How would you deal with Kirk's cheating?

[Lighthawk]

Problem: You're basing your arguement on what a modern day college would do. Starfleet academy isn't a college in the normal sense, it's probably more along the lines of a college meshed with boot camp. Who's to say what the rules are in regards to Kirk's cheating?

As for Kirk's motives, as we never heard him state them outloud, I have to admit, it's open to interpretation. I believe he didn't give a damn about the grade, his personality never struck me as a man who needed to be perfect. I believe, as stated before, he simply could not stand being unable to win, and thus had to find a way to do so, consequences be damned.

I will say though, I find it unlikely he was cheating for a better score on two accounts, one minor, one major. The minor was his attitude during the test, lounging in the chair, snacking on an apple, and generally just not bothering to pay much attention, to the point that we had an instructor ask " Is he not taking the simulation seriously?"

The major point against him taking it for a grade though is the simple fact that, regardless of any other character flaws, Kirk is NOT an idiot. Do you honestly think he believed that the people monitoring the simulation would fail to notice that none of the klingon ships had any shields, a rather major deviation from every other time the test had been run? I'm sorry, but Kirk is not that dumb, nor that inattentive. While his exact motives might be up for debate, I really see no way you can say he was truly trying to acheive a better score by cheating.

[Tyyr]

Actually I reported someone else's personal attacks and the moderator explicitly told me they are not forbidden according to the forum's rules. Not that what I engaged in was a personal attack; it was a simple statement of fact. Deal with it, like a big boy would.

And you miss the point. Rather than address the point you decided to make a rather stupid statement. Instead of a simple, "you're an idiot" or "you're an asshole," that would be a qualitative judgment you decided to go with something easily disproven. So not only do you fail marvelously by resorting to an ad hominem attack (which in a debate is just one small step away from starting to throw around "Nazi") you then decided to insult me in a way that just makes me laugh and says far more about you than me. So in the future please, come at me with something that qualifies as an actual attack instead of a marvelous display of your own monumental ignorance.

I must insist that yes, the conclusion I offered is far more logical.

Sorry, it's not. First its only an OOU explanation. Second it requires us to believe that Starfleet lets its cadets keep taking tests over and over again. That makes no logical sense.

It is perfectly reasonable to suggest that he took the test again in an effort to get a better mark,

And again, have you EVER been in a class where the professor let you just keep taking a test over and over to get a better mark?

Besides, the scriptwriters don't tell us how recently Kirk took the test last; he's in his fourth year, and it could be a third-year test that he's taken months ago and scheduled ahead of time. Hell, it could even be a first-year test, since the idea of a no-win scenario seems to be the sort of basic thing you need to drum into cadets before they get too far.

Ok, so now you're proposing that they not only let him take a test over, they're possibly letting him take it over again years later? At what point does logic and your line of reasoning intersect?

And even if he did have some sort of insane motivation when cheating, you punish him for it like you would in any real school. You fail him for that course, or expel him if the board feels like it. Like I said, at a real college today, they don't care why you cheated when they catch you. And they don't really care what you say when they call you in to inform you what decision they've reached on how to punish you. They only care that you have cheated.

Ah, yes. Except they don't. I've seen plenty of instances of cheating in college where the person caught doing it was only failed for that test, the end. Yes, most colleges talk a big game about academic honesty, cheating and plagiarism getting you expelled no questions asked but I've yet to see it. Few professors have the stones to push for a full on expulsion of a student.

I find it very difficult to believe that the most elite academy in the world would be more lenient with academic discipline.

The same academy that gave us amazing individuals like Tucker, Kosinski, and pretty much every red/gold shirt bit of cannon fodder. Just for fun, the only other instance of a major screw up at the Academy I can recall off the top of my head, Wesley's shuttle accident. The disobeyed a direct order. Some one actually died. Wesley was reprimanded and had to repeat his sophomore year. I'll be the first to admit this is a TNG episode over a century later but there you go, a significantly greater infraction and someone who participated directly in it was not expelled. His flight leader was expelled but Wesley took part in it.

[Tsukiyumi]

*ahem*

In regards to the "retarded" writers (who are two of the best in the business, BTW), they just showed a version of what also happened in the original timeline.

Unless everyone has forgotten The Wrath of Khan? In the original timeline, he also reprogrammed the test, and he also didn't get expelled. Clearly Starfleet operates differently than a modern-day civilian college.

[Mikey]

Which begs the completely different question, "Why would such a presumably elite academy allow such shit to go on?"

[Tsukiyumi]

Which begs the completely different question, "Why would such a presumably elite academy allow such s**t to go on?"

Clearly, the "test" wasn't that important.

[Mikey]

I don't care if it was a test to measure potato-peeling ability; if I were running that academy, the big takeaway from the whole scenario was that I had a command-track cadet who was a) unwilling to deal witht he circumstances presented, and b) willing to cheat. On what he cheated is immaterial.

[Tsukiyumi]

I don't care if it was a test to measure potato-peeling ability; if I were running that academy, the big takeaway from the whole scenario was that I had a command-track cadet who was a) unwilling to deal witht he circumstances presented, and b) willing to cheat. On what he cheated is immaterial.

I guess Starfleet is actually serious about looking for "outside the box" thinkers, and people who are willing to cheat in order to win.

[Tyyr]

It depends on how you define the circumstances presented. If you confine yourself to the simulator scenario presumably Kirk got killed the first two run throughes which should have satisfied Spock's blood lust. If you define the circumstances as an unwinnable scenario in the simulator then he did deal with the circumstances. He changed the scenario to make it winnable.

[Nickswitz]

I have one thing to say about Sparticus' comment, besides the fact that logic is highly lacking, but please do tell me; How do you grade someone on an unwinnable scenereo that has 2 outcomes, one your ship blows up, your dead, two the Kobiyoshi Maru blows up, their dead, which your mission states that you are supposed to help them out, so either way you lose, you don't even fail, you just lose the whole 'test'.

So, how is it graded, if you can tell me that then I won't completely disregard your comments as illogical and plain stupid.

[Sionnach Glic]

one your ship blows up, your dead,

Not to mention you start a war with the Klingon Empire.

Let's face it; there's simply no way this test can be graded. How do you grade a test which is designed explicitly so that the student gets it wrong?

[Mikey]

The whole point is not to "grade" the cadets' acheivement of the desired outcome; it is to monitor their reactions within the scenario. To weed out the people who would just shut down in a tight spot.

[Nickswitz]

Exactly, Kirk's reaction being, turn the tables on them...

[Captain Seafort]

Exactly, Kirk's reaction being, turn the tables on them...

Kirk's reaction being to have a tantrum and cheat because he refused to accept that their are some situations that are simply unwinnable. Note that in TWoK he (eventually) got that through his head, although it took Spock's death for him to do so.

Plus, of course, we have the big issue that he didn't just cheat - he hacked into the computer to do so. He should have been booted out of the Academy and locked up for that alone.

[stitch626]

Well, he had someone else do it for him. He didn't do a thing to the computer.

But you point is still valid.

[Tsukiyumi]

...Note that in TWoK he (eventually) got that through his head, although it took Spock's death for him to do so...

That situation was obviously winnable. It just cost a friend his life.