Cheating investigation overlooks facts

Friday, February 19, 1999

Cheating investigation overlooks facts

ACADEMICS: University ignores professor’s pleas for hearing on
incident

By Andras J.E. Bodrogligeti

In the Jan. 14 issue of the Daily Bruin (News), Pauline Vu wrote
an article titled "They’re watching you," and mentioned the
cheating incident that occurred in the quarter final test of Turkic
IIIA Modern Literary Uzbek in December 1996.

More than two years after it happened, on the eve of the
administrative hearing of five students involved in the incident,
Vu prepares her audience for the defense’s stand – the proctor has
been expelled, the professor is under investigation. Maybe there
wasn’t even any cheating. He who says there was cheating is a
racist (and an enemy of the people, mea culpa, mea culpa).

Most recently, as I read in the Feb. 10 issue of the Daily Bruin
("Academic senate looks at cheating allegations"), the Academic
Senate discussed the same student cheating at its Tuesday meeting.
I take this opportunity to bring to the attention of the
distinguished members of the Academic Senate that this cheating
case also involved a crime against the professor in his office
during working hours while he was doing his job for which he had
been hired. UCLA, his employer, had the legal obligation to take
immediate action.

In other words, his superiors, chairman Antonio Loprieno,
Associate Dean of Students Cary Porter, Dean Pauline Yu and Provost
Brian P. Copenhaver had the duty to be concerned about the
professor’s situation, and do everything possible to secure his
safety while at work. Failure to do so was a gross negligence on
their part. This was not even mentioned at the Tuesday meeting of
the Academic Senate.

This all happened two years and two months ago. I strongly hoped
that this most bizarre incident, together with its traumatic
aftermath, would be forgotten by now. To facilitate that, I
declined until recently all invitations for TV shows (including
CNN), radio talks and public speeches.

Unfortunately, the issue at hand is not going away.

The news about the en masse cheating, the frantic cover-up by
the administration and the retaliation against the professor and
his proctor by some middle echelon Murphy Hall cadres has gone
beyond campus boundaries and became the object of public concern
and scrutiny.

Letters of inquiry, protest and outrage are still coming, and
reporters keep on asking questions. In their hasty responses,
invited and uninvited representatives of UCLA are anxious to
downplay the incident, even if it means altering the facts and
using good old American double talk.

They make solemn pronouncements about how seriously they take
cheating, anxious to sell the idea that there has been a continued
investigation in this matter which soon will culminate in the
belated showcase hearing of the five "alleged" students who
"allegedly" were involved in the "alleged" cheating.

The cheating incident and what followed afterward, of course,
were an embarrassment for all of us.

We all wish that this infamous act did not happen. But it did,
and something had to be done. In the spirit of due process, I asked
Associate Dean Cary Porter that an informal hearing be held with
all the students present and that we explore together with them
what happened.

I had many questions about this most bizarre event and was eager
to find out who was behind it. There were unmistakable signs that
the students had been encouraged to cheat, maybe to discredit the
class, the professor or both. In the course of the hearing that I
proposed, we may have found some answers.

The informal hearing, however, was not granted. The seven
letters I wrote to the administration in the span of one and a half
years went unanswered. Worst of all, no action whatsoever was taken
nor any interest shown. Evidence proves that those who say there
was an ongoing investigation are not telling the truth.

Maybe we will never know who was behind this incident. Neither
will we be able, I am afraid, to identify that gentleman who, in a
business suit and a bow tie, was hanging with his hands on both
jambs of my entry door observing the assault with a grin.

In the remaining space that the Daily Bruin generously allotted
to me, let me write about Halil Kaya, a student of Turkish studies
from Konya, Turkey. He is devout Muslim who, through his academic
merits, obtained a scholarship from the Turkish government to study
in the United States. He chose UCLA.

Kaya finished all his courses with high marks and took the
written tests for his master’s degree. When he was just days away
from the oral examination to get his master’s, Associate Dean
Porter summoned Kaya to his office and told him that he was
expelled.

The reason, as the Daily Bruin also stated, was that he sold
study guides for $200. "Who was the idiot that gave $200 for a
study guide that he could get free in class?" Don’t ask!

The $200 was not the asking price, and the buyer was not a
student. The buyer was a member of the administration who brought a
credible witness with him.

He insisted on having a copy for a friend and offered $200. He
then handed it over to Assistant Dean David Wilson who mistakenly
thought the merchandise was the test sheet for the coming final. It
was not. The actual test sheets were printed two days later, right
before the exam.

But even then, this officer of the College of Letters &
Science, an honest and reliable public servant I would think, still
had the duty to alert the professor before the test. He also had
the duty to request immediate action in the matter, if any was
needed. He failed to do so. He was after a bigger fish.

Two days later, together with Mila August, his assistant and
family friend, he appeared in the professor’s classroom under the
false pretense of helping the professor proctor the test.

Rather than doing so, the two self-anointed Columbos lumbered
around the room, distracted the students, tempered with test
papers, made photos of the sign-in sheets, removed without the
professor’s permission a few blank test copies, and in general,
made a big nuisance of themselves.

A footnote to this incident: upon my inquiry in 1996 it was
established that UCLA had no regulations against students’ selling
their notes.

The only explicit regulation was mine, printed in my syllabi. It
prohibited selling as well as buying notes in my courses. So if
Kaya violated anything, that was my prohibition.

But so did Assistant Dean David Wilson, his middleman who paid
the $200 and Mila August, who joined him in raiding my classroom. I
resent Kaya’s resisting my orders. He would have been reprimanded
had the case been brought to my attention.

Yet, beyond all this, I still can’t shake the feeling that he
was victim of a calculated trap designed and carried out by members
of our administration.

His dismissal topped the criminalization process of the key
witness in the case who, as ill luck would have it, discovered a
mass cheating and followed his professor in not giving in to
blackmail.

Comments, feedback, problems?

© 1998 ASUCLA Communications Board[Home]