Administration warns students about cheating
Although severe cases of cheating are rare, USU has policies and procedures in place to make reporting and resolving academic integrity violations as simple as possible.
Eric Olsen, associate vice president for student services, said teachers have “full autonomy” to do whatever they feel is appropriate when a student is caught cheating.
“Faculty could warn a student or they could fail them for the assignment or course depending on severity,” Olsen said.
Brock Dethie, a professor in the English department, said first offenses can become “teachable moments” where a student can learn from their mistakes. However, he said obvious, forms of cheating are usually not tolerated.
“If the offense is blatant or intentional, the student usually gets a zero for the paper and in some cases, fails the course,” Dethie said.
According to the university’s academic integrity code, cheating can actually be broken down into three different categories: cheating, falsification and plagiarism.
Cheating is defined as using any “unauthorized assistance” in taking tests, using material not approved by a professor, substituting for another student, not following time restrictions and/or using one assignment’s work for more than one class. The integrity code states that falsification is “altering or fabricating any information or citation in an academic exercise or activity”, and plagiarism is defined as using someone else’s work without properly identifying it, as well a buying a paper written by someone else.
Olsen said the process of punishing a student is gradual. He said first offenses are usually taken care of by the professor, but can also be reported. So if it happens again, more extreme measures can be taken to discipline the student.
The Academic Integrity Violation Form (AIVF) brought changes to the student code, Olsen said. The form outlines the process the professor follows if a student is suspected of cheating. The form, available to professors through the USU website’s “Faculty and Staff” tab, is filled out online and sent to Olsen for review.
“We created the AIVF and put it into place this past spring,” Olsen said, “the form allows us to put the violation into a database and track it to see if it is a first offense.”
The form came about because former ASUSU officer Jerry Brunt wanted to make the discipline process for cheaters more timely.
“Students would cheat spring semester and not think they got caught. Then summer would come and go and once fall semester got started they would see they failed the course or something like that because of something that had happened months ago. We want that interaction between the faculty and student so the situation can be resolved in a more timely matter,” Olsen said.
According to the Code of Policies and Procedures for Students at Utah State University, Article 6, Section 2, “the Academic Integrity Violation Form provides guidance to instructors and students, ensures minimum due process requirements are met, and allows tracking of repeat offenders at the university level.”
Olsen said because it is such a new form, many professors aren’t aware of it or don’t utilize it like they should. He said it is hard to tell how successful it has been so far because he believes many professors just don’t know about it enough to use it.
If it is a repeat offense for a student, Olsen said, they could be dismissed from the university but he said that situation isn’t the norm. He said he has seen this happen two or three times in the last five years.
“If a student was to be dismissed from the university, it would be a very severe case. Usually they are put on probation with university community service, or suspended for a semester. It just varies on the degree of the situation that could be applied after first offense,” Olsen said.
In the severe cases Olsen talks about, students would have to do something where it is clear they planned to cheat ahead of time.
“A reason where a student would be more likely to be dismissed from the university would be, like, they stole the professor’s key to the test and then distributed it around to other classmates. Something where it is clear this wasn’t just a student getting into a tight spot and using cheating as a last result,” Olsen said.
Dethie said he thinks the number one reason students cheat is because they are lazy. Olsen said along with being lazy, many students “get in a tight spot” and don’t really think about it. Olsen said he has seen cases where students end up copying their own professor’s work without realizing it.
“Every year I get at least one or two cases where students plagiarize their professors work. The student finds it somehow and their professor, or a coworker of theirs, were the ones that actually wrote it. Kids just aren’t paying attention to whose work they are copying,” Olsen said.
Olsen said the advice he would give students to help them not cheat would be to not procrastinate.
“Procrastinating stresses students out so they aren’t thinking straight. Most students, when they aren’t waiting until last minute to do a project, never think about cheating. It is their last resort that shouldn’t ever have to come,” Olsen said.
– megan.b@aggiemail.usu.edu