Consequences of snitching on cheating classmates? None of my business?

Snitching ? To me, you are on the wrong foot right there. Try whistle-blowing? Or, academic honesty? As a former teacher, and a current small business owner, if you let this slide, I would not want you as a student or an employee. When good people turn away, the bad ones win.

Since you're getting to it beforehand and they still could do the right thing, I'd take a kind of softened approach, probably. "Hey, professor, I have overheard some talk about the possibility of forging signatures to get out of actually doing the supervised portion of this project. It might be that nothing's going to come of it, but I didn't really know what to do about this and I felt it was best to leave it up to you how to handle it." And then let the professor figure it out. This is the sort of thing where they *should* be verifying all signatures, anyway. If they get away with it after that, it's totally off your conscience. If they don't, it will be because there was a process put in place to handle such things, not because you called attention specifically to those people.

Tell. I'm a former college professor that has worked in both four year and two year settings. I would really appreciate you telling me this. Yes, a report of this sort is annoying and laborious for the faculty involved but I did it every time it was the right thing to do. You can alert the teacher anonymously, just create a fake email address and email the professor something like this: Professor, I'm a student in one of our courses with a significant project due this week. Several of my classmates are planning to dishonestly claim they did volunteer work [I'm assuming this is volunteer work] that they did not do and forge documentation to prove it. I feel uncomfortable saying this in front of the group but feel even more uncomfortable allowing such dishonesty to go unreported. A Student Drop a paper copy in his/her faculty mail box to make sure your email doesn't get spam filtered.

Does your school have an honor code that you've agreed to? Is your intended behavior consistent with that code?

I love Sequence's answer. I had something similar happen to me in a work situation. I went to my manager and said, "I was approached to do this unethical thing by a vendor. I said no. I'm not naive enough to believe that I'm the only one approached. I recommend that all sales involving this vendor be audited." I didn't let him know about the actual people who told me about the deal and the kick-backs they were getting. I just told him to do his job and to audit the damn sales. They got away with it for a long time. Then one day security came to ME and said, "You know about this, we want you to tell us who, what, where, when and how." I simply said, "I was approached, I said no, and I have no idea who, what, where, when or how from that point. I did tell my manager and suggested an audit. I don't know where it went form there." Then they stopped with the intimidation tactics and they rolled their eyes and said, "Yeah, that one thing, that's the one the sales people miss." I will say that it turns out our center manager was deeply involved in this unethical stuff and my willingness to speak up ultimately resulted in her being dismissed. (She was horrible, justice was served.)

Ask the professor in class, before the project is handed in, if they do any follow-up with the people who signed the forms. This would give the professor a chance to say that yeah, of course they check, which would give the forgers a chance to fail a class instead of being kicked out of school. If I were the professor and normally *didn't* check, I would probably find the question suspicious enough to do so this semester. (They probably will check yours extra-thoroughly as well, but if your work is already in order then you won't have any concerns.) If the forgers get mad at you for asking, you can tell them that your alternative was to specifically tell the professor that they were cheating.

There is anonymous reporting. I suspect your university also has an honor code that strongly requests/requires you report cheating. I personally think this type of behavior should in fact be reported, especially if any of the students will have careers that require ethics.

" it feels nosy. That's my biggest reason for sitting on this information for three weeks. It feels like something preschoolers do, not adults." True adults do not cheat. " my desire to tell the professor is hardly pure. It's a slap in the face to sacrifice weekends for two months, only to have classmates giddily announce that they're "just gonna write really sloppy signatures." Your reasons are as pure as they can possibly be and not entirely selfish since it's not only a slap in the face to you and all the students that actually did the work, but also to anyone out there in the same grade as you. Your reasons are extremely honorable. "She could handle the situation in a way that makes it obvious someone snitched" Yes she can. Having been in a similar position myself I would like to tell you that this is a very real concern. You should under no circumstance let an authority figure know that this information came from you. In my own case it was a team project where a particular person ruined the project for everyone else and very purposefully. The entire team suffered because of this person's actions. What's interesting is that I wasn't even a part of the team myself. I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time where I was able to witness this person due some sabatoging on the project. My conscience and my feeling bad for the people on that team led me to report the incident in person in order to save everyone on that team from a failing grade. And yes, the person was called out on it, but in a way that made EVERYONE aware that someone (me) snitched on her. And the authority figure I reported it to promised they would not do this yet they did it anyway. Yes it did save the team from a failing grade, but while they were secretly very grateful for my action- they only extended this gratitude when members of the team were alone with me in a room or something. In public they acted completely different towards me. As if they didn't want to be seen being friendly with a snitch even if this snitch was the very reason they were able to pass. For me it was also the end of the semester, so this mess didn't last very long, but it taught me a lesson for sure. Don't expect any real thanks or any real loyalty for helping others in this way. It's just as likely that they will all too readily accept the benefits of your action while hypocritically pretending not to accept the action itself. Either find a way to report this anonymously or don't report it at all.

As a professor, I would not question your motives for reporting (not snitching!) this egregious dishonesty. This goes far beyond someone failing to cite a proper source in a paper. This violates the basic trust of the project and the course. As your teacher, i would be sure to shield your privacy as far as I could, and I know at least where I teach, my colleagues would as well. Of course, it could become impossible to do so when this matter goes up the administration and the students are penalized with a failing grade or even expelled. One reason I think it's important for them to be held accountable: these students are going to learn that they can cheat big time and get away with it. Lovely to think about them later thinking they can get away with fudging data or statistics in the corporate worlds. Maybe if you are worried about repercussions, it would be better to send the teacher a note telling them to look into it and explaining that you need to remain anonymous but are concerned.