According the Stanford University’s academic cheating statistics, 86 percent of high school students have admitted to cheating several times throughout their high school career. With such a high percentage, it can be easy to wonder what could influence kids to cheat in high school.

Fred Wolfgramm, the Dean of Students at BHS, addressed the ongoing issue.

“This semester already, about 20 students have been caught cheating, leaving them with one strike left before having a drop ‘F’ in the class.”

“Usually students are found cheating through classes like English and Math, where websites like turnitin.com help teachers find similarity in students essays to other essays online,” Wolfgramm said.

Because of the stress students in high school are under, teenagers are more likely to cheat on tests and homework assignments.

Wolfgramm added that, “the high expectations that parents put on their kids encourages them to cheat. Students feel compelled to cheat and rarely think about the consequences and cheat thinking they won’t get caught. Also, because it is becoming more and more difficult to attend college, in order to get good grades kids resort to cheating.”

Grant Cosovich, a sophomore at BHS, said that, “from what I’ve seen, students usually cheat due to lack of confidence. As well as that, students can get pretty lazy as the year goes on. They usually don’t study as hard later in the semester, and resort to shortcuts like cheating. It’s better for students to just accept the grade they deserve rather than get caught for cheating, and then have it stay on their record forever.”

Cocovich added that, “technology is a huge part of our life now and it makes it so much easier to cheat. Things like turnitin.com can help stop cheating, but it’s still easy to just look up the answer to your homework and be able to answer it in seconds.”