1 ,0' 1, Air mwr UPON 'All AT TIE MOV15: DECLARE 311-1Al2 ON "aAICNAM STYLE! A look at what others are saying SHANGHAI — Ever since the 1970s, I have known that the Chinese people are the freest and most democratic people in the world. Each year at my elementary school in Shanghai, the teachers mentioned this fact repeatedly in ethics and politics classes. Our textbooks, feigning innocence, asked us if freedom and democracy in capitalist countries could really be what they proclaimed it to be. Then there would be all kinds of strange logic and unsourced examples, but because I always counted silently to myself in those classes instead of paying attention, the government's project was basically wasted on me. By secondary school and college, my mind was unusually hard to brainwash. Even so, during my college years, I still hated Japan. I felt that the Japanese had killed so many of my countrymen, the vast majority of them civilians, that it wasn't enough that they had eventually surrendered. It was only after studying Japanese and reading additional historical materials that I gradually understood - ,1 rah ► See LEFT, Page 9 AColumn Divided Two students take two angles on one political issue hadn't purchased the Diaoyu Islands, the Chinese government wouldn't have opened the net a little, allowing them to take to the streets last week. The demonstrators chanted monotonous and boring slogans, like telling the Japanese to get the hell out of the Diaoyu Islands; plainclothes cops intermingled with the marchers, keeping in nervous contact through their earpieces. Protesters even carried images of Mao, who died in 1976, though I wish he had died much earlier. Many of the young marchers were terribly excited. For decades, TV shows about the AntiJapanese War of 19311945 had distorted historical facts and turned the Japanese into a stupid, aggressive, cruel race of cockroaches that needed to be exterminated. Amusingly, the Chinese actors portraying those Japanese devils only spoke Chinese, bowing and scraping shamelessly, their every move no different from those of corrupt officials throughout China today. Now, the Chinese government feels that it's not enough to smear the enemy through television alone, and the time has come to allow young people to demonstrate, a chance young people welcome ►See CHINA, Page 9 Any time someone dies in the service of our country, it should be looked on as a tragedy and not politicized. The attacks that led to the killing of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya are a tragedy. Details are still coming forward about the attacks, so I will shy away from making assumptions as to what exactly happened that day. I'm not one that is going to jump to conclusions and blame President Obama for the attacks, but I would like to make a couple points regarding the administration's reaction to the attacks and the lack of preparation for such an attack. The initial response by the Obama administration was that the attacks were a direct reaction by a group of angry people about a YouTube video titled "The Innocence of Muslims" who spontaneously decided to attack the American consulate in Libya. The video is poorly-made and attempts to discredit Islam's first prophet. I think that the Obama administration erred in its assessment. Certainly any attack that happens on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on our nation should trigger a red flag as being deliberate and planned. In my view, the administration showed more condemnation toward the filmmaker than toward those that killed innocent Americans. Since the adminis►See RIGHT, Page 9 Features Editor Natasha Bodily Tavin Stucki Obama, Romney differ on foreign policy The foreign policy Mike McPhie achievements of Barack Obama are arguably the most successful in recent From history. Osama bin Laden is dead, the wars overseas left are coming to an end, the world is rid of dictators and terrorists and we have built stronger relationships with our allies across the globe. The President's handling of international affairs earned the Nobel Peace Prize and created an ideal balance between strength and diplomacy in the path to a more peaceful world. The biggest international challenge came from the ongoing wars in the Middle East, which had killed thousands of American soldiers and cost over a trillion dollars. Obama brought about a peaceful end to the war in Iraq after nearly a decade of violence. In Afghanistan, he took the advice of his generals and ordered a surge of troops to quickly neutralize enemy forces and make the country safer. Under his direction, all the troops will be home in 2014. He showed strength against an oppressive dictator in Libya as the U.S. joined a coalition with our allies to provide limited support to pro-democratic forces. Obama has placed strong emphasis on working with nations around the world to advance our mutual interests rather than resorting to unilateral warfare. The greatest success of the Obama administration was the death of Osama bin Laden. On the President's order, a team of Navy Seals killed America's most dan- News Senior Writer Tmera Bradley Sports Editor Free speech in China the true face of history: When the Japanese I army invaded China in I 1931, Mao Zedong, in those days still a guerrilla fighter, turned and ran. Chiang Kai-shek, China's nominal president at the time, stayed behind to fight the Japanese in his wartime capital of Chongqing, but Mao's Communist Party fled to the north to establish a base of anti Japanese resistance in the provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia, where there was no Japanese army at all. Today's youth are repeating the same growth experience I had, but unlike my generation, whose hatred of Japan remained at the verbal level, they have taken the streets to demonstrate. Even though China's permits constitution demonstrations, the government prohibits them except in special circumstances. Anyone familiar with Chinese history knows that when Chinese law says one thing, it might mean the opposite. For example, Chinese law says that everyone is equal before the law, but in fact Hu Jintao and his colleagues are more equal than everyone else. So, Chinese young people today ought to thank the Japanese government, for if it Allee Wilkinson Features Senior Writer Drew Van Dyke titiri ... World Vie Steve Kent News Editor -'( - ---- Editor in Chief Eric Jungblut 0 '...s... A bou tU S Copy Editor „ -, - / -- -- „Mill STILTED DIALOGUE, tHE ACTORS SEEMED To PHONE I.T_IN _ LLIKE Tl-IE MOTHER LESS SONS OF DOGS THEY ARE- Sports Senior Writer Curtis Lundstrom Photo Editor Delayne Locke Senior Photographer Curtis Ripplinger Web Editor Karli Brand Editorial Staff: Steve Kent Allee Evensen Delayne Locke Tavin Stucki Eric Jungblut Natasha Bodily Karli Brand About letters • Letters should be limited to 400 words. • All letters may be shortened, edited or rejected for reasons of good taste, redundancy or volume of similar letters. • Letters must be topic oriented. They may not be directed toward individuals. Any letter directed to a specific individual may be edited or not printed. • No anonymous letters will be published. Writers must sign all letters and include a phone number or e-mail address as well as a student identification number (none of which is published). 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