Students rightly love and support their siblings at school. Who doesn't want to see their older brother or younger sister achieve and succeed? And sibling support can go beyond the usual things like sharing food, clothes, transportation, and friendship. Sibling support can also include help with academic studies. Wouldn't every parent love to see their oldest child tutoring or otherwise helping their younger sibling with schoolwork?

But helping your sibling cheat clearly crosses the line. One might think that anything goes within the family. Family members indeed do things to help one another that strangers or even friends would seldom or never do. They shop, cook, clean for one another, and constantly run errands, too. But the student who helps a sibling cheat at school doesn't just subject the sibling to school academic dishonesty charges. The helper is cheating, too. Both you and your sibling could face cheating charges and, in the worst case, get kicked out of school.

Collusion Is Cheating

Schools do, in fact charge students with academic misconduct, requiring skilled and experienced attorney defense. Cheating scandals are a real thing, especially at colleges and universities, where disciplinary officials are less willing to view cheating as a maturity issue and more willing to label cheating as a character issue deserving punishment. And cheating doesn't just mean sneaking answers to or from another student on a quiz or exam. College and university cheating can come in several forms including plagiarism, falsification or fabrication of data, acquiring advance exam information, and unauthorized access to forbidden services or materials.

Collusion, also called unauthorized collaboration, is clearly among those cheating forms. Just look at the student handbooks at Harvard University or the University of Michigan, both of which expressly prohibit collusion. Collusion or collaboration means helping another student with an assignment when the instructor has instead required individual work. Sometimes, collusion involves two struggling students helping one another. But in many cases, collusion involves one student helping and the other student receiving help. The help may be supplying answers, solving problems, or writing papers or parts of papers. But if the instructor required individual work, doing the work for the other student, even a beloved sibling, is cheating.

What to Do Instead

You still have an important role if your brother or sister asks you to help them cheat. First, find out why they want to cheat. Your response to their request should differ depending on whether they lack discipline for study, for instance, or instead have a disability interfering with studies that the school has failed or refused to accommodate. Help your sibling address the root cause of the cheating desire. Cheating doesn't help. It hurts both you and them. Cheating isn't an option. But caring for your sibling and helping them get back on the right academic track is an option. Indeed, it's your family responsibility.

School Discipline Defense Attorney

National school discipline defense attorney Joseph D. Lento and the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team are available nationwide to defend and defeat school cheating charges. Avoid discouraging or disastrous discipline. Call 888.535.3686 or go online now.