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Academic Misconduct Hearing at UT ... severity?


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On 5/31/2023 at 8:48 PM, boilerhorn said:

If the professor seems reasonable, a simple question would be “If I knew this was wrong, would I have done something that was so obviously in violation of the rules?”  The counter might be, “you signed off on the code of conduct, right?”  And a response would be, “Yes.  Just like we all read every line of the terms of service of every piece of software we’ve every purchased.”

At which point dickhead prof says: "Yes, of course I do, don't you?"

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On 6/4/2023 at 6:04 PM, Sawbonz said:

What upper division English courses were required for your degree?

He’s not talking about upper division classes. Calculus is not an upper division class. It is taken by freshmen.  There was a calculus for us nerds, and another for the Neanderthals who need to use their fingers and toes for addition.  Same with physics and chemistry. There was not, however, an intro English/lit for socially awkward people that sometimes forget to shower. 

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On 6/4/2023 at 6:04 PM, Sawbonz said:

What upper division English courses were required for your degree?

In engineering, you had to take the three English/substantial reaming component classes, or place out of them:  E306, E316, and then a third that was, for several years any substantial writing component class, then they turned into "technical writing."  But UT didn't offer technical writing, so you could either take it at JUCO, or take that miscellaneous substantial writing component class.

I believe the Technical Writing course eventually was upper division.

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If you hand in the same paper with nothing changed but the date, you didn't do the assignment. While I agree that you can't plagiarize yourself, he's using the work from another credit. This type of behavior would be rewarded in the real world as being efficient, but academics isn't the real world.

If he had been proactive by asking the professor if he can just turn in a relevant paper from another class, whether the class is repeat or not, I'm sure the professor will say to write a new paper. Which could also just mean re-arranging and adjusting the old one.

I doubt this is the first instant of this occurring at this or another school. People retake classes all the time for a variety of reasons and it would be tempting to re-use previous work. I would ensure the school is aware of the fact that his is "plagiarizing" himself and stand proud that you felt the initial work couldn't be improved upon.

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11 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

In engineering, you had to take the three English/substantial reaming component classes,

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5 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

If you hand in the same paper with nothing changed but the date, you didn't do the assignment. While I agree that you can't plagiarize yourself, he's using the work from another credit. This type of behavior would be rewarded in the real world as being efficient, but academics isn't the real world.

If he had been proactive by asking the professor if he can just turn in a relevant paper from another class, whether the class is repeat or not, I'm sure the professor will say to write a new paper. Which could also just mean re-arranging and adjusting the old one.

I doubt this is the first instant of this occurring at this or another school. People retake classes all the time for a variety of reasons and it would be tempting to re-use previous work. I would ensure the school is aware of the fact that his is "plagiarizing" himself and stand proud that you felt the initial work couldn't be improved upon.

agree with all of this, and even beyond "well academics isn't the real world", for lots of types of assignments doing the assignment is the part where you're... learning and growing in the way that is the purpose of the course and discipline. 

From purely an outcome based perspective I have a hard time believing that lawyering up is a smart move. Heartfelt apology where you apologize generally and to the professor specifically, communicate that if there's something you can do to make it up you would like to do so, circle back around to explain that at the time you didn't understand it as academically dishonest but you understand how it is and you have learned from the experience and thank you. If you can manage to actually mean it it'll play better.

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3 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

From purely an outcome based perspective I have a hard time believing that lawyering up is a smart move. Heartfelt apology where you apologize generally and to the professor specifically, communicate that if there's something you can do to make it up you would like to do so, circle back around to explain that at the time you didn't understand it as academically dishonest but you understand how it is and you have learned from the experience and thank you. If you can manage to actually mean it it'll play better.

I agree that bringing in a lawyer could backfire. It's possible it could intimidate the school into giving him a positive outcome but it could also lead them to bring in their counsel. If I walked into a meeting where the other person brought in their lawyer, I'm postponing the meeting until I can have a lawyer there.  The person bringing in the lawyer is escalating the situation.

You can always bring in a lawyer later on.

