ACADEMIC HONESTY
To be deemed "honest" is to be "held in honor," to be
respected and judged "decent" and "creditable." The honest
person is one who "deals fairly and uprightly in speech and act. . .who
is sincere, truthful, candid. . .someone who will not lie or cheat or steal," (O.E.D.)
and so, a person who may be trusted.* Honesty in this sense of the
word then, is a virtue that rewards its possessor.
For the person who
is part of an academic community, honesty in academic
work engenders trust and ensures credibility and authority. At Monmouth
College, where high value is placed upon learning through the free
exchange of ideas,
our academic community must be able to trust to the truthfulness, sincerity,
and candor of its working members. Not just the reputation, but the
very continued existence of the academic community depends upon adherence
to standards that authenticate our processes of education. And so at
Monmouth College,
in order to sustain the credibility and authority of our educational
aims, we describe and enforce standards of academic honesty.
To put
this matter another way, as money is the currency of the banking industry,
ideas are the "currency" of higher education. While
a family may be rather casual about money and financial records at
home, it would be a
very serious matter if employees of a bank failed to keep detailed
and accurate records or did not insist upon accounting for all cash.
Such
oversights in
a bank might even be deemed criminal. Similarly, while it may have
been acceptable for you to be rather casual in your use of ideas before
coming
to college,
now that you are at Monmouth you are expected to be careful in accurately
representing ideas as your own and in accounting for the sources of
ideas that you borrow from others.
To be honest may also mean, in an apparently more trivial sense,
to be adjudged "neat" and "tidy." But
these descriptive terms should not be seen as trivial definitions when
we mean by them to suggest that authority and credibility often attend
upon
those who provide an orderly record of their transactions in the exchange
of ideas.
WHAT IS ACADEMIC DISHONESTY?
The College defines academic dishonesty as intentional or inadvertent
misrepresentation in the use of ideas by members of the academic
community. There are three
principle forms of academic dishonesty: cheating, inappropriate
collaboration, and plagiarism.
1. CHEATING involves misrepresenting one's knowledge or experience.
For example, if students use unauthorized materials during an
examination (e.g. using
crib sheets, looking at other students' exams, etc.) they are
falsely representing themselves as having recalled material or reasoned
correctly, when, in fact,
they did not do so. If students fake the data in a laboratory
experiment,
they are falsely suggesting that they acquired information in
accordance with prescribed procedures.
2. INAPPROPRIATE COLLABORATION involves presenting academic work
as one's own independent effort when it includes significantly
the work
of others.
It is common and usually acceptable for students to study together
for examinations. Students and faculty alike frequently discuss
with friends
and colleagues
ideas they are developing for papers and presentations -- in
order to gain encouragement and critical advice. Asking a friend
to proofread
a paper is
a legitimate request. HOWEVER, when important ideas or actual
phrasings in an academic work belong to an unnamed colleague,
misrepresentation
has occurred.
It is dishonest for one student to write some or all of another
student's paper or presentation. It is equally wrong for one
student to develop
key ideas for a project that is represented as the work of another.
In
cases
of inappropriate collaboration both parties involved are guilty
of academic dishonesty.
3. PLAGIARISM involves both theft and cheating. When someone
appropriates, for use in formal course work, the wording, phrasing,
or ideas
of another (especially from "published" sources and especially of knowledge
that falls outside the "common domain") and either
accidentally or purposefully fails to acknowledge the debt, that
is theft. Plagiarism
is also cheating insofar as one is creating a false impression
about one's own intelligence, ability, achievement.
There are times in an academic community when the nature of our "free
exchange of ideas" seems to preclude clear source attribution and confound
our attempts to acknowledge what words, phrases, and ideas we may have borrowed.
At such times, students should seek help from their teachers, refer to appropriate
handbooks, but especially test the instance against the provisions of the
broad definition, "Am I stealing from another?" Does
my use of words, phrases, or ideas create a false impression
about the source
of
my information and about my ability and achievement.
AVOIDING PLAGIARISM
Proper Citing of Sources
In borrowing from "published" sources (books, articles, films,
television, interviews, etc.), avoiding plagiarism is generally
a matter of following three rules:
1. Keep a good (neat and tidy) record of the "exchange of ideas," taking
place in the work you are doing. Most often this means taking
good notes.
2. Make it clear in any oral or written work you do that you
have demarcated clearly the beginnings and endings of your uses
of borrowed
material.
Most often, this means introducing your source in some way, and
clearly indicating
(through closure of quotation marks, footnote numbers, etc.),
that you are through using that source. No matter how tiresome
it may
seem, you
have the
responsibility to "introduce and close" each time you
borrow words, phrases, ideas.
3. There are several acceptable forms for citations but all citations
should: a) provide sufficient information to enable readers to
locate the original
source of the borrowed material; b) include enough information
about the source so that an informed reader can begin to evaluate
the validity
of that
source in your work (author, publication, date of publication,
etc.).
WHAT ARE THE PENALTIES FOR ACADEMIC DISHONESTY AT MONMOUTH COLLEGE?
Academic dishonesty undermines the trust necessary to pursue
our educational goals; it damages the reputation of the college
and
the worth of a
Monmouth degree. While an assessment of the student's motive
may influence the
choice of punishment for acts of dishonesty, the claim that the
act was unintentional
does not excuse dishonesty. Monmouth students are expected to
know how to avoid acts of dishonesty. When in doubt, ask a faculty
member,
include
a
citation, or avoid collaboration.
The rules of the Faculty of Monmouth College state that, when
a student has committed an act of academic dishonesty for the
first
time, the
penalty for
that act will be determined by the faculty member involved. You
should be aware that many faculty members consider AUTOMATIC
FAILURE IN
THE COURSE
to be the normal punishment for first offenses involving academic
dishonesty. In situations which do not involve a particular course
(e.g. plagiarism
in a student publication) the Academic Dean will usually act
on behalf of the
college. All offenses of academic dishonesty must be reported
to the Academic Dean who keeps such descriptions of incidents
on file
until
the student leaves
the college.
If a student commits a second act of academic dishonesty during
his or her career at Monmouth, the Academic Dean will refer the
case
of such
a student
to the Admissions and Academic Status Committee. For a second
offense, SUSPENSION FROM THE COLLEGE IS A LIKELY MINIMUM PENALTY
and EXPULSION
FROM THE COLLEGE
IS A POSSIBILITY.
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