Cheating

Michael Moffatt, an anthropology professor at Rutgers University, had been an innocent about student cheating. But that was before he surveyed students and discovered, as he put it, that the New Jersey state school "sounds like a place where cheating comes almost as naturally as breathing, where it's an academic skill almost as important as reading, writing and math."Rutgers is not alone, according to Mr. Moffatt's new and controversial study, which suggests that most large, impersonal universities in the United States are hotbeds of dishonesty.

When the truth began to surface about the biggest cheating scandal at the U.S. Naval Academy in 20 years, Rodney Walker says he did what any good sailor would do. He confessed.Now the 23-year-old junior is one of six midshipmen facing expulsion from the prestigious school. He claims they were the only ones to follow the academy's honor code and tell the truth about the stolen exam."The superintendent was stressing moral courage," he said yesterday. "All six of us who were man enough to come forward and say what we did got in trouble.

Spurred by a Senate panel, the Navy's top watchdog is investigating whether Naval Academy officials mishandled the school's biggest cheating scandal in two decades.Agents from the Office of the Naval Inspector General came to Annapolis last week and reviewed records from the scandal that has rocked the academy for the past four months. The Pentagon's inspector general will oversee the probe, requested by Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Perry.Twenty-eight midshipmen were accused in February of passing around copies of the fall final exam for Electrical Engineering 311, one of the toughest required courses.

WASHINGTON -- Another month, another standardized-test cheating scandal. Principal Karen Karch stepped down May 31 after teachers in her Montgomery County school were caught helping fifth-graders cheat on statewide tests. Before then, her school, Potomac Elementary, was considered one of Maryland's best. Teachers and principals are supposed to be role models for students, not partners in crime. But such man-bites-dog-stories are becoming all too frequent. Similar cheating scandals made headlines in New York City and Los Angeles earlier this year.

The Cheater's Guide to Baseball By Derek Zumsteg Houghton Mifflin / 288 pages / $13.95 Baseball-wise, I was educated in the fine arts of booing, interfering with a center fielder's catch of a fly ball and shrieking curses - even at the home team - in that Harvard for hecklers, the zoo-like "bleacher-bums" section above the ivy-covered wall of Wrigley Field, lair of the Chicago Cubs. Unlike our crosstown rivals, those knuckle-dragging White Sox fans, we usually refrained from jumping onto the diamond to slug a player or coach.

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.

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.

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

Thirty-three Baltimore police officers are being promoted to sergeant today, signaling an official end to an investigation of whether portions of the promotional exams were compromised by cheating.Officials said they found no evidence of tampering, but the departmental probe delayed promotions for months.A similar investigation into alleged cheating on a separate lieutenants' exam also has concluded with no finding of wrongdoing, and promotions for that rank are expected in two weeks, officials said.