Given the easy accessibility to a wealth of resources on the internet and increases in students’ knowledge of how to manipulate technology and their workload, it is no surprise that plagiarism continues to be an issue at Boston University and colleges across the country.
After a survey that said 25 percent of students reported having plagiarized was released late last year, officials at BU have begun discussing the issue. Chancellor John Silber brought the issue up at a session with students and another session with faculty in early March.
The question facing faculty and administrators is, how many cases do the colleges at BU miss and what are they doing about the problem?
Many students said they have seen their classmates plagiarize before, if they haven’t plagiarized themselves.
A School of Management senior, who wished to remain anonymous, said last spring a classmate in her Core class attempted to plagiarize the business plan from a previous semester’s team, but did not succeed when his team members caught him the night before the project was due.
‘The team had to re-write his whole part and they turned it in late,’ the senior said. ‘Turning the project in late is a pretty big downgrade in the class.’
But surprisingly, the senior also said there didn’t seem to be harsh long-term punishments on the student.
‘The student who plagiarized was not allowed to participate in the final presentation, but he passed the course and is going to graduate on time,’ the SMG senior said. ‘In his review, he explained that he plagiarized because of the pressure the team gave him.’
Norm Blanchard, SMG’s director for Undergraduate Programs and coordinator of the Academic Conduct Committee in SMG, was unable to speak specifically about the case. However, he said the Academic Conduct Committee looks at every case differently.
‘Every case has its litigating circumstances, which is the reason why we have a committee to hear the cases,’ Blanchard said. ‘We want the students to have a chance to present all the facts.’
Furthermore, most cases involve a form of probation that usually results in some form of suspension, he said.
‘We use probation very often, although I don’t want to say that SMG typically uses probation because that implies that there is a ‘typical case,’ which is not true,’ Blanchard said.
The School of Management’s Academic Conduct Code emphasizes the circumstantial basis of evaluating each case. Unlike the College of Arts and Science’s Conduct Code, SMG’s code includes a detailed section recognizing the different conditions of each case.
SMG’s Code states, ‘The Committee’s goal is to impose sanctions that are consistent from case to case. However, to ensure fairness to all students, and to accommodate the wide variety of issues that arise, the Committee must respond to unique aspects of a particular case.’
The Code lists possible factors that the committee considers in determining the consequences, such as the premeditated or spontaneous nature of a student’s misconduct.
Both Blanchard and Solomon Eisenberg, the associate dean for Undergraduate Programs in the College of Engineering, said a student’s contrition and conduct in the hearing are considered, but not primary factors, in deciding his or her penalty.
Collaboration is a major problem and a form of plagiarism that is growing at BU, officials said. ENG’s Code allows collaboration if it is ‘specifically permissible.’
In a previous article printed in The Daily Free Press, ENG student Bethany King recounted an incident last semester where 10 of her classmates got away with plagiarizing the same circuit by copying and pasting from a shared file on the network, even with the Teaching Fellows’ knowledge of their misconduct.
But Eisenberg says that students have the responsibility to report concerns and suspicions of plagiarism among classmates to their instructors.
‘I am reasonably sure that there are instances of academic misconduct that go unreported,’ Eisenberg acknowledged, adding that he is only aware of cases brought to the committee.
College of Arts and Sciences associate dean Loren Samons said it is important to note that in each school, only professors can actually bring a case forward to the Academic Conduct Committee.
‘[CAS] does not wish to put students in the position of acting as ‘policeman’ of their classmates,’ Samons said. ‘At the same time, students who believe they know of a case of academic misconduct are doing a service to their fellow students by reporting such cases.’
While each college is clear about establishing the highest level of academic integrity for its faculty, several students and faculty had differing views on the problem of plagiarism at BU.
‘I am not so naive to think that we have 100 percent compliance among faculty, but I have heard cases where misconduct was settled privately,’ Blanchard said on professors’ duty to report every case to the Academic Conduct Committee.
Samons agreed, saying most cases of plagiarism are found and punished in some manner.
‘I can only say that while I believe we miss some cases, I think that most incidents of plagiarism and cheating are discovered,’ Samons said. BU faculty members use some new technologies which easily track down plagiarism, he said.
However, CAS junior Ashley Pollock said she often witnesses people plagiarizing on problem sets and lab reports and most people seem completely comfortable with letting others copy their work. She added that she has never seen anyone get caught.
‘Most classes at BU are so big that the graders don’t notice the plagiarism,’ she said.
However, she said the relationship and closeness a professor develops is a key to preventing plagiarism.
‘Not surprisingly, in classes where the professor is more involved with the students and the grading, there is a lot less plagiarism,’ she said.
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