by the Fifth Quintile Allstar
Princeton has long prided itself on its Honor Code and academic integrity, but the Discipline Committee recently announced that they have uncovered a new epidemic sweeping across our institution- Academic Doping. Though there is no formal definition of the scandal yet, academic doping is generally accepted around campus as the use of performance-enhancing drugs during exams and reading period. The most notorious is Ritalin known to be available on the East Side in the Junior Slums and referred to on campus as Vitamin R or the Riddler.
The illustriously fictitious Dean Malkiel announced that the Honor Committee had not been up-to-date with current trends and this is a widespread problem that has academic dis-integrity written all over it. She has released a press release stating, “This has not been the fault of the students participating in the pandemic but rather an issue not covered in the Honor Code as the original writers could not have predicted this a hundred years ago.” Instead, she blamed the current class presidents and other students sitting on the Honor Committee for failure to address this issue at the onset. Though not official, rumor has it that she will ask everyone on the Committee to resign this coming week and furthermore three members were involved in Academic Doping. Already, Honor Code Literalists have formed a Facebook petition to resist the new changes. They say the founders of the Honor Code said exactly what they wanted to while drafting it and that it is not a living, breathing piece of legislature. Malkiel’s release deflected this argument saying, “The Spirit of the Honor Code is what matters, and had the founders possessed modern medicine, they would have outlawed this.”
Ritalin, the most common drug used in Academic Doping, is the most easily obtainable drug on campus- even more so than alcohol from the Street. Legally, one is supposed to obtain a prescription from a doctor, but it easy to buy from pushers in the slums of campus. If that fails, getting a prescription is perhaps the easiest thing a student can do. Fidgeting a little and easily failing a simple test is all that is needed to get diagnosed with ADD– which is a lifetime supply of insurance-funded academic dishonesty. In addition to receiving a mind enhancing drug that students abuse to stay up all night and focus, student’s automatically qualify for extended time on tests. The effect is so strong that it puts students not using it at an academic disadvantage. Malkiel wants to strip last year’s Pyne prize winner of his title because it calls into question how much of his performance in obtaining all those academic home-runs really was the result of his ability or the result of the drug. Likely because this was not in the regulations when he accomplished this, his academic record will stand, though with public knowledge that it has a little footnote with it.
The University has not said what it is going to do about the problem, but they’ve formed yet another committee to deal with it. There’s a good chance that every student on campus may have to submit themselves to random urine samplings to qualify to participate in exam period. Many students have been calling for a reversal of grade deflation over the past three years and supplements to the GPA saying that they have been hurt by other students’ use of ADD drugs. The most likely effect: your GPA will still be a fraction of what employers require.