PLAGIARISM

It is extremely important that all students have a clear idea of what constitutes plagiarism. I have often found that students do not have a thorough understanding of this serious form of cheating and to avoid any problems due to lack of knowledge I want to spell out the definition in detail. Below, I have reproduced the definition of plagiarism from the Cortland College Handbook and a few more relevant points. In addition, to let you understand how deeply those of us on the other side of the grade book feel about this subject, I have reproduced an article by Merri Swid Morgan on the following two pages. I hope you will find it of interest.

340.02 ACADEMIC DISHONESTY Academic dishonesty can occur in many ways. As excerpted from the Handbook of the University of Colorado at Boulder, common forms of dishonesty include:

1. Plagiarism.

Each student is expected to present his or her own work. All papers, examinations, and other assignments must be original or explicit acknowledgment must be given for the use of other persons’ ideas or language. Examples of plagiarism as it might occur in term papers, research papers, laboratory reports, and other written assignments are listed below:

A. Failure to use quotation marks: All work which is quoted directly from a source should be enclosed in quotation marks and followed by a proper reference giving the exact page or pages from which the quote is taken. Failure to use the quotation marks, even if a footnote source is provided, is plagiarism.

B. Failure to document ideas: When a student uses one or more ideas from and/or paraphrases a source, s/he must give the exact page or pages from which the ideas or paraphrasing were taken, either in the body of the text or on the “references ” page according to course guidelines. Failure to provide an exact reference is plagiarism.

C. False documentation: Falsifying or inventing sources or page references is plagiarism. Ideas which are part of the general fund of human knowledge (e.g., George Washington was the first president of the United States, Albert Einstein developed the theory of relativity, etc.) need not be documented in papers.

3. Other Forms of Academic Dishonesty

C. Writing a paper, lab report, or other assignment for another student or submitting material written by someone else;

D. Submitting the same paper for two different classes without explicit authorization and approval of the faculty members teaching those classes. (It is immaterial whether or not the classes are taught in the same semester.);

E. Selling or purchasing examinations, papers, or other assignments.

PLAGIARISM: POWER AND PUNISHMENT AT CORTLAND

by Merri Swid Morgan

Faculty members generally agree that overshadowing our students’ standard peccadilloes – failure to learn our names or spell them correctly, failure to do assignments or hand them in on time – is their causal commission of plagiarism. Whereas we were inculcated with the conviction that plagiarism is the most (only?) unforgivable academic sin, our students seem to view it as a minor error and are generally chastened but astonished to find us outraged that a plagiarized paper has been foisted upon us. Actually, I think what really astonishes them is not our anger but the discovery that we were able to catch them. I even had one student ask me how I knew she had plagiarized sections of her paper, honestly incredulous that I could distinguish between the passage of skilled, sophisticated prose and her own turgid efforts. Other students thought I was dumber still. When two of them turned in virtually identical papers, one day apart, and late enough so the rest of the class papers had long since been returned, I informed them that I might have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night. They at least had the decency not to insist the plagiarism was coincidence or an act of God.

I suspect that nearly every instructor on this campus has had a plagiarized paper presented to him at some point in his teaching career at Cortland. I have taught only two courses here, both freshman composition, and have had to deal with three instances of plagiarism. Each time my initial reaction was fury. How dare this student try to pull this in my class? How dumb does he think I am? He won’t get away with this!

After I recovered from my initial impulse to crucify the student, fail him for the course, or at least give the paper a zero, I calmed down enough to fill out the official Disclosure and Notification of an Academic Dishonesty Charge and mail it to the Provost’s office. I also told the student I suspected plagiarism, excused myself from being his judge, jury and executioner, and warned him that the Provost’s office would soon be in touch with him. And soon it was. Within a week the student had his preliminary visit to the Provost’s office where he was given a choice between confession or a tribunal hearing, and in less than a day or two after that the Provost was on the phone to me to discuss the punishment. Even the one case which occurred less than three days before the start of exam period was handled swiftly and firmly, though had the student opted for the tribunal, the case would have been held over to the next semester.

The purpose of this essay is not so much to praise Linda Pedrick and Charles Warren’s [a former Provost] promptness in responding to and resolving the charge as it is to plead for all faculty members to follow the mandated procedures for dealing with suspected plagiarism. As we all know, the standard argument for why these procedures should be followed is that they are required by college policy to protect the rights of the student who, in fact, may be innocent.

As must be clear by now, I sympathize totally with the infuriated instructor who knows damn well is student is guilty of plagiarism, wants to punish that student and is as outraged by the suggestion that he cannot be the final arbiter in his own classroom as he is by the plagiarism itself. But having been there myself, I ask you to set aside for a moment the rights of the student as the basis for the argument of due process and to consider your own outrage at plagiarism as the best argument for not dealing with plagiarism yourself but for forwarding the charge to the Provost’s office.

If a student plagiarizes in your class, it is likely he has plagiarized before and will plagiarize again in another class. If each of you deals with the plagiarist on an individual basis, how will we ever finally stop him? Only if each case of plagiarism is reported to a central office can we expect to effectively punish each student who plagiarizes and effectively control plagiarism on campus. Though you may think it just retribution to give a plagiarized paper a zero, clearly our students are not intimidated by this punishment. And I do not imagine there are many of you who have given a student a failing grade for the course solely because of a plagiarized paper. The Provost, however, may endorse such a punishment and may even suggest it himself. The most severe punishment a student can receive is expulsion, but faculty do not have the power to expel students for plagiarism; the Provost does. Furthermore, it is a common but false belief among students and faculty alike that a first plagiarism offense will not result in expulsion. In fact, if the first offense is flagrant enough, the Provost may, as he did once with me, suggest expulsion, though the faculty member does not have to agree to it. Clearly, following college policy for plagiarism is more likely to result in punishment of the terrible swift sword rather than the slap on the wrist variety.

The corollary to strict faculty compliance with reporting plagiarism is that students, as part of their orientation, should know exactly what the college’s stand is on plagiarism and what will happen if they are accused of plagiarism. This is not so much to empower them – though, of course, they should be aware of their rights – but to advise them of how seriously plagiarism is taken at Cortland and to warn them that their first try may be their last and their second almost certainly will be.

Faculty members have complained long enough about the casual and persistent plagiarism at Cortland College. I argue that only if all charges are referred to a central office can both the student’s right to due process and the faculty’s right to punish be preserved. Dealing with plagiarism on an ad hoc basis serves neither the student who is innocent nor the student who is guilty and receives too light a punishment. Nor does it serve the justly furious member of the faculty who has been insulted by the plagiarized paper. Most importantly, it ultimately fails to stop plagiarism because the repeat offenders go undetected and unchecked. And our students know it.

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