Students describe a culture of cheating

Boston Latin School junior Jo Werba says her typical day is a grueling parade of classes, flute ensemble, band practice, speech team meetings, and four hours of homework, including the five chapters assigned each day by her advanced-placement biology teacher. Most nights, she says, she crawls into bed at 1 a.m., exhausted.

The 17-year-old says she doesn't cheat on her schoolwork. But with the intense pressure to succeed that she and her classmates are under, cheating is around her every day, she says.

''If cheating means the difference between staying up five minutes later and studying and [still] getting a bad grade, I can understand why people do it," she said as she stood outside the school with friends yesterday.

A group of parents recently banded together to address cheating at the school. And yesterday, amid reports that a student is being investigated on allegations of hacking into a teacher's computer, about a dozen Latin School students interviewed on campus said cheating is common.

At an elite school where teenagers juggle honors courses and compete among some of the city's most advanced students, some said they feel pressure to get perfect grades and participate in extracurricular activities, which they deem necessary for admission to Ivy League universities. But there are only so many hours in one day, and cheating provides a less demanding alternative to all-night study sessions, they said.

''You feel like your grades really matter," said Janet Calcaterra, 17, a junior. ''This school is so competitive, you are more likely to cheat because of what is expected of you."

The students said test-takers have been known to affix cheat sheets to water bottle labels or hide them inside calculators and the clear tubes of pens. Some students whisper answers to one another during pop quizzes, they said.

Students said that although the school's honor code forbids cheating, many of their classmates feel it is OK for homework and quizzes, because such assignments usually play only a small role in final grades. Cheating on major exams or projects is considered less acceptable, the students said.

''There's a difference between copying two homeworks over the course of a year or copying someone's quiz and getting into someone's computer," Werba said. ''That's invasion of privacy."

The school's honor code is posted in many classrooms, but ''nobody pays attention to it," said Noris Duncan, 17, a junior who says he has witnessed cheating.

Edward Perkins, a 1984 graduate who works in the athletic department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, said he can't recall any incidents of cheating while he was at Latin. Students studied hard and either passed or didn't, he said.

''It's always been a very competitive school," he said. ''They feel they need to cheat? I don't buy it."

Cristina Silva can be reached at csilva@globe.com.