 

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On 6/1/2023 at 11:53 AM, Doc Daneeka said:

Self-plagiarism is a valuable practice in life. It kind of sucks that it’s discouraged in school. 

This.  It's encouraged in corporate.  I've heard the phrase "Let's not reinvent the wheel here, just re purpose that memo from last week" a million times. It's also not consistent with IP law: you can't plagiarize your own work as long as you solely own the copyright. 

But the university holds all the cards here, so your BIL should tread carefully, smile and be deferential, and don't be afraid to apologize without a "but" if it'll get him out of this with minimal pain.

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16 hours ago, UT_OB1 said:

He’s not talking about upper division classes. Calculus is not an upper division class. It is taken by freshmen.  There was a calculus for us nerds, and another for the Neanderthals who need to use their fingers and toes for addition.  Same with physics and chemistry. There was not, however, an intro English/lit for socially awkward people that sometimes forget to shower. 

I know we’re off topic here, but I felt bad for Asian double E kids taking English and Literature. That had to be a bitch.  I was all honors in HS, but my high school honors English teacher was also the coach of the girls basketball team.  Maybe a lesbian, but she had rules I could understand. Hippy dippy English professors were hard to understand what they wanted. I don’t think they wanted a jock/frat type engineer with all the right answers. 

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20 hours ago, UT_OB1 said:

There was a calculus for us nerds, and another for the Neanderthals who need to use their fingers and toes for addition.  Same with physics and chemistry. There was not, however, an intro English/lit for socially awkward people that sometimes forget to shower. 

E316 was the Neanderthal English class. 
 

eta Armendariz taught my M 408c section. Made an 89.4 for the semester and went and asked for the 10th of a point to round up to an A. He asked me how many of the small group TA weekly sessions I attended. I told him one. He said if I had gone to a couple more, I probably wouldn’t need the help and politely declined to bump me up 

Edited by Sawbonz
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20 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

In engineering, you had to take the three English/substantial reaming component classes, or place out of them:  E306, E316, and then a third that was, for several years any substantial writing component class, then they turned into "technical writing."  But UT didn't offer technical writing, so you could either take it at JUCO, or take that miscellaneous substantial writing component class.

I believe the Technical Writing course eventually was upper division.

I did not have to take tech writing, but had some speech/debate option so took that my final semester.   Along with freshman psychology to get that last non tech requirements into my 132 hour sack.  Both quite good.

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2 hours ago, Sawbonz said:

E316 was the Neanderthal English class. 
 

eta Armendariz taught my M 408c section. Made an 89.4 for the semester and went and asked for the 10th of a point to round up to an A. He asked me how many of the small group TA weekly sessions I attended. I told him one. He said if I had gone to a couple more, I probably wouldn’t need the help and politely declined to bump me up 

Everyone had to take E316.  It was the biggest class I had.  People that didn't place out of E306 were neanderthals, no-spelling, no-grammar neanderthals.  I suppose some could place out of E316 with AP English, but I didn't know anyone who did.

I took World Lit and got Ernest Kaulbach.  For a 300 person class it was damn good.  I kept the Norton Anthology and still drag it down to read some actual literature from time to time.

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On 6/1/2023 at 8:32 AM, MonkeyDoughnut said:

Yeah, my guess is professor has nothing specifically to do with this, everything happened automatically via turn in system.

At least where I teach, nothing automatically triggers. I can’t imagine how that would work without lots of false accusations.

TurnItIn comes up with possibly plagiarized passages and possible sources, but context would tell you if it is or isn’t plagiarizism.

There are plenty of scenarios where an assignment that triggers lots of flags wouldn’t be plagiarized as well as scenarios where an assignment triggers nothing is obviously plagiarized.

My institution doesn’t want us handling these issues off-the-record. If a student plagiarizes, we report it and go through the procedure. We don’t work out arrangements on our own for students to make up for the cheating. There have been situations where a student seemed to perpetually work out ad hoc arrangements and skated by with lots of plagiarism.

