The temptation to cheat on a test is present for any student who may not have done enough studying or just blank out after reading a certain question.

Midterms are this week and El Camino students might be at a point where their grades rely on taking a peek at another student’s test to copy the answers they have.

Jean Shankweiler, the vice president of Academic Affairs, believes there could be a plethora of reasons for why students will cheat on tests.

“Unfortunately sometimes (students) don’t make good choices when they’re stressed,” Shankweiler said, “They might be stressed (because) they’re taking too many classes, have to work too much, they’re trying to meet expectations of someone else.”

The best case scenario for a student who was caught cheating on a test is a verbal reprimand from the professor and a zero on the assignment. If the professor wants to make the penalty more severe, then there is a formal process for reporting a student.

Greg Toya, director of Student Development, said that there are some factors that determine how stern the penalty could be.

“It depends on the nature of the severity of the violation, prior violations, mitigating circumstances,” Toya said. “If the students takes accountability…that helps. If they say, ‘I learned from all this,’ that will help them with their sanctions.”

The formal process for dealing with a student that cheated is the professor putting an incident report to the Maxient system, Shankweiler said.

Maxient is a database that keeps track of students’ disciplinary records and academic honesty.

Depending on the severity of the student’s actions, the student could be suspended, whether it’s for a short amount of time or permanent is decided by the director of Student Development.

There can be harsh consequences for cheating on any type of test, but some students still take the risk anyways.

Math professor Edwin Ambrosio said that students are under great pressure to succeed, which is why they take that risk.

“To transfer to good universities (and) have a high GPA when they apply for a scholarship…grades are definitely a large factor,” Ambrosio said, in a phone interview.