Plagiarism in Other Countries

1. The standard penalty for students caught plagiarizing for the first time at Stanford University is one-quarter's suspension and 40 hours of community service. If the student is caught during the last quarter of his/her enrollment, then the student is suspended for two quarters. In addition, a Judicial Panel will review the case and evidence and decide accordingly the penalty. Sometimes expulsion is decided. The professor of the class decides the grade as an incomplete for the class, fail, or just a zero on the assignment or test that student cheated on. (website from class)

2. The six possible punishments for cheating at the University of Washington are: a disciplinary warning, a reprimand, restitution, disciplinary probation, suspension, and dismissal (expulsion). (website from class)

3. Examples of people who have lost their jobs because of plagiarism:
a. A professor from Teachers College, an affiliate of Columbia University, was fired because she copied work from three former students and colleagues. She sued the college and does not admit she plagiarized.
http://www.themaneater.com/stories/2008/10/21/professor-fired-plagiarism-sues-columbia-u/
b. The chief editorial editor for a Japanese local newspaper was fired after he confessed to copying 15 editorials from other newspapers. He said he did not know what to write for his paper as the reason he copied. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2007/mar/08/japanleaderwriterfiredfor
c A high school principal was fired because he gave the same speech of a former student without attribution.
http://www.imperfectparent.com/topics/2008/05/29/high-school-principal-fired-for-plagiarism/

4. I agree with the first case because it only involved that one student and another person's work. For the second one, I disagree because the student used the exact paper as someone else and only changed it around a little. The other student must have been his/her friend. I think they should have both gotten suspended. The third case is really funny. If you go to so much trouble to cheat, why not read the syllabus first first? Plus, Stanford is a prestigious university, it doesn't make sense to cheat because you have already proved you can handle the workload by your high school grades and activities. This person was just careless. Case four seems fair. I think that dealing with plagiarism cases is problematic, because you don't know the intentions in some cases. for example, case five, the student could very well have misinterpreted the directions and forgot to cite sources properly. Maybe the student had no previous experience in writing an academic paper or the professor didn't teach how to write an academic paper. The student could have plagiarized unknowingly because maybe the professor's directions were unclear on the syllabus. Conversely, the student could have went to the professor and talked about the paper/assignment before turning it in to make sure no plagiarism had occurred an that the assignment was done properly. so, the student could have lied that he didn't know the directions, etc. For the last case, I think it's just stupid that anybody could cheat to such a degree that whole portions of websites can be found as the original text.

The essay didn't even answer the question! What is the point of going to university if you don't do your own work? It is completely unacceptable to cheat. None of the cases on the website should have occurred because you shouldn't even be allowed to attend university if you can't even understand the basic courtesy of respecting someone else's work. Of course, everyone uses sources and works by other people, you just have to cite them properly and then these types of things won't happen. No one expects you to write a Nobel Prize winning piece of work as an undergraduate. all you need to prove is that you can use and cite source properly. The only exception would probably be in a creative writing or film class that wants original ideas for scripts or poetry, etc. It is a good thing to have these cases, though because it shows that there are consequences to cheating and palgiarizing other people's work.