Forgive the Unforgivable: Cheating at Harvard

Everyone deserves a second chance, right?Surely by now, most (if not all) Exonians have heard about the Harvard cheating scandal. It’s been popping up just about everywhere—newspapers, web articles and other forms of media. But rather than me telling you all the facts and statistics of it all, I want to express my opinions on it, starting with the big question: do they deserve to come back?We’ve all heard people say, “Everyone deserves a second chance.” Think about this exact situation, but instead of being in your position right now, wherever you may be, place yourself in the shoes of the accused cheater. They must be going through an enormous amount of stress, experiencing unbelievable shame and probably having the worst time of their lives. Sure, we all know that "cheating is bad," but from a humane point of view, is it really that intolerable?To those people out there who are big on academic integrity and honesty and disagree about the university’s decision to bring them back, I understand where you’re coming from. But these students have already paid for their mistakes; they received their punishments and the way I see it is that they have a slightly cleaner slate. Some people learn from their mistakes, and don’t you think that being suspended from one of the top universities in the world isn’t enough of a lesson?However, nobody ever reacts the exact same way to a certain situation, and there will always be those people who take advantage of the decisions people make about them. It is a risk, taking the students back into university, and the danger that those same people will repeat their mistakes exists. The worst-case scenario could even be that the people looking from the outside of this event would think they could get away wih cheating.But you see, it all depends on the person. One could want to start over, study harder and become the better person they know they can be. Another could take things easy, and when it gets hard they retreat back to their own plagiarist habits. Those who had nothing to do with this could learn from this occurrence, and take better precautions for themselves for the future. Nobody ever really knows what’s going to happen in the future.The assembly speaker from this past Tuesday, Shantam Seth, came all the way from India. While the highlight of the assembly for most students was when he had everyone in the assembly hall meditate, his speech included something that struck me: karma. Karma is when your actions reflect on you. Sooner or later, your actions will ricochet back to you. In a way, this is how I see the whole issue. The people who chose to cheat, whoever they may be, eventually got their sentence and were suspended for a year. Their actions led them to their fate. Everything depends on you. We never know what the future is going to turn out like, just like how we don’t know what’s going to happen when the students return to Harvard from their suspension.We don’t know whether Harvard made a terrible mistake by accepting those students back, or if they have made the best decisions so far. We can’t control what’s going to happen, no matter how hard we try. One thing for sure is that the present is all ours and we can direct it any way we want it to—and we should take control of it at Exeter.