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human
Dept. head ignored class of cheaters. Ethics.

Hi there. Just wanted to hear some of your thoughts about what happened yesterday at my final (senior in undergrad in Business).

**the professor** My class was taught by the department head of Business. He's arguably not a great teacher. He got through 6 of the 16 chapters we were supposed to cover on the syllabus, gave back 4 small assignments over the entire semester (completed around 14 assignments), and did not give back our midterms at all. I am guessing he got reprimanded recently for not returning work because this was the first year, in my 3 years of his classes, that he returned submitted work to us. He has been with the school for over a decade.
He is older (71 years old) and his lectures tend to ramble on tangential topics instead of explaining accounting procedures. While I recognize that anecdotes can have merit, these anecdotes generally don't. Finally, his lax class policy means that students spend the entire class on their laptops and don't even *look* at him.

**the school** It's miniscule. The Business department has 3 main professors and several supporting professors. My entire year has 25 Business majors, and Business is our most popular major. We all know each other and we all know how people are academically.

**the cheating** Our final was an open book final. This included the use of personal laptops or phones as long as we "promised" not to use the internet. Note- our professor draws all of his questions from test banks and rarely changes the numbers. During the final, the majority of people looked answers up, texted their friends, did whatever since the professor sat at his desk reading online news articles. The professor barely glanced at the class. In fact, he even took two breaks where he walked out of the classroom and left us completely alone. People whispered to each other during this time. People were excused to go to the bathroom and return during the exam.
The cheating was blatant and some non-Business students have heard about it through our incredibly fast-moving grapevine.

**the ethics** Most of my issue with what happened is the lack of genuine teaching and learning going on, as well as the testing conditions. As someone pointed out to me about the cheating, how big is the difference between an open book final and working with your peers? I'm more upset by the fact that we didn't cover the material properly and the fact that the department head created ridiculous testing conditions in the first place.
I am one of the few who didn't cheat. Term ends in 3 days and I don't feel I can round up student support to report this exam in this time. Due to the nature of my small school, any reports filed will be quickly known by the student body my peers and faculty. I work regularly with many of the faculty and it's about to be my last semester. In fact, next semester this same department head is teaching my capstone class for all of the senior Business majors. I am worried about alienation and retaliation if I report anything.
Course evaluations have already been submitted so I can't write anything there. I don't know if it's worth reporting anything (will we have to retake the class? will anything be done since he's a longterm professor?) but I feel that this final was wrong on so many levels.

Does anyone have any suggestions about how to approach this problem? Should I ignore it and enjoy spring semester but knowing that other people have to deal with him and the fact that I stood by uselessly? Should I report it and face whistleblower consequences that are magnified at my school? Are there any semi-protected solutions?
gpt
I encourage you to go to whoever is this professor's boss (Dean of Faculty, most likely), and report your observations under conditions of confidentiality.  You can also encourage other students who took the class to do the same.  If you really want to have an impact, put it in writing.

Consequences for you: none, except the time and effort it takes to figure out whom to go talk to.

Consequences for your classmates: none.  Course grades are not retroactively invalidated in disfavor of the student in such situations (incompetence of instruction).

Consequences for the professor: his boss will have evidence of his dereliction of duty; if there is sufficient evidence, the professor is dismissed even if he has tenure.  (More likely, rather than an outright dismissal, he will be strongly encouraged to retire.  If he doesn't, the Dean of Faculty may impose some form of oversight of his classes.)

Consequence for future students: better instruction in their classes.