What should I do?

Hey all, long time lurker, first time poster. My friend is in kind of a bind right now. Near the end of the semester, she was caught cheating on her final and is no required to go in and talk to the dean about it. But technically she was not cheating, so she says.

She had a packet of her homework papers on her desk. It was like 10 pages long and had 6 pages of hw printed on each page. We're required to print out our homework from a server. I remember telling her not to take it into the testing room, but she wouldn't listen. Anyways, she had a bunch of scratch paper and homework papers underneath her feet since she never carries around her backpack with her, and since it was the final, she didn't feel like it. The teacher walks over and takes the papers from underneath her desk and goes to the front of the room and makes an announcement to the class about putting away all loose papers. The next thing I notice is that the teacher AGAIN goes to my friend and takes away the hw packet I was talking about earlier. So now, my friend receives a notice about how she has to go see the dean.

Seeing as how I don't want my friend to get into too much trouble, I started thinking about what she could say to defend herself. I was thinking that she could say the hw packet on her desk was for study purposes and the reason why it was printed so small was to conserve paper (Seriously, I wasted 70+ pages printing everything normal, not to mention the ink). Also, to consider cheating with a PACKET of small fonted print is just ludicrous to even consider it. I told her to say that since she didn't have a backpack on her and had a bunch of papers with her, that she just neglected to put that hw packet underneath her desk like she had done with the others. Also, the hw packet was faced down, if that matters (probably not since the dean could just say that she flipped it over.). And finally for her not to acknowledge our teacher's inquiry to put away all loose papers, she could just say that she was too busy or too focused on working on her test that she either didn't hear or didn't pay attention to what was said.

That was the best I could come up, as weak as it is. The dean could easily counter any of these arguments along with the fact that none of this changes that the packet was on the desk. My friend swears to me that she didnt even notice the packet on the desk and didn't even look at it. Her grade for the test wasn't great but wasn't poor, so could she use that to her advantage? Since she got caught towards the end of the test, if she had used the hw packet she wouldve gotten a better grade?

I really don't want to see my friend get in trouble. She's really beating herself up over it, and knows what she did was wrong. I'm positive she won't go unpunished. What do you guys think she can say or do?

she fucked up. what kind of idiot would put their hw on their desk during finals??!??!? i would've aced every damn test i ever took if this were ever OK

sorry i can't i think of an excuse for her, she might be able to try..

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.\./. just kidding of course D

Yea, it sounds like it could be an honest mistake to me. If she was going to use the HW packet to cheat, she would have gotten an near perfect on the test.

Also, wouldn't some of the neighboring testers would have heard russling or her flipping through the papers over and over again?

The teacher would have probably easily seen her flipping through the pages over and over again or noticed more paper russling coming from your friend's area then any other area.

Also, couldn't the students around her vouch for her not cheating. They would have noticed something was up.

I say, all in all, if the Dean has ANY heart, he would be able to see she is being truthful and, at the most, to satsify all parties, require her to retake the final exam under very strict eye or automatically give her a barely passing grade.

I say, the worse that could happen is that they fail her to make her retake the course and if that is the case, I would just hope the class was a filler and not something she needed to take to get her degree.

I know the feeling about college final exams. I took 2 college course during my last semster for my senior year of high school. I was so stressed out and over-studied that the day of the test, I walked out the house with two different flip flops on, my shirt on backwards, and forgot to bring my books for my high school classes.

And that was only for 2 college courses...I could imagine how off someone would be a full time college student. I could see this happening...