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Hang ’Em High?
CAPE forum on plagiarism debates behavior modification versus enforcement

The troubling and accelerating trend of academic dishonesty was the subject of a March 27 CAPE forum moderated by Dennis Rothermel, provost for undergraduate education. Panelists included Robert Jackson, dean of Graduate, International, and Sponsored Programs; Lizanne Leach, from student judicial affairs; Ken Derucher, dean of the College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology; Richard Narad, from the Department of Health and Community Service; Fay Roepcke, director of legislative affairs for the Associated Students; Jed Wyrick, from the Department of Religious Studies; and Andrew Flescher, Department of Religious Studies and director of CAPE.

Jackson opened the discussion with a profile of plagiarism on campus. “In my current role as graduate dean, I’ve been alarmed at three recent instances of plagiarized master’s theses,” he said. “Studies indicate that problems with academic dishonesty, and plagiarism in particular, are growing nationally.”

Jackson has participated in numerous plagiarism discussions, including one with the academic affairs council and another with department chairs. “The subject got very hot, very quickly,” he observed. “There’s a difference between information-age-literate students and people like myself, who are teaching and come from another generation, and how we think about learning, writing, and assembling information. Group work using the Internet—taking information and assembling it for reports and so forth—is now very much a typical mode of learning. The idea of what belongs to whom is very different in this age, and how we use other people’s work as a result gets blurred. Students also feel that if others are getting away with cheating, they’re in some ways placed at a competitive disadvantage.” A systemic response to the problem is needed, Jackson stressed, and everyone in the university community must be involved.

Leach found herself “taken aback” during a recent University Life class concerning academic honesty. “Students raised their hands and said, ‘Why do professors make such a big deal about this? It doesn’t hurt anybody. I mean, if we want to do it by cheating, we’re only hurting ourselves.’ Name some professionals whose credentials you really depend on, I said. Doctors? Lawyers? I asked them to view this problem in a whole different way: that the knowledge you are credited with when you graduate is knowledge that people trust you actually obtained while you were here.”

Among solutions Leach has discussed with others is to personalize term paper requirements so that papers can’t be so readily recycled. A database program called Turn It In also exists, which faculty can use to monitor for plagiarized papers. The program is supported through library funds, though perhaps not for long, given looming budget constraints and an indifferent response—so far—to the resource.

Derucher spoke on behalf of honor codes. “The system I’m familiar with is one of pride and clarity. When you come in as a freshman, you’re told up front what the honor code is. You’re asked at some universities to sign a statement that you’ll follow the particular procedures of the code. If you were caught cheating at Stevens Institute of Technology [where Derucher served as dean and department head], a star would go after the grade on your transcript. Below, it would read, ‘honor code violation.’ Try showing that to an employer.”

Narad weighed in with a pragmatic view. “We’re really not going to solve the problem here because it didn’t start here,” he said. “But we can work to change it.” Narad advocated a university policy. “The university needs to standardize the appropriate response. When should we allow a rewrite? When do we fail a student’s assignment, fail that person for the course, or throw someone out of the university?”

Roepcke offered the student perspective. “There’s a wide range in how students define academic dishonesty,” she pointed out. “Some feel it’s not dishonest to ask about what’s on a test, for instance. They’re confused about what plagiarism is.” Roepcke read the vague, four-sentence reference to the subject in the course catalog to illustrate how easy it is for students to misunderstand the definition. “Is it the faculty member’s job to change their assignments each semester? I think it’s really important to hold students to a higher standard, to the knowledge that they’ve earned their education. If I graduated from a school with an honor code, it would give me that much more pride in my education.”

Wyrick constructed a series of syllogisms to define the “crime” of plagiarism and suggested a punishment that would fit it. “Plagiarism is cheating in the sense of a game,” he concluded. “During plagiarism, the rules of the game have been broken. However, as far as I can tell, cheating is a fact of human nature, and so an individual instance of cheating can’t be punished so severely.” Wyrick recommended a three-strikes policy, whereby a cheating “temperament” could be established and punished.

Flescher presented somewhat stern and, as he characterized them, “paternal” views. He took exception to a recent Orion survey asking whether students have ever cheated and documenting several smirking, affirmative replies. He blew the whistle on a Web site “club,” www.chuckiii.com, where students can exchange term papers. (Search results for the phrase “term paper exchange” include more than a million and a half sites.) “Students must understand that getting a college degree isn’t just about getting a credential,” Flescher said. “They plagiarize because they want to avoid the pain-in-the-ass experience of spending Friday night to Monday morning stressing about a paper. We’re battling a culture around here that countenances that kind of attitude.”

Taran March