Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons/ Brian Turner
The following reports are real cases adjudicated by the Emory College Honor Council. Any personally identifiable information has been omitted to protect the privacy of all parties involved.
While grading a freshman’s response paper, a lower level humanities course professor noticed that the wording of several passages resembled that of an unreferenced online text. The student said that she had added the passages but forgot to add quotation marks and attribution and apologized. Taking into account her poor working habits and the professor’s suggestion, the Honor Council issued the student a zero on her paper, a two-year mark on her record and an educational program on plagiarism.
A lower level humanities course professor accused a junior of using responses from a publisher’s answer key on three homework assignment questions. The student, however, explained to the Honor Council exactly how he had arrived at each of the answers, showing the council each pages that he worked from. The student was found not guilty of seeking unauthorized assistance on a homework assignment, as the Honor Council found his defense credible and none of his answers had unusual similarities with the answer key.
After finding that the entirety of a senior’s final paper had been plagiarized, an upper level social science course professor examined the student’s previous papers, only to find that they had also been plagiarized. The student admitted to plagiarizing but added that she had several personal challenges that semester and apologized for her actions. She received an F in the course and a seven-year mark on her record.
— Compiled by Lydia O’Neal, Asst. News Editor
A College senior studying economics and French, Lydia O’Neal has written for The Morning Call, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Consumer Reports Magazine and USA Today College. She began writing for the News section during her freshman year and began illustrating for the Wheel in the spring of her junior year. Lydia is studying in Paris for the fall 2015 semester.
