Cheating at the UCSD BHSAT Mirror

[Grace]

We have reason to believe that Joanna Li, a member of a hybrid team at the UCSD Triton Spring tournament, obtained a copy of the BHSAT 2014 set before playing UCSD’s May 24 mirror of the set. We have been presented with strong evidence of unethical behavior, including repeated attempts to ask others for sets which are not clear before playing those sets, though we do not choose to release all of our evidence at this time.

We do not believe that any other member of Joanna’s hybrid team at Triton Spring was involved in cheating, nor do we think that her school team, La Jolla, was implicated in her actions. We request that Joanna Li be banned from future quizbowl tournaments and have discussed the situation with some hosts in the Southern California area.

We would also like to take this time to repeat the importance of not sharing sets which are not clear. We regret this breach of question security and will certainly be more stringent with our electronic packet distribution in the future. In addition, we hope that other tournament writers and hosts will follow stricter security measures in order to prevent further iterations of this kind of incident.

[Urech hydantoin synthesis]

In my capacity as head editor and mirror site coordinator for LIST IV, I have a couple of things to add to Grace's post concerning Joanna Li of La Jolla High School.

In the week before Westview High School's mirror of LIST IV, the tournament director, Aseem Keyal, brought to my attention that La Jolla had somehow practiced on the first packet of LIST IV. He also informed me that Joanna Li was the one who acquired the packet, and that according to her, she did not acquire any other packets of the set. Based on that and his personal opinion of the matter, I did not pursue it further, being content to have him give La Jolla's team(s) a bye in round 1.

After the tournament, however, several people reported Joanna's anomalous performance to me, which can be found at http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... etail/#t10. Compared with her statistics from previous tournaments, this performance was indeed suspicious, and even more so when examining the contrast between her team's points per bonus and her own individual performance, especially her powers/neg, power rate, and power percentage. That kind of performance does not make much sense especially considering that this year's LIST was harder to power, but had easier bonuses, than the average set. This sentiment was apparently shared by a significant number of other quizbowl players who saw the stats, but there was nothing to prove it.

Of course, the statistical evidence was not strong, I (at that time) thought it was perfectly possible she only acquired 1 packet, and I did not have any idea as to how she might have acquired the questions, so I did not pursue this further, since I had absolutely no leads and any possible cheating was history. In retrospect, acquiring only 1 packet of LIST electronically would have been very unlikely, since I only sent out the set in a single zip file to hosts.

Based on new evidence, I also have come to the conclusion that she had acquired a copy of the LIST IV set prior to playing it, and used it to her advantage. I myself have no power other than to perhaps forbid future mirrors from letting her play, but I strongly urge other TDs to do the same thing unless she can provide a satisfactory explanation for how she managed to acquire only one packet of an unclear set that was not distributed in individual packets.

I agree with Grace in that set editors should take more precautions with question security; while Ladue's team did not password-protect the LIST IV packets because we did not feel the need to (based on previous years' experience), we will obviously be doing so in the future due to various incidents that have occurred in this past year.

This post should be construed as strongly condoning everything Grace has said, in addition to corroborating her reports with more evidence.

[Jason Cheng]

EDIT: I'd like to note that I agree with everything Grace and Ben have said in this thread, and any reading of this post should reflect as such

After Ben Zhang brought this to my attention earlier today, I found that the breaches in question security most likely did not come from any source in Southern California, nor is there any evidence that anyone in the Southern California circuit aided Joanna Li in her suspicious actions. I also uncovered proof that what occurred was that people from regions that had already mirrored tournaments from the current season would forward the questions to players in regions that had yet to mirror the set, and vice versa. I have seen the strong evidence that Grace mentioned and this directly corroborates with the method in which I suspect that Joanna Li cheated. Thus, I'd like to put forth a couple of points:

First, I'd like to request that no one accuse any other parties from Southern California of unethical behavior without strong evidence, as I have already had a number of people approach me with obviously false allegations, even from within the community. Most members of the Southern California circuit that I approached are provably innocent, and were more than willing to assist me in my investigation--I shared all this evidence with Grace and Ben before they released these announcements, and they have agreed with my conclusions. In particular, I want to make it clear that I have seen no proof that the members of La Jolla's quiz bowl program are guilty of anything other than perhaps a poor judgement call in allowing Joanna to compete at Westview's mirror of LIST after knowing she had somehow obtained the first round of the question set. To accuse an innocent party of cheating would have disastrous consequences, which I would like to avoid.

