Academic integrity policies exist to protect students, and sometimes they end up punishing the wrong ones.

A student who spent her senior year taking every difficult course available, including a joint enrollment college physics class, watched her final exam get invalidated after a classmate photographed the test and distributed it to a friend group.

She didn’t receive the photos, and she didn’t cheat, but she still has to retake a harder version of a two to three-hour exam during a summer she’s spending working.

The worst part? The classmate who actually took the photos hasn’t faced any consequences.

Now she’s wondering if reporting what she knows is the right move.

Keep reading for the full story.

WIBTAH for snitching?

I (18F) go to a high school in the middle of a pretty large city.

My friends and I recently took a college physics final, since our school is connected with the college through joint enrollment.

It wasn’t easy, but this student managed to get it done.

The final was absolutely brutal, along with a bunch of my other classes.

This whole year has been an absolute nightmare for me, as I decided to take all AP and college courses to go out of senior year with a bang.

She introduces one of her other classmates.

Anyway, a girl — Kayla (18F) — ended up taking the final early since she has a full ride to a college out of state for golf and had a tournament.

She ended up being pressured, as I was told, to take pictures of the test and send them to her friends, while also using her phone to cheat on it.

The teacher favors her, so she was able to take the test in a room by herself.

But Kayla was soon caught.

Long story short, the pictures were sent to almost everyone in her friend group and most of them were caught.

This would be fine, except school has already ended and now the college has invalidated all of the tests.

This means that everyone in the class was forced to pay for her indiscretion.

The rest of us are forced to take time out of our job-filled summers to retake the final, or accept a zero.

I tried everything to get out of retaking it, but nothing worked.

She’s rightfully upset at this turn of events.

I take my grades incredibly seriously as I am committed to a great school, but taking time to retake a two to three hour final while I have a job is obviously not ideal.

The issue is that they didn’t catch Kayla, who was the one who took the photos.

I’m upset, and my question is, “Why would you take a college class just to cheat?”

I’m mostly wondering if they already know who took the photos but won’t do anything due to her scholarship.

This student worries her outcome won’t be nearly as good the second time.

I’ve also been told that the retake is incredibly harder than the first and includes things we have yet to learn and are expected to figure out on our own.

My friends and I are frankly ticked off that we have to go back to school to retake, so WIBTA for snitching?

Sounds like Kayla really messed things up.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a high school student whose manager insists on scheduling them during school hours.

What did Reddit have to say?

This user has serious doubts snitching would change the outcome.

Getting further involved may actually end up having the opposite effect.

Maybe this student should have spoken up sooner.

The school’s punishment seems way too extreme.

While reporting the person who actually took the photos is the right thing to do, it’s also probably not going to solve the immediate problem of a harder retake on a summer weekday.

The institution already made its call, and the schedule is already set. And institutions like this don’t tend to go back on business that’s already settled.

If anything, this situation taught this student a lesson better than any AP course ever could: sometimes life’s not fair, and there’s nothing you can do about it.