It's not about the tests or the fairness of the system. It's about cheating.

This “soft cheating” is the only form of cheating that I actually benefitted from, though I paid into the system just as often as I took from it

When people start to look at other people like "adults" or the "system" as not worthy of their respect, they can justify a multitude of ways of "soft cheating".

I was just reading the article on law enforcement officers who abused the system to get information for personal reasons. Some of them probably used other people to get that information. All of them probably justified it as "soft cheating."

It's as if "soft cheating" is OK as long as it's sticking it to The Man or if no one gets caught or if you just don't like the way the system works.

It's really about the cheating itself. It's about how people's character gets shaped in the face of unfairness. Generally, when people can justify soft cheating in one area, they can justify it in another. The author may not have agreed with the fairness of the system, but if every time someone doesn't like the fairness of the system, they're justified in cheating, I'm not sure she'd like the result.