Simply Dumb

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At least 60 students had their grades changed by four high school students at Hightower High School near Houston, Texas. Officials are estimating the losses at more than $190,000, although no one’s quite sure how they arrived at that figure. But if the figure is correct, the students could face second-degree felony charges. The penalty? Two to twenty years. Ouch.

Look, kids, you may think being all haxx0r is cool, fun, or just hilarious. But it’s not. It’s serious stuff. You’re breaking into someone else’s property. It’s illegal. And you’ll get caught. Rarely is someone smart enough to cover their tracks. It’s not that hard to track down stuff like that. The question isn’t whether you’ll get caught, but when. Do you really want a jail sentence just because you were goofing around and thought something would be funny? Think before you act. Consider whether you could get in some real trouble for that little prank.

The school district audited grades and is sure that everything is now accurate. If the data had been unrecoverable, I’m sure these kids would be in even bigger trouble. At least two of the kids involved had grades changed to higher scores. But they didn’t mention whether the rest of the students had higher or lower grades after tampering. It’d be interesting to find out if this was a ring, and if they were being paid to give other kids better grades. I’ve seen it happen at the college level. Nothing in the article mentioned that, but why else would they change so many other student grades?

Court documents have been filed, but there was no mention of arrests at this time.

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