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Intellectual Honesty

Examples of intellectual dishonesty include, but are not limited to, the following:

  1. Multiple submission of the same or similar work without prior written permission of the instructor(s). Examples include:
    1. Submitting the same work, or substantially the same work, for more than one course without the prior permission of all instructors involved.
    2. Submitting the same work, or substantially the same work, as that submitted by another student without the prior permission of all instructors involved.
    3. Submitting the same work, or substantially the same work, as was used in a previous course or at another school without the prior permission of all current instructors involved.
  2. Unauthorized collaboration. Collaborating on any academic work without the prior permission of the instructor(s) is dishonest.
  3. Unauthorized possession and/or distribution of an examination.
  4. Consultation of unauthorized materials during an examination.
  5. Failure to comply with an instructor’s specific instructions with respect to academic honest. Students who are uncertain about the terms of academic integrity for any particular course or assignment should ask the instructor for explicit guidelines.
  6. Falsification or misrepresentation of one’s own academic record or that of anyone else.
  7. Falsification or misrepresentation of data, information, or quotations.
  8. Preparing work for another student.
  9. Use of another person’s work. Examples include:
    1. Copying from another student’s exam, paper, lab report, or homework assignment.
    2. Submitting, as one’s own, work that someone else did.
    3. Plagiarism.

Plagiarism

To avoid intentional plagiarism, a student must be honest and careful. To avoid unintentional plagiarism is more difficult. The student must remember that “Plagiarism means presenting, as one’s own, the words, the work, or the opinions of someone else.”1 In order to ensure that due credit is given to others, the student should also keep in mind that whether quoting directly or paraphrasing the words of another person, or using “the sequence of ideas, the arrangement of material, the pattern of thought (or the observations and opinions) of someone else,”2 they should be sure to acknowledge the debt (to a book, a newspaper, a columnist, an instructor, a relative, a fellow student, etc.) in a footnote or a parenthesis, or should refer precisely to the source in the body of the paper, speech, or examination.

Students sometimes find it difficult to avoid plagiarizing unintentionally when they paraphrase material from a printed source. To illustrate this difficulty, let us take a passage from H.L. Mencken’s The American Language:

The American, probably more than any other man, is prone to be
apologetic about the trade he follows. He seldom believes that it is
quite worthy of his virtues and talents; almost always he thinks that
he would have adorned something far gaudier. Unfortunately, it is not
always possible for him to escape, or even for him to dream plausibly
of escaping, so he soothes himself by assuring himself that he belongs
to a superior section of his craft, and very often he invents a sonorous
name to set himself off from the herd. Here we glimpse the origin of
a multitude of characteristic American euphemisms, e.g., mortician
for undertaker, realtor for real-estate agent, electragist for electrical
contractor … so on.3

If the student were writing a research paper on some aspect of the American language and wished to use Mencken’s explanation of the origin of the euphemisms for professional occupations, but wished to draw examples from another source, they might write thus:

As Mencken says, “The American, probably more than any other
man, is prone to be apologetic about the trade he follows.”4

The student who wishes to quote even more from Mencken is quite free to do so, as long as the student uses quotation marks to indicate the places where Mencken’s exact words appear and acknowledges the source in a footnote. Often, however, the student will prefer to paraphrase and in doing so may run into difficulty. The most important point to remember is that paraphrasing means putting into different words and phrases the material expressed in the printed source. The following “close paraphrase” is not a satisfactory paraphrase:

As Mencken says, the American believes that he would have adorned
something gaudier, so he soothes himself by inventing a sonorous
name to set himself off from the herd.5

Technically, this is plagiarism, despite the reference to Mencken; a student who has written this sentence would have been using verbatim the words of the source without fully acknowledging the fact—even if the student had used a footnote reference to the text (as should be done even with a paraphrase). In order to paraphrase correctly, a student must restate the original material in their own diction and style. An acceptable paraphrase might read:

Mencken explains the origin of these professional euphemisms as
lying in the American’s vanity; the American feels that he is really
better than his profession, but since he cannot escape it, he tries to
make it at least sound worthy of him.6

This sentence, which assumes that the student has already been talking about these euphemisms, embodies accurately the ideas that Mencken expressed, but it is a true paraphrase rather than an unacknowledged quotation. It still requires a footnote; whether Mencken is mentioned by name or not, the student is indebted to him for an idea and should acknowledge the debt.7

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1Genevieve B. and Newman P. Birk, Understanding and Using English (4th ed.; New York: Odyssey Press, 1959), p. 696.

2Birk and Birk, Understanding and Using English, pp. 696-697.

3H.L. Mencken, The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States (4th ed.; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936), p. 284.

4Mencken, The American Language, p. 284.

5Mencken, The American Language, p. 284.

6 Mencken, The American Language, p. 284.

7The regulation on intellectual honesty is taken from the Manual for English 101: Freshman English (fifth edition; Trinity College, Hartford, Conn. 1965), pp. 5-7.

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Academic Dishonesty: Procedures, Panel Composition, & Hearing Information

A Faculty member may not impose a grade penalty for academic dishonesty without notifying the student and reporting the student to the chair of the Jury Pool (if proceeding to first violation resolution) or to the Office of Student and Community Life (if proceeding to a formal hearing). A suspected violation must be reported in a reasonable period of time (normally within 30 business days of the date when the alleged violation is discovered).