FROM THE ARCHIVES: Recent Expulsion Highlights Plagiarism Problem at SIPA

Cartoon from Communiqué, 2005.

By Seth Searls

The following article is from Communiqué, SIPA’s former print newspaper. It was originally published on December 4, 2002. In light of our discussions in this issue on AI and plagiarism, we decided to reprint it.

A SIPA student has recently been expelled for plagiarism, marking the fourth such expulsion in as many semesters, according to Dean Lisa Anderson.

The student in question is appealing the expulsion, said Dean Robin Lewis. He would not comment further on the specific case, citing legal reasons.

This case highlights an issue that is further complicated by claims of cultural differences in attitudes towards plagiarism, and student perceptions that the administration’s disciplinary process may not be sufficiently fair or transparent, leaving students unclear about what specific violations will result in expulsion.

The administration says it has begun exploring ways to better address the problem. Two ideas are to establish a review committee to handle plagiarism and other cases of cheating, and to publicize details of disciplinary cases—though not the accused student’s identity, for reasons of privacy.

Assistant Dean Sara Mason admitted that because current disciplinary policy limits the disclosure of information, the student body sometimes forms the wrong impression about what constitutes plagiarism. She pointed out that the infractions that resulted in expulsion were unambiguous, even under the most limited definitions of plagiarism.

“The cases that I’ve seen have been absolutely extensive and egregious, and undoubtedly verbatim and unattributed use of other people’s work,” said Mason. “There was no grayness about it at all.”

In an effort to make the disciplinary process more transparent, she added that SIPA might borrow from other schools’ policies. According to Mason, Columbia Business School withholds the identities of all disciplinary hearings including the classes where infractions occurred.

“We should provide some information to students because they’re not hearing about anything except the final verdict in the worst cases. I can think of many other cases where it didn’t come to this.”

She also thinks that having a disciplinary committee with students on it would help to ease student fears and put an end to the speculation that often follows expulsions.

“It’s important to get student representation on the panels, because then you have a conduit of information to the student body and therefore you don’t get the sense of ‘us’ against ‘them,’” she said.

Some students felt that expulsion might be too drastic punishment for first-time offenders, particularly given the potential for cultural misunderstanding.

Darsie Bowden, associate professor of English at Western Washington University and a plagiarism expert, noted in a recent article that in non-Western cultures, where memorization remains an important learning method, plagiarism is sometimes encouraged, not punished.

“Many non-Westerners have a very difficult time understanding that a person can own discourse,” wrote Bowden. “For many Asian students in composition classes, proper acknowledgment of the language and ideas of others is a very difficult concept to understand, much less master,” she wrote.

Some students had no problems with expulsion as a punishment, but worried about a lack of uniformity in how standards are applied. Kartik Desai (MIA) recommended using plagiarism detection software to eliminate ambiguity in judgments. Detection services like EVE2 (an acronym for “essay verification engine”) runs documents through an online engine and flags copied passages from journals, web pages, and even paper mills.

“If we used the software system and submitted our papers electronically, it would help to create standards,” said Desai. “This would legitimize standardized penalties,” he said.

Desai also felt that existing policy sometimes made students afraid of expressing any idea without mentioning the idea’s progenitor.

“We should be able to discuss and assert a basic concept without saying that its particular gentleman came up with it first,” he said.

While a few students felt that plagiarism policy needed more clarity, most students thought much ado was being made of nothing.

“Punishment for plagiarism is a pretty standard thing, so deal with it,” said a first-year student who wished to remain anonymous.

Bojana Zebelej provided additional reporting for this article.