I was quite surprised to read Friday’s article and editorial on the proposed clarifications to COM’s plagiarism policy (“Proposed changes to COM policy on plagiarism draw faculty fire,” April 21, p.1 and “Policing plagiarism,” p.6). They demonstrated a clear misunderstanding of the nature of group projects and managed to make a mountain out of a molehill.
A group project is a single, integrated work submitted by a group of students, who then receive a single grade. There is no separate identification of who contributed what to the project. All students in the group are responsible for the entire work. This means that when a project contains plagiarized work, all the students involved can be charged with plagiarism. Thus, a student who contributes plagiarized work to a group is putting at risk the academic career of every student in that group.
What, then, should students do when they suspect someone in their group is incorporating plagiarized material into their project? When this happened last year, the students had no guidance because the COM plagiarism policy does not address the problem. The proposals you are so concerned about are nothing more than an attempt to address that omission.
Contrary to the fears expressed in your editorial or by certain people quoted in your article, this is not an attempt to turn students into “the plagiarism police.” Rather, the guidelines under study simply spell out what students should do when they suspect plagiarized work will be submitted in their name. It is a way to protect and empower the innocent students in the group project setting.
Your article also contains the illogical and incorrect assertion by Sandy Kalik that “[b]y codifying the proposals, students would have to face the Academic Affairs Committee on plagiarism charges rather than deal directly with the professor.” The proposals at issue say just the opposite. Both proposals direct the students to talk to the professor. It is the students whose group project contains plagiarized material who have to face the Academic Affairs Committee.
T. Barton Carter
The writer is the chairman of the department of Mass Communication, Advertising ‘ Public Relations in the College of Communication.