Second, I want to point out that this means there is a possibility that other people from circuits all across the nation have also been cheating this season. While the "underground packet trade" has always existed and there is nothing inherently wrong with this, Joanna Li's actions prove that there is a potential for an individual to abuse this practice and knowingly obtain sets that they are going to play. I strongly encourage people to investigate this matter with regards to the tournaments that have been hosted in their region, as well as take reexamine the overly lax nature of question security between regions, as Grace and Ben are doing.

I will encourage tournament directors in the Southern California circuit to bar Joanna Li from future tournaments, and hope that this incident sparks conversation on how it happened, who took advantage of it, and how to prevent it from happening in the future.

[Jason Cheng]

I have given the following message to the SoCal community:

http://www.socalquizbowl.org/cheating-i ... he-season/

[Steeve Ho You Fat]

While Ben's statement that Joanna had access to one packet of LIST when it was only distributed as a zip is fairly damming regarding the LIST mirror, I would be interested in seeing Yale's evidence. Has anyone admitted to sending Joanna the questions? Did anyone look at her notebook during the tournament, or did she do anything else suspicious at the tournament?

[vinteuil]

We would also like to take this time to repeat the importance of not sharing sets which are not clear. We regret this breach of question security and will certainly be more stringent with our electronic packet distribution in the future. In addition, we hope that other tournament writers and hosts will follow stricter security measures in order to prevent further iterations of this kind of incident.

This is the most important takeaway from this, I think. I'd like to reiterate that nobody should be asking anybody but the editors of the set for copies of the questions, and that anybody who receives a copy of a set (e.g. tournament directors) is NOT authorized to distribute it further until the set is clear. We'll make this more explicit for BHSAT XXIV.

[Al Hirt]

We would also like to take this time to repeat the importance of not sharing sets which are not clear. We regret this breach of question security and will certainly be more stringent with our electronic packet distribution in the future. In addition, we hope that other tournament writers and hosts will follow stricter security measures in order to prevent further iterations of this kind of incident.

This is the most important takeaway from this, I think. I'd like to reiterate that nobody should be asking anybody but the editors of the set for copies of the questions, and that anybody who receives a copy of a set (e.g. tournament directors) is NOT authorized to distribute it further until the set is clear. We'll make this more explicit for BHSAT XXIV.

I'm curious here (and maybe it's my naivete), but why would a team ask for paper copies to questions that are posted freely online mere months after they played them? Would such copies even NEED to be distributed in the first place?

[vinteuil]

We would also like to take this time to repeat the importance of not sharing sets which are not clear. We regret this breach of question security and will certainly be more stringent with our electronic packet distribution in the future. In addition, we hope that other tournament writers and hosts will follow stricter security measures in order to prevent further iterations of this kind of incident.

This is the most important takeaway from this, I think. I'd like to reiterate that nobody should be asking anybody but the editors of the set for copies of the questions, and that anybody who receives a copy of a set (e.g. tournament directors) is NOT authorized to distribute it further until the set is clear. We'll make this more explicit for BHSAT XXIV.

I'm curious here (and maybe it's my naivete), but why would a team ask for paper copies to questions that are posted freely online mere months after they played them? Would such copies even NEED to be distributed in the first place?

I do not believe that anybody in this thread has been referring to paper copies.

It is perfectly reasonable, e.g. for a team to request a copy of a set after playing it, so that they can reread it, post in the discussion forum, practice on the remaining packets, etc.

