Editorial : University must continue to reform, harshen punishment for academic dishonesty

The Academic Integrity Office revamped its policies to distinguish between conscious dishonesty and negligence. As a result, first-time offenders who have overlooked proper citation or the like will answer exclusively to their professors to decide the punishment. Students whose work reveals blatant dishonesty, such as plagiarism, will follow a similar course as in the past: appear before a college-specific review panel, receive a note of the infraction on their permanent record and attend an educational seminar. Depending on the severity of the offense, dishonesty can also result in suspension or explosion, particularly for graduate students. The distinction between dishonesty and negligence allows younger students, whose high schools may not have enforced proper attribution, a chance to learn from their mistakes. Removing the possibility that a student’s infraction arose out of ignorance or by mistake should allow the judicial review boards to deal more severely with cases of conscious dishonesty. As was discussed last spring semester, Syracuse University’s academic integrity policy is relatively lax compared to its peer universities. To continue raising SU’s academic standards, the office’s next step should evaluate the varying degrees of punishment from college to college within SU. Each school organizes its own judicial review panels. A judicial review panel made of faculty, administrators and students exclusively from one school can appropriately assess the infraction in the context of their field. However, differences in professional demands should not result in one college dealing more leniently with dishonesty than another. A third distinction, between ignorance and negligence, may also aid in assessing the proper punishment for a student; ignorance must be corrected with a lesson, whereas negligence results from avoidable laziness or sloppiness. However SU’s policies change, punishment for conscious infractions must be more severe. Raising students to higher standards directly raises the quality of their work and an SU education.