As the pieces continue to fall into place in the still unfolding CS 4 cheating scandal, a new figure has emerged and added his own opinions on just what went wrong with the class that has now garnered a national audience.
According to a Computer Science 4 teaching assistant, Visiting Professor Rex Dwyer's problems with that department may largely have been a result of Dwyer's own actions during the course of the term.
TA David Wagner, a Ph.D. student in the CS department, told The Dartmouth in an interview last night that, in his opinion, Dwyer was not "proactive" in seeking solutions to the problems he faced staffing his classes and dealing with students in his classes.
'Out of control'
"A few weeks into the class he told me he had it under control," Wagner said, "as opposed to the truth which was that it was not. My feeling was that he was kind of in denial."
Wagner described the CS 4 class as disorderly, saying that students often left class early and Dwyer did not try to stop them. He said in one class the entire class got up and left nearly 15 minutes before the class was scheduled to end.
"It would have been completely reasonable to have [Chair of the CS department] Professor Drysdale come into the class and mention that he thought the class was out of control," he said. "I don't think Rex felt he had lost control."
Dwyer cited problems staffing his classes with TAs and graders in past interviews with The Dartmouth, saying that he had not expected to have to come to Dartmouth and recruit students to fill the positions.
Wagner said that, while this was a real problem for the students and for the professor, Dwyer was not assertive with the department in letting them know that he was having issues with staffing the sessions.
In an interview with The Dartmouth last week Drysdale said that there were some communication problems between the department and Dwyer, and added that while the department thought the problems had been solved, they were continuing well into the term.
The Assignment
Wagner said that the CS 4 homework assignment on which many students allegedly cheated was extremely difficult for the students in the class and also said Dwyer's assignment was quite a bit harder than what the graders for the class had experienced when they took it past years.
Wagner added that the difficulty of the assignment may have led many to feel as though they had little choice but to copy the lines of code, either off the website or from TAs and graders.
"Some of the students have come to me and told me that they felt that they were trapped by this assignment," he said. "I can tell you that there's certainly evidence to support that this assignment was handed out with the intent of catching some people cheating."
Wagner said the graders in the class were often unable to assist the students who came to them for help because they had not dealt with any assignments of this difficulty during their own CS 4 classes, adding that he did not think the graders could reasonably be expected to know how to do the assignment unless he or Dwyer had explained it to them.
As a result, he said that he and the other TA for the class Yuhang Wang helped as many as 30 or 40 students each in the days leading up to the deadline for the assignment.
"I didn't realize that the assignment was so hard until close to the due date," Wagner said. "I told [Dwyer] that I thought there were many students that were not [understanding the material]. He said that's the way the class goes."
Wagner said he believed only about 25 percent of the students in the class could have done the assignment without help from TAs or graders.
The investigation
Wagner said he was not asked by Dwyer to participate in the investigation of the alleged cheating. However, Wagner said he attempted to get statements from those students who had received help on the assignment.
He said that Dwyer did not come to him to find out who may legitimately received help from the TAs and graders, but Wagner felt it was "prudent" to investigate this portion of the scandal after the Judicial Board asked that the TAs make a list of students whom they helped on the assignment.
"There were too many students," he said, describing the large number of CS 4 students who sought help on the assignment. "We couldn't remember all the names."
He also said that he believed there to be two graders who had passed the solutions on to those whom they helped, and speculated that there may have been as many as 40 students who received the answers from these sources in addition to those who may have gotten the solutions through less legitimate means.
In a BlitzMail message Friday, Dwyer wrote that more than 40 students had been turned into the College for the alleged cheating, though he also wrote that none of them had gotten the answers from TAs.
The last three weeks
Wagner said that he expects the class to continue normally for the rest of the term now that professor Jay Aslam has taken over the teaching of the course.
"A lot of the students have already told me that today's class went well and that they like him," he said last night. "It's definitely going to be an abnormal situation, but hopefully the class will be under control.
Wagner described Aslam as a very good professor and said that he has plans to give two more homework assignments in addition to a final project and a final exam before the class is finished.
He added that neither of the homework assignments will cover the topic of the last one on which the students allegedly cheated.
Repeated attempts to contact the class' second TA, Yuhang Wang, were unsuccessful in the days following Dwyer's cheating allegations.
Dwyer himself could not be reached for comment last night after Wagner spoke with The Dartmouth.
