Whether you’re writing a term paper or a magazine review, be mindful of citing your sources. If you don’t, you will be guilty of plagiarizing.
Plagiarism is “a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work and the act of plagiarizing; taking someone’s words or ideas as if they were your own,” according to Dictionary.com.
It can be as serious as buying a paper off the Internet, to copying another student’s paper, or as simple as a single quote not cited in a research paper.
All incidents are addressed fully and individually, no matter the degree of the offense at the university.
“All plagiarism is taken very seriously,” said Norman Solomon, dean of the Dolan School of Business.
Plagiarism has become a widespread problem all over the nation. According to a Center for Academic Integrity study, 80 percent of college students admit to cheating at least once. The number of cases of plagiarism at Fairfield is undetermined, but cases do exist, according to Solomon and Timothy Snyder, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Fairfield has clear regulations of what is defined as plagiarism in the undergraduate catalog. Plagiarism is one of the many actions that are defined as academic dishonesty by the regulations. Every case of plagiarism is addressed following the principles set forth by the university.
“We follow the guidelines set forth by the undergraduate catalog,” said Solomon.
The faculty member will determine if plagiarism occurred and award a grade to the student. If the student has a concern with the decision, they can appeal it to their dean.
After investigation, the dean gives a written report. The student may appeal the dean’s decision to Orin Grossman, academic vice president. Grossman meets with an Academic Dishonesty Advisory Committee, which will make the final decision regarding the student’s concern, according to Solomon.
“Along with either a zero on the assignment, failure in the course, or expulsion from the class or school, the student receives an official letter in their file that is used to keep track of multiple offenders. We have been dealing with instances of plagiarism by taking the stricter option for punishment,” said Snyder.
Plagiarism cases have risen due to easy access through the Internet and continuously changing technology.
“With the ease of using the Internet it makes it simpler for students to plagiarize,” said Snyder.
“It begs the question, is morality digital? We believe that it is very important for us to take this seriously because we are doing it on the behalf of the students who have the moral and ethical beliefs that the plagiarizers don’t have,” said Snyder.
University officials do not keep record of plagiarism cases. This may change, due to the attention the issue receives from the Curriculum Committee, chaired by Susan Rakowitz, assistant professor of psychology.
“I’d like to collect detailed statistics on plagiarism,” said Rakowitz.
Not only will there be more detailed statistics in the future, but the Curriculum Committee may change the process for identifying plagiarism, according to Snyder.
“We need to use electronic tools to identify plagiarism. In the past, faculty members have used Google to discover incidents of plagiarism. In the world today, we need to use the tools at our disposal to identify plagiarism,” said Synder.
Other schools across the country have taken that step into the technology realm. At University of Southern California, the computer science department uses MOSSMeasure of Software Similarity, to detect plagiarism. With MOSS, professors send in a batch of student assignments and receive a report on the similarities between assignments in return. Further action is taken by the professor.
Texas A’M and Florida State University have purchased a license for TurnItIn.com. TurnItIn.com is an online service that provides plagiarism detection. It uses three databases of content, a collection of every student paper submitted to TurnItIn, millions of published works and a copy of the publicly accessible Internet, which is of more than two billion pages updated at a rate of 30-40 million pages per day.
Regardless of how the problem is approached, Fairfield will remain observant and diligent to prevent plagiarism.
“We can’t allow a select few ruin the value of education for everyone else,” Snyder said. “Plagiarism is a serious offense and we must deal with it seriously.”
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