The Culture Beat

My life as columnist collided with my life as a professor this week.

As Milligan College finished its academic year, I failed a student because he submitted a paper that copied, almost word for word, an essay on the Internet and tried to pass it off as his own work. In the academic arena, we call that plagiarism. In other places, they call it cheating or even theft.

Academic dishonesty is a big problem, one that’s growing. In just the latest headlines, 34 students in the MBA program at Duke University were caught cheating and suspended two weeks ago.

At least one of every five college students confesses to cheating on an exam or other test, and half admit cheating on a writing assignment. That’s according to Donald McCabe, professor of management and global business at Rutgers Business School in New Jersey, who has researched academic honesty for more than 15 years, surveying hundreds of thousands of students.

So, sad to report, my plagiarizer wasn’t alone, even though Milligan is a Christian college, one of several in this region, one of scores across the country. Shouldn’t a religious environment make a difference?

“You’d like to think so,” said Michael Arrington, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Carson-Newman College, a Southern Baptist university in Jefferson City, Tenn. “But Christians are exposed to the same temptations as anyone else. We’re still human. I haven’t seen any studies that show Christian colleges have any lower incidence (of academic dishonesty) than state schools.”

Tracy Parkinson, dean of the faculty at King College, a college in Bristol, Tenn., affiliated with the Presbyterian Church USA, is equally humble.

“I don’t want to come across as saying our kids are more ethical than anywhere else,” he said. “That would be a bit self serving, and I don’t have enough evidence.”

But in fact, some evidence does suggest that religious schools are distinctive. Although McCabe has not formally studied church-related schools apart from other institutions, he is convinced that a religious environment can bolster academic integrity.

“There’s little question that the nature of Christian colleges is different,” he said in a phone interview this week. “It’s generally better, but not always. At some Christian colleges, the situation is clearly better.”

Carson-Newman might serve as an example. Arrington’s office receives only about seven or eight reports of academic dishonesty per semester, in a student body of almost 2,000. Arrington knows more incidents occur but, he said, “We have not had the problems we’ve heard from my peers at other schools.”

McCabe thinks two factors are at work. One is the role of religion at the school, which can vary widely, from secularized universities that began as Christian institutions, to those that highlight their religious character with devout mission statements, required chapel services or prayer during class. (Being a Christian college doesn’t imply an all-Christian student body; most schools readily admit non-Christians.)

“My sense would be that the more the school is infused with its Christian heritage, the more it teaches Christian principles, the better it will be,” McCabe said.

The size of the institution is another vital factor, he said. Small schools form tight-knit communities, and Christian colleges tend to be smaller than most.

“I would argue that some of the rituals and ceremonies help build community as well,” McCabe said. “When it comes to cheating, being part of community is important. Students realize they are going to stand out.”

King College connects community and academic integrity through its honor code, which is overseen by the Honor Council, a committee of students whose responsibility includes deciding cases of academic dishonesty. (One of the council’s faculty advisers was impressed that the students are “pretty tough on one another.”)

“If something goes before the Honor Council, then the ruling comes from the students, with guidance from faculty,” Parkinson explained. “It’s part of our responsibility to one another. The student ownership has been a positive influence.”

While no one is claiming Christian colleges are perfect examples of academic integrity, at the very least they offer some kind of alternative model.
“We all make mistakes,” Arrington said. “We want to be redemptive and use it as a teaching experience. We don’t want a mistake to destroy an academic career.”

First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 12 May 2007.
Image via Glass Half Empty.

The United States seems to have turned a corner. Working with U.S. Census data, this week the New York Times reported that probably for the first time most American women (51 percent) now live without a husband.

A few commentators quickly pointed out the findings are dubious since they include females aged 15 and older. Point taken: counting high-school girls would inflate numbers.

Even so, the study does compare head-to-head with previous studies, and the trends, if not the actual numbers, are indisputable: In 2000, 49 percent of women lived without a spouse; in 1950, the figure was 35 percent. Likewise, married couples became a minority of all American households for the first time in 2005.

Taken together, the surveys say the American household is changing and the traditional model American household – husband, wife, kids – is not the majority. We have reached “a clear tipping point,” William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, told the Times.

It’s hard to predict what changes this trend will bring. The Times speculated that it could “shape social and workplace policies, including the ways government and employers distribute benefits.”

What’s clear is that congregations will be affected along with everyone else. Religious communities, after all, focus keenly on the home: premarital counseling, children’s programs, care for the elderly and more. Many even organize their schedules around the family. So what happens when the shape or even the definition of “family” changes?

Celebration Church in Blountville has been dealing with such questions since 1998 – since it began, that is. The interdenominational church started with 28 members but now attracts about 2,500 worshipers to weekend services, many of them from nontraditional homes, according to Associate Pastor Robert Russell, whose duties include overseeing ministries to families.

“I don’t have statistics to back this up, but I would say this region is not significantly different from the rest of the country. We’re not isolated,” he said. “We have to deal with family issues in very different ways from what a church might have done 40 years ago.”

For example, three years ago the church hired Leigh Sexton – like Russell, a member of Celebration since it started – as a part-time staff member to coordinate its single-adults programs. Her job grew to full time last January.

“Celebration has tried to address the trends,” said Sexton, who’s 33 and recently married. “That (single-adult) demographic was growing, and the church leaders saw the need.”

Thus, besides the children’s and youth programs typical in many churches, Celebration organizes ongoing groups and activities for single adults, everything from Bible studies and worship services to a New Year’s party that drew more than 400 people. A new 12-step program, Celebrate Recovery, is designed to help adults and children who have come through divorces. The backbone of the ministry is its small groups, organized by age, that involve about 150 people every week.

“A lot of those who come are not members here but attend other churches,” according to Sexton. “Many of them feel like they’re looked down upon, especially those in their 40s who are divorced. They’re lonely inside their own church walls.”

Even the pastor’s messages, she said, aims to include single adults.

“There isn’t a preconceived notion of what we should be,” she said. “You’re still a soul, still valid, still have gifts.”

Russell echoes that message of acceptance. Being single is “a legitimate choice,” he said, and held up as an example a “godly” friend of his – almost 80, never married and, he believes, “called to a life of singleness.”

But he also sees a shadow in the decline of the “traditional family,” which he takes more as a sign of instability than of positive choices.

“I think there are pressures in our society not to marry – pressure to achieve in careers, pressures or maybe even fears what that kind of commitment would involve,” Russell said. “I think marriage is the hardest thing a person can do, but when done well, it’s one of the best things a person can do. Marriage is not easy, but to avoid it out of fear is not healthy.”

First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 20 January 2007.