This way it’s tracked. We have a pretty well-defined policy to determine the punishment — it’s a combination of the severity and frequency. A one off like the violation in the OP would just be a zero on the assignment and some training.

I don’t always bother asking the student for their side of the story. If the plagiarism is obvious and unambiguous, I’ll just send them a notice, give a zero, and report it. There’s no point in it, just a chance for them to make up some dumb story and debase themself. I encourage them to use the appeals process if they’re unhappy they got a zero for copy/pasting from Wikipedia. 

A self-plagiarism case like this would be pretty straightforward, so I’d probably just notify and report. Unless it’s a major assignment or the student is a repeat offender, I wouldn’t expect major ramifications.

Self-plagiarism gets covered in our intro to being a college student class as well as first semester English. I suspect most institutions are similar. A returning student after many years would likely fall through the cracks and would be more likely to accidentally commit the offense. Our policy is that ignorance is no excuse, but first offenses on minor violations are mostly teaching moments rather than a chance for punishment.

And lulz at a board full of lawyers talking legal options because someone might be punished for violating a clearly defined policy. I’ve served on our appeals committee for a number of years. We’ve had a few lawyer-assisted appeals and it has never helped the student.

 

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13 hours ago, Sawbonz said:

E316 was the Neanderthal English class. 
 

eta Armendariz taught my M 408c section. Made an 89.4 for the semester and went and asked for the 10th of a point to round up to an A. He asked me how many of the small group TA weekly sessions I attended. I told him one. He said if I had gone to a couple more, I probably wouldn’t need the help and politely declined to bump me up 

Not bumping up is typical for profs - although I know a woman who was a gunner and wanted to be number 1 in the class who would try to be the class rep and get questions dropped that she missed. She also cried in a prof's office to get a small bump at the end. I don't know if she did any more but she did get the residency that she wanted. Between that and being a suckup to become class rep and obtain old tests for studying... I hate her.

What were we talking about? Oh, yeah, professors. I bet if you told the prof that you went to 3 sessions, he would have said the same thing. In fact, no matter what you answered, he would have always had a reply to deny the grade bump.

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14 hours ago, Mole said:

And lulz at a board full of lawyers talking legal options because someone might be punished for violating a clearly defined policy. I’ve served on our appeals committee for a number of years. We’ve had a few lawyer-assisted appeals and it has never helped the student.

Yeah....seems to me the policy is plainly stated, and he likely violated it.

However, I think it's a stupid policy.  As someone who literally writes a LOT for a living, I "self-plagiarize" all the damn time.  There's no point in me re-writing my explanation of how the summary judgment standard works under Texas law when I wrote it well the first time, and wouldn't say anything different this time.

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19 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Yeah....seems to me the policy is plainly stated, and he likely violated it.

However, I think it's a stupid policy.  As someone who literally writes a LOT for a living, I "self-plagiarize" all the damn time.  There's no point in me re-writing my explanation of how the summary judgment standard works under Texas law when I wrote it well the first time, and wouldn't say anything different this time.

Yeah, I think I would take a different less passive approach to the inquiry. Yes, I submitted the same paper to the same class. I made an A when I turned it in to the professor the first time and just assumed that I would receive an A again. I didn't even realize self-plagiarism was a thing. I have sent the same memo to employees and superiors all the time at work. After all, there isn't a need to reinvent the wheel. And if I was a professor, I would use many of the same essay questions from semester to semester. Is this wrong? And as a professor who asked the same question, I would expect the students to give the same answer. If I wanted a different answer, I would ask a different question.

In this case, I just wish the professor came to me directly. I would have no problem with him telling me that he wanted a new paper for the assignment. And still, I would be happy to oblige the request.

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1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

I "self-plagiarize" all the damn time. 

Yea, we all agree that you like to repeat yourself.

There’s a disconnect in terms of purpose here though. The goal of a student paper or assignment isn’t to make something that anyone will ever read — I had a real moment of clarity when I defended my dissertation and realized that no one on my committee had read past page one. No one really cares about your great paper you wrote in that one class that one time.

