By Amanda Battle             

      Sports, clubs, work, homework, sleep; which do studnts sacrifice? Hereford students find themselves facing this quandary on a daily basis. One would be able to simply observe the answer by walking around the halls of our school between 7:15 and 7:35 in the morning; almost every Hereford student is equipped with a cup of coffee and a set of baggy eyes while attempting some last minute homework before the bell rings.

      The Hereford Harbinger conducted a survey that exposes just how often students are remunerating for their sacrifices of sleep, due to excess homework and a lack of time to complete it due to participation in clubs, sports, and work. Though some just muck it through late nights and early mornings, many people face the moral question of whether or not to cheat.

     As evident by their expressions, Hereford students grind out papers, equations, outlines, and worksheets for hours on end every night to just obtain a decent homework grade for a questionable majority of their rigorous classes. The school day is only six hours long. Yet, 24% of students at Hereford High School are spending more than three hours on homework every single night. With 180 days in a school year, it is forecasted that 58% of students’ time in the 2012-2013 school year will be spent in school or working on homework.  That leaves only 42% of the day for sleep, clubs, sports, or work.

     After, either a student goes to bed and faces a zero on the assignment; or more commonly, students will text their fellow classmates and ask to copy their homework before class the next day. More than half of each grade admitted to cheating on homework, class work, or tests. The results show that over 48% percent of the cheating is occurring on homework. And as expected, over 62% of the cheating is done through copying.

     There is no doubt that Hereford students cheat. But do they get caught? An underwhelming 124 of X amount students attending Hereford High School have ever been caught cheating. On the contrary, 897 of those X amount of students admit to having cheated before. This may lead one to think that Hereford High School is full of manipulative cheaters. Or, one could come to the conclusion that Hereford students are so smart that they know how to cheat, and know especially how to get away with it.

     Cheating is a game Hereford students continue to win, not because of foul play, but because students are so concerned about their grades they sacrifice some morals to get the “A.”