Should we condemn Jack Berghouse for being a good lawyer?
Should a parent defend a bad egg? A cheating bad egg?
Berghouse has intervened to keep his son, a sophomore at Sequoia High School in Redwood City, California, from being kicked out of the honors program for copying his homework assignment from the work of another student. He doesn’t dispute that his son cheated—-his son admits it, and was caught red-handed. Dad is suing the school because he says its policies are conflicting, and thus his son was deprived of due process. He may be right about that. He is also doing it because, as a father concerned about his son’s future, he worries that the blemish on his record will affect his ability to get into an Ivy League college. He’s probably right about that, too.
But is it right—that is to say, responsible and ethical— for parents to use lawyers and the court system to intimidate schools into whitewashing a student’s records? The vast majority say no, which is doubtlessly the reason why Berghouse reports that he is getting hate mail.
I agree that students in any school setting should be accountable for cheating, and should pay a high price for it. I also agree that parents who continue to cover-up their children’s crimes, misdeeds or other evidence of bad character do neither their children nor society any favors, and ultimately help accelerate the course of cultural and ethical rot.
But for the time being, I support what Jack Berghouse is doing, and I would do the same. I strongly suspect that when the complete drama has played out, I won’t be so supportive, but as of now, he hasn’t done anything improper or unethical as either a father or a lawyer. Why? Because the school screwed up, of course.
The school required Berghouse’s son to sign a pledge that he wouldn’t cheat, and that he understood that cheating was grounds for a student’s immediate removal from the advanced-level program. Berghouse’s wife signed the pledge as well. The problem is that the school also has a policy on its books that declares that a student will only be removed after his or her second instance of cheating, and Berghouse, good lawyer that he is, rightly believes that it is unfair for the school to have two conflicting and apparently valid policies, and to arbitrarily choose the most stringent.
I know what many of you want to say: “But his son cheated, and he signed the pledge! He didn’t even know about the other policy.” Yes, indeed, he would be getting off on a technicality if his father’s suit prevails. Technicalities are important, however, when important consequences are involved. If Berghouse’s son faced prison time because crack was found in his backpack after a police officer performed an illegal search, would you argue that his father should just shrug off the 4th Amendment violation and let his son be convicted because, after all, the kid was guilty? If so, it’s a terrible argument. Berghouse says he is opposing his son’s punishment for the other students too, and I believe him. If the school can be this sloppy and arbitrary in disciplining guilty kids, it can be just as inept disciplining innocent kids. The school should punish cheaters, but it has an obligation to do it the right way, with clear policies.
Thus I believe that so far, Jack Berghouse is doing the right thing. Should he prevail, however, he will not be acting ethically or responsibly if he allows his son to avoid serious consequences for his cheating. After he was caught and informed of his punishment, Berghouse’s son took to Facebook and posted an entry protesting the school’s “tyranny” and injustice of the punishment. That proves it: you’re raising a burgeoning, selfish, corrupt little creep, Jack, and it’s your job as a parent, your duty to society and your obligation to any college that accepts him to, as the spectral Mr. Grady tells Jack Torrence in “The Shining,” “correct him.”* Now.
Berghouse should inform his son that although he escaped being ejected from the honors program, he must still fully inform any college he applies to regarding the incident…and if he doesn’t, his father will. Berghouse should tell sonny that his choice is to agree to that, or be yanked out of honors by his father. In addition, he should be required to submit to additional punishment at the school, and also to do independent study on the topic of —Tada!—ethics.
Berghouse is a good lawyer, and so far, he’s being a good father. If he doesn’t make certain that his son is broken of the cheating habit, however, and the only result of his legal machinations is to teach his young scoundrel the lesson that cheating is only wrong if you get caught and punished, Jack Berghouse will be both a bad father and an ethics corrupter.
I guess we’ll see.
*Not in the manner Mr. Grady suggests, however, which is for Torrence (Jack Nicholson) chop his son into little pieces like Grady did to his daughters, those scary twins in the blue dresses.
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Pointer: ABA Journal
Facts: San Mateo County Times
Sources: Class Struggle blog
Graphic: After Elton
Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at jamproethics@verizon.net.
Ethics Alarms 
I’m good on everything except “Berghouse should inform his son that although he escaped being ejected from the honors program, he must still fully inform any college he applies to regarding the incident…and if he doesn’t, his father will.” and “In addition, he should be required to submit to additional punishment at the school[…]”
I’m not sure what the point of the former is (It’s not like getting revoked from an honors program would be on the kid’s transcript) and the latter seems like post hoc rule creation. The inconsistency around the honors program rules shouldn’t affect any other rules the school has.
The cheating may not be part of his transcript, but the kid should own it, admit it, and let the school decide if he’s worthy of being admitted.
Frankly, I think it might even help him. I’d be impressed.
Wouldn’t discipline have been on his transcript if he was kicked out? That was my understanding.
I appreciate the footnote. If not for that, I’d have asked just what you were suggesting.
In the spirit of the new Ethics Alarms attribution policy, I credit a tipster at Above the Law for pointing this out.
This is probably a case where the Streisand effect will apply. Jack Berghouse doesn’t want colleges to know that his son is a cheater, but now, thanks to the lawsuit, you and I and everyone else knows about the incident, regardless of the result.
Yes, I was going to mention that in the post, but forgot. Now that the story is all over the place, young Berghouse’s cheating will be there for anyone doing an internet search.
Maybe that was one of his intents, the other holding the school to its own standards.
Somehow, I doubt it.
Four students were involved. Since they turned in the same work, the work gets X marks, each of them gets X/4.
For a first offence.
You then go back over all their previous work, to make sure it’s a one-off crime. If so, then the mark penalty should be sufficient. If not, you deal with it in accordance with school policy – usually removal from the program.