The goal of student assignments is to learn something. There’s a presumption of original work when an assignment is given. A student reusing a paper isn’t learning something and certainly isn’t doing original work. The expectations are different than normal work life because the purpose is different.

It’s also typical in normal work life to take our hard questions to experts and let them solve it for us. I don’t think anyone honestly would defend a student sending another student to take their exams for them. Different goals carry different expectations.

The most common form of self-plagiarism that I see on the appeals committee is where a student is retaking a science lab and uses data from the previous semester.

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10 hours ago, Bevo said:

professors. I bet if you told the prof that you went to 3 sessions, he would have said the same thing. In fact, no matter what you answered, he would have always had a reply to deny the grade bump.

Well he was a good dude and he bumped 2 of my classmates that I knew of from C’s to B’s. They went to all the voluntary TA sessions though. He may have been more stingy w an A. The worst thing for me is there was a 10 point bonus question on the final that they specifically did an example of during the TA finals review. 
 

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2 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Well he was a good dude and he bumped 2 of my classmates that I knew of from C’s to B’s. They went to all the voluntary TA sessions though. He may have been more stingy w an A. The worst thing for me is there was a 10 point bonus question on the final that they specifically did an example of during the TA finals review. 
 

Undergrad, I never went to that stuff but later I never missed them. My big problem with undergrad was ADHD. In pchem, I started the exam from back to front and checked my answers as I went through. I got to the first problem and did about 9/10ths of it and ran out of time. I figured I made something like a 97 coming out of the exam. I found out later that the 1st question was worth 50% of the total. I'm thinkin' I should have read the instructions before starting. And I probably would have cried if I found out they went over the first question in the TA sessions. Ignorance is bliss.

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I just don’t see any purpose at all in trying to explain to professors/deans/etc that self plagiarism shouldn’t be a thing and isn’t in the real world and I guess I’m wrong but I don’t really think I’m wrong. They’re not going to find themselves in a logic trap and change the their opinion, they’re just going to get annoyed that you are not learning and give you more consequences.

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1 hour ago, NeverMarryAStripper said:

Maybe the purpose of going to school is to learn.  You learn by doing. 

Getting on a tangent, and a bit philosophical, but I don't agree with this. It isn't so much to learn as to get in the habit of learning (most of the actual info we learn in school is not applicable to work or life later, excepting certain occupations and the pub trivia circuit). Being forced to make new work for identical assignments isn't helping that one bit. And the time wasted in busywork for an identical assignment is time taken away from other activities that may actually be new "learning."

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9 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Yeah....seems to me the policy is plainly stated, and he likely violated it.

However, I think it's a stupid policy.  As someone who literally writes a LOT for a living, I "self-plagiarize" all the damn time.  There's no point in me re-writing my explanation of how the summary judgment standard works under Texas law when I wrote it well the first time, and wouldn't say anything different this time.

Well, same.  And I cut and paste from cases quite a bit with only the barest revision.

But, as has been pointed out, we're not in school anymore.

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12 minutes ago, Sam Lin said:

Getting on a tangent, and a bit philosophical, but I don't agree with this. It isn't so much to learn as to get in the habit of learning (most of the actual info we learn in school is not applicable to work or life later, excepting certain occupations and the pub trivia circuit). Being forced to make new work for identical assignments isn't helping that one bit. And the time wasted in busywork for an identical assignment is time taken away from other activities that may actually be new "learning."

Well, by that standard, you should not be able to take the same class for credit twice.

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9 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

However, I think it's a stupid policy.  As someone who literally writes a LOT for a living, I "self-plagiarize" all the damn time.  There's no point in me re-writing my explanation of how the summary judgment standard works under Texas law when I wrote it well the first time, and wouldn't say anything different this time.

Yeah, but you copy and paste the cites too, right?  Not plagiarism if you cite your source. 

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22 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, by that standard, you should not be able to take the same class for credit twice.

No disagreement here. That's a very odd policy to allow, most of the time the retake "overwrites" the original take.

