Cheating

THE ISSUE: -- Amid concerns about rampant cheating at Severna Park High School, Anne Arundel County student government leaders said that the problem is common at their schools, too, and goes unchecked because of defensive parents, weak administrators and a frantic competition to get into top colleges. The discussion with school board members May 23 came a day after county school system officials stopped three Severna Park High students from retaking the Advanced Placement U.S. history exam after they allegedly got hold of a sealed packet of questions and sneaked into a bathroom to find answers in a review manual.

After the Ravens practiced yesterday, Brian Billick declared that in no way was he implying that the New York Jets and coach Eric Mangini were cheating in Sunday's game. Too bad. I had a bagful of asterisks with me, ready to sprinkle all over it. That's my side gig now. I've got asterisks for sale, first come, first served. The demand has risen so high so fast, someone had to step in, figure out who and what are deserving, and apply accordingly. And, of course, cash in on the trend. (Goodness knows, I can't retire on what I make writing for newspapers.

Defensive back Bruce Laird brought his Baltimore Colts playbook with him to San Diego when he was traded to the Chargers 25 years ago. Like many other just-traded players before and since, Laird didn't even think twice about supplying inside information on his former team's plays. "I mean, you're wearing different colors now and you're there to win," he said. Because of such experiences, Laird was less surprised than many in the public to learn that the New England Patriots trained a video camera on the New York Jets' sideline Sunday to try to steal defensive signals.

The College Board has placed a top Anne Arundel County high school on probation after a cheating scandal last spring, warning that the school will no longer be allowed to offer Advanced Placement exams if the problem reoccurs, school officials said yesterday. In its decision this week, the College Board also banned the instructor involved in the May 11 incident at Severna Park High School from administering any future AP exams and required the school's designated AP coordinator to attend a training workshop.

I hesitate to admit this in polite company, but if I didn't listen to books, I wouldn't read at all. I have a daily commute that is almost an hour in each direction and for many years have spent the rest of my time driving kids hither and yon. During that time, I bet I "read" 500 books. Books that I would not have had the time nor the inclination to read if I had had consumption or two broken legs. I used to keep a numbered list of all the titles (another thing I shouldn't be admitting)

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Michael Waltrip's Toyota team yesterday took the hardest hit yet in what has mushroomed into the toughest cheating crackdown during Daytona 500 week in at least 31 years. Waltrip's crew chief and his vice president of competition were ejected from Daytona International Speedway for the remainder of Speedweeks and suspended indefinitely from NASCAR competition. Gatorade Duels Today, 2 p.m., Speed Channel

When competing against his fellow chicken growers for Piedmont Poultry, farmer Lloyd West played by the rules, and for years it did nothing but cost him money.Eventually he found out why. Some of the other farmers were cheating -- falsely reporting lower costs to make themselves look more efficient. Their paychecks rose while his went down -- and Piedmont was looking the other way. So, West and other honest farmers secretly called in investigators from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.Had the farmers been Piedmont employees complaining about unfair wages, they could have taken their grievances to the Department of Labor.

NEW YORK -- Suppose you were rambling around the Internet and stumbled across a Web site devoted to the works of Euripides, the ancient Greek dramatist. Maybe you'd think this was the obscure hangout of professors exchanging ideas about things written on scrolls.Well, you would be wrong. You would find typical yet tightly wound college students, burdened with homework, pressed for time, cheating their hearts out with ingenuous amorality. You'd find scholars such as Jeremy, whose last name is being withheld to spare him a scowl from his instructor, in deep research.

Last year Congress heard testimony from four women who said that years after their husbands left they discovered that the men had been cheating on their taxes and that the IRS expected them to pay huge bills, including interest. In response, Congress made it easier for them not to pay such taxes, as part of the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998.The IRS expected perhaps 3,000 new "innocent spouse" claims in the year since then, but about 45,000 applications, more than 90 percent of them filed by women, have already been logged, 15 times the anticipated number.

DIGOS, Philippines -- As a presidential race tainted by violence and chicanery draws to a close, Vice President Joseph "Erap" Estrada is the man of the people to beat Monday.From a field of 10 1/2 candidates -- former first lady Imelda Marcos was in the race, dropped out and now is half-heartedly back in -- Filipino voters seem ready to elect a controversial former B-movie actor to navigate their country through the Asian financial turmoil and into the 21st century.Estrada's detractors scorn the 61-year-old, who has a seemingly insurmountable lead in the polls.

