Chico State University is facing another crisis that has nothing to do with a lack of money, but this particular challenge may do more to damage the core values of higher education than any budget disaster ever could.

Chico State and in all fairness most colleges and universities, thanks to the wonders of technology and the Internet is facing a plague of academic cheating and plagiarism.

One might expect the faculty to be leading the charge to bring this surge of cheating under control, and certainly there are individual lecturers and professors on campus who are doing all they can. However, according to Chico State Provost Scott McNall, it was a delegation led by students who came to the administration last year saying their degrees were being devalued by those who cheat and lie their way through the institution.

These same students also told McNall they saw the cheating happening in their classes, and the faculty members in their classes were doing nothing to stop it.

So a committee of students and faculty was formed. For a year this panel has made a profound effort to gather information on how other people and groups deal with cheating on the nation's college campuses.

Tuesday this panel brought a proposed policy on cheating before the university's Academic Senate. The senate is a body that oversees educational issues on campus and makes policy recommendations to the university president.

In essence the proposed policy said students should be carefully educated on what constitutes cheating and plagiarism, and the faculty is to watch for cheating, make sure their rules are clear, vary their assignments and tests so students can't pass tests and writing projects to others, and see that violators are punished.

However, almost as soon as the senators had the documents they began to pick the language apart.

Some of the faculty in attendance bristled with academic arrogance because their particular ideas had not been included in the documents. Others fretted over legalistic concerns about proper due process for those who are caught cheating. Still others made it clear any procedure that required more work on the park of faculty would be resisted.

The picture was at best pathetic. People who should be actively defending the university from cheaters were too busy picking nits to stand up for honesty. The proposal isn't dead, but it was sent back to a committee.

The vast majority of Chico State students are decent, hardworking, honorable individuals who want to learn. The majority of the faculty are people who have chosen that field of endeavor because they truly desire to teach and instill in their students a love for scholarship.

However, there are times when the glory of the institution is shrouded in a cloud of arrogance and self-centered concerns.

The students are right. Cheating hurts everybody at the institution and in fact cheating hurts and endangers all of us.

Thomas Whitcher, a student member of the committee that drafted the proposed policy and one of only two students who sit on the Academic Senate, made the point clearly and forcefully at Tuesday's meeting.

"Would you want to have surgery performed on you by a doctor who cheated his way through medical school? Would you want an accountant doing your taxes who cheated his way through school? Would you want to be represented in court by a lawyer who cheated his way through law school?" asked the student.

His questions are valid.

But another question may also be worth asking.

What value is there in an academic institution, or a faculty member in that institution, that trivializes academic dishonesty and attacks attempts to halt it?

Chico State has an obligation to itself, its students and the wider community to root out this educational cancer and any faculty member who chooses to fight this effort or even just dig in her or his heels.