A UCF student is suing her own university to overturn her suspension after pulling out her cell phone during a test and being accused of cheating, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
Taylor Seitz was suspended from taking classes for two semesters through the end of December 2016, according to the Sentinel. She said her punishment was “egregious” and filed the lawsuit last month in the Orange Circuit Court.
The University of Central Florida is one of the largest schools in the nation with more than 63,000 students, but despite its size, very few cheating incidents are reported to the Office of Student Conduct every year.
There were 124 academic misconduct cases reported in during the 2015-2016 school year and only 94 in the year before that, according to the Orlando Sentinel. The most reported annually in the last five years was during the 2012-2013 school year where there were 221 cases, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
Seitz wrote in an apology letter that she faced pressure for getting perfect grades and getting into graduate school, according to the Sentinel.
“I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life,” wrote Seitz. Seitz arrived at UCF in 2015 as a transfer student studying speech pathology.
According to the Sentinel, Seitz was told by her assistant professor that her punishment would be failing the course and having to take a workshop on academic integrity.
Instead, Seitz had to go through a formal discipline process and after a hearing, was suspended for two semesters and now remains on discipline probation for the rest of her undergraduate career, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
This all happened in February when Seitz was taking a fill in the blank test at UCF’s Cocoa Campus, according to the Sentinel.
According to the Sentinel, the lawsuit said that Seitz stopped herself before Googling any answers and placed her phone back in her purse.
Court documents also included written statements from three people who rode in the car with Seitz after she took the test. According to the Sentinel, the statements said the Seitz complained about the test being tough and admitted to Googling answers.
One student said she was thankful that Seitz brought her phone to take the test or she would have failed, but in the school documents, Seitz denied helping other students, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
One student in the car was discomforted about what had happened, according to the Sentinel.
That student wrote, “I felt compelled to come forward and report the incident despite the friendship we had with these students because a hard test does not justify cheating, and it’s important for them to realize this.”
Seitz scored an 82 percent on the test. It wasn’t until five days after scores were released that her professor confronted her about cheating, according to the Sentinel.