Here's Jim Palmer, in Baltimore for an eye exam, then stopping by the radio station before heading back to Florida, where spring training is about to begin. The Orioles' legend turned 63 last fall, and he's a grandfather now. He's still tall, lean, tanned and handsome, keeping himself in good shape long after the end of a Hall of Fame career in which he established himself as one of baseball's greatest pitchers - without the help of anabolic steroids. "Anti-inflammatories," Mr. Palmer says when, during an hourlong conversation on WYPR, I ask him to list substances that players of the pre-steroidal era used to keep themselves going.

It looks like there might be a genetic mutation in men that makes it easier for them to cheat, and if it is true, the nature of marriage, not to mention country music, could be changed forever. The hormone vasopressin, known in rarefied scientific circles as "the cuddle chemical," is released in men under the direction of a particular gene. Swedish researchers found that men who have extra copies of that gene actually produce less of the hormone, and those men are less likely to marry.

Ohio State running back Chris "Beanie" Wells will not play for the fifth-ranked Buckeyes against No. 1 Southern California tonight. Ohio State coach Jim Tressel made the announcement late yesterday afternoon after the team went through a 40-minute walk-through at the Los Angeles Coliseum. "He's been getting treatment 15 times a day," Tressel said. "I guess if looks could kill, he fought me. I just told the team because it's important our guys know what we thought we should do." The Trojans (1-0)

After a cheating scandal last year landed an Anne Arundel County high school in hot water with the College Board, the atmosphere of Advanced Placement testing there changed drastically, said recent graduate Sage Snider. Instead of chattering and toting schoolbooks for a last-minute peek before the national exams this spring, she said, Severna Park High School students silently entered the rooms and carried nothing but calculators. All other materials were banned. "It was very, very different, and everybody knew why," said Snider, who on June 30 finished her term as the student representative on the county school board.

Tougher integrity policy OK'd The Anne Arundel County Board of Education passed a stronger integrity policy yesterday that reflects a need to "promote vigor and achievement" in schools, one year after a cheating scandal jolted Severna Park High School. The new regulations clearly define cheating, fraud, plagiarism and more; the old policy had no definitions. The policy goes on to say that cheating includes copying assignments, working together on independent assignments without teacher permission, and using unauthorized study aids or cheat sheets during tests.

For tomato lovers, this month could not get here fast enough. July is the time that the good stuff, tomatoes grown in Maryland fields, starts to ripen. This year, local tomatoes are especially welcome. They provide a flavorful alternative to what I call "outsider" tomatoes, those grown in distant, warmer states. These outsider tomatoes are suspects in the great tomato scare. It began in May when health officials linked salmonella outbreaks in New Mexico and Texas to eating fresh tomatoes.

MONTCLAIR, N.J. - It's rare these days to read a newspaper or watch the evening news without hearing about an athlete who used steroids, a team that spied on another team's training camp, or kids who cheated on a standardized test, sometimes with the aid of teachers trying desperately to meet their No Child Left Behind benchmarks. According to one survey, 60 percent of high school students admitted to cheating on a test over the past year. We're swimming in a sea of cheating - so I decided recently that I'd better talk to my kids about it, before they get the idea that everyone in the world cheats and it's pointless to resist.

Five members of the Baltimore Fire Department who were accused of cheating on their promotional exams are scheduled to be elevated in rank tomorrow, according to fire officials. Acting Fire Chief James S. Clack brokered an agreement last month with the city's human resources department to have the tainted promotion exam reinstated. He made his decision after reading a report from the city's inspector general. "I read though the report a couple of times," Clack said yesterday. "The expert there said he could not prove cheating.

Confronting one of his first challenges, the city's acting fire chief, Jim Clack, says he has resolved a racially tinged cheating scandal involving promotional exams by allowing the results to stand. His decision led to the reversal of a previous ruling by the city's human resources director who had ordered a retest and means that six firefighters identified by the inspector general as likely cheaters -- the top three scorers on a lieutenants and a captains test -- could be promoted. But Clack said he is considering disciplining them, which could prevent them from moving up in the ranks.

The Sun's editorial "Ethics 101" (Jan. 5) states the obvious about integrity in children but seems to dump responsibility for the problem on our education system. However, integrity stems from ethical training - which comes from the home and the rest of the environment. From their birth, children are constantly observing and learning from the world around them. And one need only ask, "What do they see?" to understand why a lack of integrity abounds. Children observe what passes for integrity from the top of countless organizations on down.