Cheaters

In which Noah is caught cheating

In my office sits Noah, a slim 13-year-old fallen on miserable times. He’s been caught cheating, the Social Studies teacher nabbed him copying answers off a classmate on a unit exam. He has sunk low in his chair in front of my desk, fighting back tears. He is flanked by his parents, nice folks, appropriately concerned.

None of us wants to be here. School let out hours ago. Noah’s parents and I have told Noah all the things about how disappointed we are, how no one learns anything if you cheat, how the only person who gets cheated when you cheat is yourself, how there was this reporter who cheated and it was called plagiarism and he lost his job. Etcetera.

We’ve come to that part of the meeting where I, the principal, am to decree Noah’s punishment. I lean back in my chair, judge-like, and consider my options. The Official School Handbook, which I myself helped revise that summer, is vague on the consequences for academic dishonesty. Suspension is a possibility, as is giving Noah a zero on the exam, either of which would be scarlet letters on his middle school transcript, potentially impacting his chances of getting in to a selective public high school the next year. Alternatively I could let him off easy with a lecture, require him to redo the test for partial credit or to write an essay on the harms of cheating.

As Noah and his parents wait, I weigh the various factors that play into my decision: Noah’s particular character, the nuances of adolescent psychology, the realities of the admissions process to selective high schools, the general principles of justice and morality that I learned in Hebrew School—and then into the mix comes this:

I am 13, the same age as Noah. It's a Friday afternoon at Capshaw Junior High in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I’m in my 8th grade Algebra class and our teacher Ms. Ortega, a young and oddly alluring woman with rakish black hair, is passing out little slips of paper that show our progress in her class. She’s announced that she’s going to use her own personal time to call the parents of any student clocking a D or below. She’s giving us the rest of the class to turn in any missing assignments, which may or may not bring up our grades enough to remove us from the call list.

This is a big deal. This is a betrayal of the accepted rhythms of school at that time—normally you did not have to worry about your parents grounding you for bad grades until a couple weeks after the quarter ended, when the school sent home a faded dot matrix report card, and even then you had a fighting chance of fishing the envelope out of the mailbox before your parents got home and burning the fucker in the arroyo. For a teacher to call home now, out of the blue, and on a Friday afternoon so that your parents could ground you that very weekend—it was a filthy play by Ms. Ortega, who after handing us our slips, sits at her desk and begins clacking into her desktop computer, the screen casting a green glow across her smooth face, the hint of a sadistic smile.

To be clear, I myself have nothing to fear. My little slip shows what I already know, that I’m running a high A in the class. I take out my math book and begin to work on some extra credit word problems, which I secretly enjoy, each problem a mini work of literature, full of the conflict and tension of trains passing each other at unexpected hours, of Jack having more apples or money than Sally, until I notice that Ian, the slight blonde kid in the seat next to me, is staring at his slip of paper. He’s starting to cry.

“Fuck,” he says. “Fuck fuck fuck.”

He wipes a tear from his eyes. Takes a breath.

“My dad’s going to have a fucken cow,” he says, speaking softly, to no one.

Partly I feel bad for Ian, who’s a friendly kid. But mostly I’m just glad not to be in his shoes. I start tinkering with the word problems while he drops his head onto his desk, cussing a bit more—and then something occurs to him.

He picks up his head. He digs a calculator from his backpack, does some figuring, and looks up. He turns to me.

“Dude,” he whispers, “can I borrow last week’s homework?”

I glance up at Ms. Ortega. She clacks at her computer, smiling. “No,” I whisper.

“Please,” Ian says. “Just this once.”

I shake my head. I’m not a cheater. No sir. I did not cheat in elementary school and I am not going to cheat in junior high. All our teachers have been very clear that if you get caught cheating the person who gives the answers is just as guilty as the person who receives them. No one learns anything if you cheat, the only person who gets cheated when you cheat is yourself, there was this reporter who cheated and it was called plagiarism and he lost his job. Etcetera.

“Please,” Ian begs.

I shake my head again. Refocus on my extra credit word problems. Ian’s head drops to his desk once more.

I’m not a cheater. No sir. I did not cheat in elementary school and I am not going to cheat in junior high.

And then Tommy Gray turns around. Tommy Gray sits one seat in front of me. Tommy Gray is 13 or 14 like the rest of us but looks like he’s 30. He has a bona fide punk haircut, part floppy, part shaved. He’s a starter on the varsity soccer team at the high school and knows the lyrics to all the Pink Floyd songs and carries his shit around the school in a real army duffle bag. It is alleged that Tommy Gray lost his virginity at the age of 11.

Tommy Gray looks at Ian, blubbering and wiping tears from his eyes, and Tommy Gray looks at me, working on my extra credit word problems that will raise my average to a 102%. He locks his steely eyes on mine.

“Give him the homework, Biderman,” says Tommy Gray. “Don’t be an asshole,”

My stomach sinks.

He’s right.

Holy shit. Tommy Gray is right, and all the rest of it is wrong. Ms. Ortega clacking at her keyboard, the room full of scared children, the rows of desks, the competition and fear and ranking, everything that has been beaten into us since first grade, when they taught us to set up those cardboard desk partitions to prevent our eyes from wandering to our neighbor’s spelling test—all of it is wrong. I have been misled.

Ian sits beside me, awaiting my decision. Now some thirty years later, Noah sits in front of me, awaiting my decision. Tommy Gray is watching me. He’s a middle-aged man now, lives in the sticks outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, but Tommy Gray is still watching me. He’s watching us all, principals and parents, priests and presidents. Don’t be an asshole, he’s saying. Don’t be an asshole.