Academic Honesty Policy

Quiz #2

Is this dishonest?

Answer Key

1. Possibly. Students have the responsibility of protecting their work from being used dishonestly. If another student makes use of your work even without your knowledge, you may still bear some responsibility for inadvertently helping another student to cheat. Your responsibility or exoneration would depend on how negligent you were about protecting your work. Certainly, if a student goes to great lengths to steal your work despite all reasonable precautions taken by you, you would not be found responsible for aiding a dishonest act. However, you should always keep your work to yourself as much as possible. Lending a friend a paper so that he can use it as a guide to writing his own, for instance, may implicate you in academic dishonesty if your friend uses your ideas, phrases, or passages in his paper, even if you never encouraged him to do so. It is never wise to share your work with others when collaboration is not allowed, and it is a violation of the Academic Honesty Policy to share completed assignments in a form that can be copied.

2. Yes. Improper storage of prohibited notes, course materials, and study aids during an exam such that they are accessible or possible to view is a violation of the Academic Honesty Policy. Always make sure that any notes or study aids that you bring to an exam are safely stowed away in closed bags kept well out of view.

3. Yes. You are responsible for correctly citing all ideas, phrases, and passages taken from other authors wherever they occur in your work, even in drafts of your papers. Failure to do so is plagiarism, a violation of the Academic Honesty Policy.

4. Yes, in almost all instances. Once a charge of academic dishonesty has been brought, you must remain enrolled in the class unless the case is resolved in one of the following two ways:
   1. If you have signed an Instructor Resolution Warning Letter offered by your instructor, you may drop or withdraw from the course once the Warning Letter has been approved by the Board on Academic Honesty.
   2. If you are exonerated by the Board after a hearing, then you may drop or withdraw from the course. If you withdraw before your case is resolved or after you are found responsible under either the Instructor Resolution with Penalty process or Board Resolution process, you will be reinstated in the class.

No matter how difficult it is to stay in a course in which the professor has accused you of dishonesty, you must continue to attend class and fulfill all class obligations.

5. Yes. You are responsible for correctly citing all ideas, phrases, and passages taken from other authors wherever they occur in your work, even in drafts of your papers. Failure to do so is plagiarism, a violation of the Academic Honesty Policy.

6. Yes. It is a good idea to have others proofread your work to identify mistakes in spelling, punctuation, syntax and style, unless such proofreading is expressly prohibited. But you are being dishonest for claiming authorship of any content added by your friend. Your instructor would have every right to turn you over to the board if she suspects that you received unauthorized aid in fulfilling the assignment.

7. Yes. Sharing permission codes with other students is the same as forging signatures or falsifying information on official academic documents such as drop/add forms, petitions, letters of permission, or any other official University document and is a violation of the Academic Honesty Policy.

8. No. This is called “duplicate submission.” Students are expected to produce original work for all of their classes. Turning in an essay written for a different class is dishonest not only because you are misrepresenting it as work done for this class, but also because you have received a grade and critical input from your former instructor, thus giving you an unfair advantage over your classmates. Many times, however, you can use a former assignment as the basis for a new one. Confer with your instructor, show her the paper and discuss how you might develop the work in a way that can satisfy class requirements. It is ultimately your instructor’s decision whether it is appropriate to use work done in a different class for her course.

9. Yes. In classes where collaboration on graded assignments is allowed, you must still do your own work. Always make sure you understand the extent of collaboration your instructor allows. If you are not sure, ask your instructor for clarification. Most instructors do not allow students to turn in identical work or assignments that contain identical work.

10. No. No faculty member can punish you for alleged dishonesty without following the procedures outlined in the Academic Honesty Policy. The instructor can follow the Instructor Resolution with Penalty process by presenting you with the evidence of dishonesty, suggesting a penalty, referring you to the Academic Honesty Policy, and allowing you up to 48 hours to accept the penalty. Or he can turn the case over to the board for a hearing in a Board Resolution. He cannot punish you on his own. In a similar vein, no faculty member can “give you a break” and overlook an instance of academic dishonesty, as all University faculty and staff are obligated to report cases of suspected dishonesty to the board.

11. No. This is called “facilitating academic dishonesty” and includes aiding another person in an act that violates the standards of academic honesty; allowing other students to look at one’s own work during an exam or in an assignment where collaboration is not allowed; providing information, material, or assistance to another person in violation of course, departmental, or College academic honesty policies; and providing false information in connection with any academic honesty inquiry.

12. No. Using automatic translation programs is the same as getting a friend to do your work for you and is dishonest.