The Prefect Council announced in a school-wide email that several sophomores have been disciplined for buying and selling photos of tests and quizzes. Dean of Students Jordan Church handled disciplinary actions on a case-by-case basis following recent investigations by his office, the Honors Chemistry team and Honor Board.

“The student responsible for taking and distributing the photos has been suspended for the remainder of the year and will receive a failing grade in the class,” the email said. “Other students who admitted to giving and receiving these exams faced combinations of single-day suspensions and zeros on the affected exams.”

Head of Upper School Beth Slattery said the root cause of cheating likely comes from the school’s emphasis on academics.

“We’re trying to remind people that cheating is not a victimless crime,” Slattery said. “But it all gets back to the biggest problem with our school, where the toxic agenda culture and the obsession with college is just absolutely insane. I do think if you take away the obsession with getting good grades and getting into colleges, there would be less cheating.”

President Rick Commons said the school is determined to continue instilling integrity and academic honesty in its students as its mission.

“It is an essential part of our mission as a school and an essential part of the training that we aim to give students at Harvard-Westlake an education on how to have integrity in their lives,” Commons said. “It’s a big deal when there are violations of academic integrity. In my career as an educator, I’ve never had a year where there haven’t been some significant violations of the institutional commitment to academic integrity. Of course, when I learned about the violations that had taken place, I was disappointed.”

“I felt that it was important that the school make a big deal about it to make it clear what our values are to everybody involved,” Commons said. “When we fall short in significant ways, we’ve got to identify and recognize that we’ve fallen short and pledged to do better.”

Upper School Science Department Head Melody Lee said that although not all departments were involved in the conversation after the incident, the Honors Chemistry teachers are working to revise any testing material that was compromised by students.

“We did not have a larger faculty meeting discussing the Honor Board cases, but we did have meetings within the Science Department,” Lee said. “To move forward, the Honors Chemistry team now needs to rethink and revamp their entire assessment curriculum.”

Slattery said that although the school is working to minimize over-challenging students, teachers should also take the initiative to adjust assessments.

“We’ve tried to do things as a school like getting rid of APs and having honors maximums,” Slattery said. “We’re trying to actually save people from themselves. We should have expectations, but we also have to understand that these are teenagers in a high-pressure environment and a high-stakes environment, and we should make it harder for them to cheat. In an ideal world, people would just follow the Honor Code. But you also can’t make it so tempting to people to cheat.”

According to anonymous student sources, quizzes were sold for $40, and tests were sold for $60. Lenny*, who was in the class where the incident occurred, said he believes the stressful environment of the class may have influenced the students’ actions.

“I heard rumors that there were some people cheating, but not much more than that,” Lenny said. “My teacher, at the start of class, talked to us about how she was disappointed and frustrated that we violated the Honor Code. While this is a big problem, it should also be looked into why students are pressured enough to be willing to pay for pictures of a test. I feel as though there is definitely, to a certain extent, overwhelming material, and because the class is an honors [class], it progresses at a faster pace, making it easy to get behind or lost. ”

April*, a sophomore enrolled in Honors Chemistry, said she is upset over the choices made by the students involved in the incident.

“I’m disappointed in my peers because I feel it’s unfair to the students who have worked so hard throughout the year to get good grades,” April said. “I also feel bad for the Honors Chemistry teachers because they trust the sophomores. We’ve noticed several more versions of the tests, so now there’s one for every block. This means the teachers have to work much harder because of us. Overall, students should reflect on their behavior and learn from this incident.”

Senior Prefect Victor Suh ’25 said Prefect Council is aiming to lower the pressure of the school environment by ensuring every student is receiving the support, such as retake policies, they were promised.

“There’s a perfectionist attitude [at the school],” Suh said. “Our playing field right now is targeting the pressure cooker environment where kids feel like they are taking on so many responsibilities. If we properly implement already ratified policies such as breaks, retakes and revisions, kids have less of a reason to feel stressed out about things. That, in itself, is a step in the right direction to helping the cheating situation.”

*Name has been changed