Read more: Local, Utb/Tsc SCANDAL, MARY AVILA, CHEATING, BLACKBOARD, RIO GRANDE VALLEY
BROWNSVILLE -- Allegations of cheating at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College are just now surfacing more than a year later.
“Last spring, through the work of our student judicial affairs process, the university learned of allegations that a few employees may have improperly used computer access privileges to obtain online exam information,” said UTB President, Juliet V. Garcia.
University police then turned to Cameron County Assistant District Attorney, Chuck Mattingly, last spring for advice on the matter. In question, whether 12 to 13 faculty members breached UTB/TSC’s district learning blackboards.
The blackboard system is an online based program used by students, via the web, to access test, grades and assignments from teachers. Anyone with access to this program can potentially alter grades, absences, and even look at exams.
According to Mattingly, university police came looking for advice on how to handle the case. “They asked questions about what type of offenses might of been committed given scenarios and facts that they gave to us," said Mattingly.
Sources close to the case believe tests were actually being sold for profit. According to Mattingly, that's where talks ended with UTB. “We looked into the information they had and we gave them our advice and never heard back from them".
Instead, UTB opted to have campus police handle matters and decided to deal with the cheating allegations in-house.
In a prepared statement sent to Action 4 News Dr. Garcia states, “We handled the issue under our established procedures for addressing academic misconduct,“ meaning the conspirators were not legally charged.
Exactly how the cheating happened and the specifics are not being released at this time.
We asked UTB for comment, but were only given a press release concerning the matter. What we do know is that if the cheaters were prosecuted, they would have faced no less than 2 to 10 years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine.