[Al Hirt]

We would also like to take this time to repeat the importance of not sharing sets which are not clear. We regret this breach of question security and will certainly be more stringent with our electronic packet distribution in the future. In addition, we hope that other tournament writers and hosts will follow stricter security measures in order to prevent further iterations of this kind of incident.

This is the most important takeaway from this, I think. I'd like to reiterate that nobody should be asking anybody but the editors of the set for copies of the questions, and that anybody who receives a copy of a set (e.g. tournament directors) is NOT authorized to distribute it further until the set is clear. We'll make this more explicit for BHSAT XXIV.

I'm curious here (and maybe it's my naivete), but why would a team ask for paper copies to questions that are posted freely online mere months after they played them? Would such copies even NEED to be distributed in the first place?

I do not believe that anybody in this thread has been referring to paper copies.

It is perfectly reasonable, e.g. for a team to request a copy of a set after playing it, so that they can reread it, post in the discussion forum, practice on the remaining packets, etc.

Ah okay. Thanks for clarification.

[Stained Diviner]

Does somebody know how the student got the questions? If so, will the source be outed?

[Urech hydantoin synthesis]

In both cases, it is believed that Student X got the questions after playing the tournament, and then proceeded to pass it along to the person involved in the cheating, perhaps with a middleman in between. It is important to note that there is not necessarily a coordinated effort to cheat here - the trading of packets one has played or will not play seems to be relatively common, but only this time has it been used for malicious purposes (that we know of). Also, I still have no idea how she got the LIST IV packets, since there are so many possible sources and mirror sites.

[Kilroy Was Here]

Being close to pretty much everyone involved in this, I can confirm what Ben said at least for BHSAT. Someone sent the packet to a middleman who wanted the packet due to it not being mirrored in his region and simply wanting to study. The person who cheated asked this middleman for the packet saying she wasn't going to play the tournament and so the middleman innocently (although carelessly) sent her the packet which she then used to cheat. I just wanted to say this to reiterate the fact that the middleman didn't knowingly help her cheat and is incredibly shocked himself. How she got LIST is beyond me.

[vinteuil]

Being close to pretty much everyone involved in this, I can confirm what Ben said at least for BHSAT. Someone sent the packet to a middleman who wanted the packet due to it not being mirrored in his region and simply wanting to study. The person who cheated asked this middleman for the packet saying she wasn't going to play the tournament and so the middleman innocently (although carelessly) sent her the packet which she then used to cheat. I just wanted to say this to reiterate the fact that the middleman didn't knowingly help her cheat and is incredibly shocked himself. How she got LIST is beyond me.

I'd like to reiterate that nobody but the editors and the tournament director of one site was authorized to send out a copy of this question set. If your reasons for wanting the set are good enough to convince your friends, they should be good enough to convince the editors. We will be inserting a punitive clause regarding this kind of distribution into our announcement for next year's set; both "someone" who sent out the packets and this "middleman" should now hopefully see the dangers of doing so.

[Kilroy Was Here]

Being close to pretty much everyone involved in this, I can confirm what Ben said at least for BHSAT. Someone sent the packet to a middleman who wanted the packet due to it not being mirrored in his region and simply wanting to study. The person who cheated asked this middleman for the packet saying she wasn't going to play the tournament and so the middleman innocently (although carelessly) sent her the packet which she then used to cheat. I just wanted to say this to reiterate the fact that the middleman didn't knowingly help her cheat and is incredibly shocked himself. How she got LIST is beyond me.

I'd like to reiterate that nobody but the editors and the tournament director of one site was authorized to send out a copy of this question set. If your reasons for wanting the set are good enough to convince your friends, they should be good enough to convince the editors. We will be inserting a punitive clause regarding this kind of distribution into our announcement for next year's set; both "someone" who sent out the packets and this "middleman" should now hopefully see the dangers of doing so.

Oh absolutely, I just wanted to make sure there weren't any allegations of the middleman doing something malicious.