College Con Artists and How They Operate (Garrett Brewer)

## **Legend Summary:**

The college con artist is a multitude of stories detailing how students “cheat the system” of their college classes. These stories can be as simple as resubmitting the previous year’s highest-grade paper, or bringing in another student to complete the final test when told that anything can be used if it is carried in the testing room. These legends also include the teachers’ attempts to catch students that were cheating or to make sure people were paying attention in their classrooms. These stories usually rely on the teacher not doing these things maliciously to fail students but to make sure they are doing what they are supposed to.

## **History:**

This theme cannot be placed to a single time in history. The stories of students trying to “one-up” their teachers, and in turn, teachers enforcing their students to “toe the line” for centuries have been told and retold in dormitory halls. Some of the more relevant and repeated themes are collectively documented in the book *Curses! Broiled Again!* by Jan Harold Brunvand, a compilation of stories and personal letters, from both the proud and boastful to the shameful and embarrassed of students. Jan explains how some of these stories go back as far as 1938. Due to the history of “college con artists” being an all-encompassing trope of stories or urban legends, the stories morph and change as the years move on, what is edgy becomes acceptable, and what is doubtful becomes plausible. An example of this is the story of an old research paper being copied and resubmitted semester after semester. In the older version of the story, a research paper is passed around so many times that it is eventually handed back to the initial writer of the paper, generations later, coincidentally who has now become the professor. The newer or updated versions of the legend boasts the research paper being copied from the internet and being turned it to the professor who authored it years before without the paper ever being physically passed to the next student to use.

## **Adaptation:**

The most infamous of the legends is the teacher who allowed students to bring with them anything to a test that can be physically carried as an aid to succeed and subsequently a student’s malicious compliance with that rule. This trope is a more common example of a teacher allowing a notecard to be present during a test and students writing in both red and blue ink on the card so both sets of notes could be read with pieces of red and blue transparent film. Nevertheless, the students were still abiding by the single card rule. The more extreme example would be the story that Jan Brunvand states in his book that a student physically carried in a graduate student to take his exam for him. Since the teacher stated that anything carried into the room could be used, the cunning student complied, and the graduate student was allowed to take the exam. This example could, however, be a modernized version of “The Wives of Weinsberg Tale.” In 1140, the town of Weinsberg, Germany was sieged by solders allowing King Conrad, III, to order the execution of all the men in the city. Now banished, the women and children were allowed to take with them whatever they could carry on their shoulders. The women chose to carry their husbands out of the city on their shoulders, complying with the king’s orders, and thereby saving their husbands.

## **Analysis of Adaptations**:

The college con artist stories while being vast have truly little screen time in pop culture. The majority of the recent stories of this genre of urban legend come from micro stories found throughout the internet on TikTok, Reddit, or Instagram. Stories like the one from the TikTok user “thelationteacher,” explain how one of his students made an Möbius strip index card for the class final to have the most note taking room while still only using a single side of the index card. A Möbius strip is a continuous surface that has only one side that loops forever and can be made by taking a piece of paper and simply twisting it once and attaching the two ends together. By doing this the student was able to double the amount of space they could take notes in while still abiding by the teacher’s rules. Teachers as well continue to catch their students trying to get out of doing work and make fake online answer sheets to catch cheaters. An article from Inside Higher Ed tells the story of a philosophy professor that posted fake answers to his final exam on Quizlet. He caught 40 of his 96 students cheating on the exam after uploading his own altered copy, stating “Most of these answers were not just wrong, but obviously​ wrong to anyone who had paid attention in class.”

## Work Cited

Brunvand, Jan Harold. “College Con Artists and How They Operate.” *Curses, Broiled Again!: The Hottest Urban Legends*, Barnes & Noble Books, New York, New York, 2003, pp. 284–288.

“The Faithful Wives of Weinsberg.” *The Faithful Wives of Weinsberg by Dolendo, Zacharias*, www.wga.hu/html\_m/d/dolendo/faithful.html#:~:text=The%20Women%20in%20Weinsberg%20is,could%20carry%20on%20their%20shoulders.

Quinn, Ryan. “Philosophy Professor Uses Fake Online Answers to Catch Cheating.” *Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs*, 26 May 2023, www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2023/05/26/philosophy-professor-uses-fake-online-answers-catch-cheating.

“Thelatinoteacher on TikTok.” *TikTok*, 31 Jan. 2022, www.tiktok.com/@thelatinoteacher/video/7059365292945722670.