I started to comment, but (as often happens), my one-paragraph response turned into a blog piece. I have a different take, but I’m not sure we actually disagree.
If I understand the situation correctly I have to disagree with your point of view. I thought I’d read that the general school policy refers to two instances of cheating, however the honors program students are held to a higher standard with stricter rules, spelled out in a separate, written understanding. That seems quite clear, not conflicting, and not at all unusual in that you can find similar cascading expectations and agreements in many walks of life. If that’s the case it doesn’t leave him much wiggle room. I can’t help but feel that in the end he’s doing more long-term reputational damage to his son than anything the school is doing by insisting they live up to the agreement they signed.
It’s still two standards affecting the same circumstances. The general one doesn’t exclude the honors students, so there is a written policy that literally imposes the lesser penalty. It’s a legal point, not an ethical one, but I can’t blame the lawyer Dad for thinking like his profession to try to keep his son in school.
I also think it’s wrong to enforce different punishment for cheating acccording to—what? IQ points? The degree to which the school thinks you need to cheat? The standards should be the same for every student. That’s why your argument didn’t even occur to me initially…I think the idea of holding honors students to a higher standard is bats, and in fact unethical. Teacher, administrators, yes. But one standard for all students, whether they sign it or not.
Give me a break, please. Supposedly this page is about ethics, and you’re arguing technicalities just to help this kid and his father avoid taking responsibility for the boy’s actions. Good Lord. The kid cheated! And now he knows that Mommy and Daddy and this website will bail him out every time he cheats from now on because his “future” depends on it. Stop it. You want one standard for all students? Drop the contract-law posturing and punish the kid for cheating. End of story.
End of story is an especially lame coda when your analysis is superficial. Did you read the post? I said the kid cheated,and I’m not excusing him, but the school has obligations too. They can’t change the rules as they please. If you let them get away with this, the next example could be much worse. That’s how rules and laws work. It’s called PROCESS, and it is part of fairness. I want one standard for all students; unfortunately, the school had two.
I think you’re being simplistic about this. The school didn’t change the rules or obligations after the fact. If they had I’d have an easy time seeing things your way. However, as I said previously, having escalating responsibilities attached to advanced positions or opportunities isn’t something this school invented. When I received my Nexus “trusted traveller” privileges the US government was quite clear that if I abused them they would be harder on me than they would the average person, owing to my enhanced status. I could either accept that or not accept that. Likewise when I was made a director at the company I used to work with it was made clear that in that role I would be held to a higher standard of performance than those who reported to me. Again, I could either accept that or not. The fact that there were separate standards for separate levels in the same constellation of related parties wasn’t – and isn’t – contradictory. In both cases those standards were made clear to me at the outset and the choice was mine to accept them or not. If I accepted my part of the agreement I was expected to live up to it. That, too, is how rules and laws and “PROCESS” work in everyday life, and there’s nothing unethical about it. I can’t see how this situation is materially any different, except that now the boy has admitted he didn’t honor his obligation his father doesn’t want him to have to live up to his part of the bargain he willingly accepted in order to be a member of the advanced-level program.
Conflicting policies != different policies based on levels of responsibility.
Well then, clearly there is no common ground for us to discuss this. I hope life on your planet remains good for you.
If there are 2 signs up: “You can take 1 free piece of candy” and “You can take 2 free pieces of candy”, punishing someone for taking 2 pieces of candy is wrong.
If there’s a sign up that says “Kids under 16 can have 2 free pieces of candy” and a second that says “Everyone 16 and over can have 1 free piece of candy”, punishing a 17 year old for taking 2 pieces of candy is right.
I don’t see this as a particularly difficult concept.
It’s not. Hence, if the school had the wit or competence to write the rule saying that all students who cheat will be punished at least with X, and honors students may be punished more harshly, Dad wouldn’t have a beef. A free-standing rule saying that ALL students will be treated like THIS includes honors students. A teacher could not make a different rule for another category of student, and neither can anyone else, without changing the universal rule.
I’d be careful there. Depending on the exact language, I could either agree with your completely or vehemently disagree with you, and I don’t think the information is available for us to make that determination.
Agreed. It isn’t, and I can’t find it.
It isn’t. That’s why I don’t understand why you don’t think it applies in this situation: Agreement 1: These are the general rules and regulations. Agreement 2: To participate in the advanced honors program, you must agree to abide by these more stringent rules. Punishing an honors student for breaking the rules is right. There were not two sets of interchangeable standards in play. Adhering to your conflicting = different premise sounds like it would mean that anyone with a driver’s license should have the right to drive a transport truck if he felt like it. Sometimes If you want to go to an advanced training you have to put up with the advance responsibility and expectations that go along with it.
If agreement 1 and agreement 2 were as you say, I’d agree with you. But the reports don’t back that up. For example: http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_20481609/parents-sue-district-kicking-son-out-sequoia-high
“The sophomore had signed an ‘Academic Honesty Pledge’ at the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year that declares cheating is grounds for immediate removal from the advanced-level program; his mother also had signed it. According to the lawsuit, however, another school document states that a student will be removed from the program only after a second plagiarism offense.”
This isn’t a policy for cheating in general and a policy for cheating for people in a specific program. This is 2 policies about cheating for people in this specific program. The lawsuit is because the school recognized that they had conflicting policies, but still wanted to apply parts of the more stringent policy.
Also, noone has said that conflicting = different. First, you changed my terms. Second, you switched my operator. That’s a strawman if I’ve ever seen one.
http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_20646846/teen-caught-cheating-cant-return-sequoia-high-honors
I saw it. I’m not unhappy about it—the kid doesn’t deserve to be in the honors program. The school still mishandled the situation.