We all know that Elkhorn isn’t an easy district; a 1 is 93% or above, a large difference from other schools. A higher grading scale makes getting good grades a bit more difficult.

While this district is so strong academically, we do have one big problem: Cheating. While I can’t say that I have never gotten a picture of an assignment from someone, it’s fair to say it has gotten out of hand. Now it’s such a normalized way to do schoolwork. Every day, students get snaps from others asking for some form of answers.

In elementary school, just the thought of copying answers on an assignment felt borderline illegal. What changed as the years went by? Maybe it is because we are lazy. Maybe it is because Covid-19 took away our academic motivation. Or maybe we should stop to consider that it could be that when students have to juggle clubs, friends, family, sports, and work while going to school for seven hours a day, five days a week the massive amount of homework goes by the wayside.

Teachers are aware of this epidemic, but I don’t see them doing much about it. Anyone who has taken AP World History has heard of PeytonCollins123. He has helped students fill out the lengthy reading guides week after week. This method is so foolproof that the teachers even recommend using his Quizlets.

Cheating can save time but it also has its downsides: you could get caught or your grades could drop from not actually knowing the material. From personal experience, I, as a lousy 6th grader, gave answers to someone on a test. Since it was a Google Form I saw my score immediately: 100. However, the teacher saw me help out a classmate and decided the only reasonable solution was to give me a zero. Luckily I got the grade back up before the end of the quarter, but it took a lot of work.

I want to see all of you go on and do great things and work important jobs, but honestly, I’m terrified. I don’t think many of us want a surgeon who cheated their way through anatomy to perform our life-saving surgery or a lawyer in an important case to have cheated on their Amendment Quiz.

While I don’t entirely disagree with (and have benefited from) swapping answers every once in a while, this method of completing schoolwork is too normalized. Let’s keep the forging answers to a minimum, our futures might depend on it.