Ad Board Cheating Statistics from Year That Saw Gov 1310 Yet To Be Made Public

UPDATED: December 12, 2013, at 10:20 p.m.

Despite repeated requests from The Crimson, administrators have not released Administrative Board statistics for cases in 2012-2013, the academic year that saw the adjudication of Harvard’s largest cheating case in recent memory.

That year’s cheating numbers were inflated by the Government 1310 cheating case, in which about 70 of the roughly 125 students investigated by the Ad Board for plagiarizing or inappropriately collaborating on the course’s final take-home exam were required to temporarily withdraw from the College.

As a result, the unreleased statistics are expected to show a number of forced withdrawals in academic dishonesty cases at least three-and-a-half times higher than the previous five-year average of 21.

Records for academic and social misconduct cases that went before the Ad Board between 2005-2006 and 2009-2010 are available online in a five-year summary on the Ad Board’s website, and The Crimson was provided with statistics from 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 upon request last fall.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson Jeff Neal and Secretary of the Ad Board John “Jay” L. Ellison declined to comment this week on the status of the 2012-2013 statistics.

The 2012-2013 Ad Board statistics are not the only records that the Ad Board has yet to make public. A long-awaited database that would include more detailed information about the Ad Board process has yet to be released roughly three years after administrators originally said it would.

The database, which Ellison announced in September 2010, would include a compilation of detailed case summaries of past Ad Board cases made available online, while keeping out information that could identify the students involved. The database would go back three years for academic integrity cases and 10 years for peer dispute cases, such as those involving allegations of sexual assault.

The database was originally planned to be made public online sometime in fall 2010, but its release has been repeatedly pushed back in the semesters since.

Last spring, Neal wrote in an emailed statement that “the large volume of work this year necessarily took precedence over this project,” writing at the time that the Ad Board was “continuing to consider ways in which it can release more detailed statistics.

Neal declined to comment on the database’s status Wednesday, and Ellison could not be reached for comment Thursday.

—Staff writer Madeline R. Conway can be reached at mconway@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @MadelineRConway.