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  • 1 month later...
On 6/1/2023 at 8:55 PM, choripan said:

Ha. Thanks everyone (and to those that DMed).

He will plead ignorance -- that he didn't know he could plagiarize himself  -- but that he should have been aware of the policy, in any case. He will maximize contrition and point out that he has no record of academic dishonesty and it's something he never would have done had he known it was wrong, and from now on he'll work to be aware of all applicable rules and regs.

Guessing he gets something like a zero for the assignment, some sort of wrist slap, maybe has to write an apology letter or a paper on academic integrity or so on. Fingers crossed it's that easy.

I was talking about this with some folks the other day.  What was the result of the hearing?

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On 6/7/2023 at 1:09 PM, Bevo said:

Yeah, I think I would take a different less passive approach to the inquiry. Yes, I submitted the same paper to the same class. I made an A when I turned it in to the professor the first time and just assumed that I would receive an A again. I didn't even realize self-plagiarism was a thing. I have sent the same memo to employees and superiors all the time at work. After all, there isn't a need to reinvent the wheel. And if I was a professor, I would use many of the same essay questions from semester to semester. Is this wrong? And as a professor who asked the same question, I would expect the students to give the same answer. If I wanted a different answer, I would ask a different question.

In this case, I just wish the professor came to me directly. I would have no problem with him telling me that he wanted a new paper for the assignment. And still, I would be happy to oblige the request.

(This is only tangentially related to your post) I have no problem with policies against self-plagiarism because you shouldn't receive credit for 2 assignments when you only did half of the work. There are plenty of courses with overlapping content areas, so if they have open-ended types of assignments (write an essay or lit review on a relevant topic of choice), students shouldn't be able to just submit work from another class and then receive credit for both assignments/courses.

 

As some have pointed out, this is a somewhat unique circumstance in which it is the exact same class. Rather than the professor come to the student directly (which I don't really agree with because of the issues Mole raised- the universities ask instructors to submit instances of plagiarism through the formal process so there can be a proper record for each student's offenses), I think the student should have come to the professor. This has come up for me with students who failed my course and retook it. I've had a few students reach out proactively to discuss what I am comfortable with regarding their submitting previous work. My responses have been context-depedent. For the major assignments, I am fine with students using their past submissions as a reference or starting point, but it should be a unique work that is submitted. For more minor assignments that are application-based and personal (I teach mostly family, marriage, and sexuality courses), I ask them to consider their development and changing contexts in light of what they previously wrote and make any relevant changes. 

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Glad to provide a happy update. He ended up with just a warning because of some mitigating circumstances.
  • The assignment was the same -- essentially, describe how assigned reading [x] makes you feel -- and he felt essentially the same way, as might be expected. Somewhere between "very little" and "around half" of the assignment was copied over, depending on if you count using the same quotes from the assigned reading.
  • Because of the similarities, the prof wanted to ask follow-up questions about his new response, so the prof emailed BIL (online class; can't talk after class). Problem is, the prof emailed his UT email address when both the UT student directory and the prof's "fill out this contact/background info" sheet at the beginning of the semester had BIL's gmail address. So the professor emailed the wrong address in follow-up, got frustrated after feeling he was being ignored and turned him in.
  • When the hearing came, BIL pointed out his GPA, pointed out that he never had any history of academic misconduct back through high school, and that he had other profs lined up to serve as a reference for him. He also offered to re-do the assignment with the caveat that he would change the form, but the substance would be similar because he truly feels the same way about the assigned reading.
  • The prof tried to flex by asking BIL why he ignored emails from his prof, including as recently as just a few weeks prior.
  • BIL said he received no such emails and that he would happily show his gmail inbox, spam, and deleted items folders to the committee.
  • Prof tried to shazam him by showing printouts of the emails from prof to BIL's UT address.
  • BIL went into [Chalkboard/blackboard/whatever learning management program UT uses] and pulled up the "assignment" that was the prof's own contact info sheet, as well as the UT student directory, both of which showed that the gmail address was how to get ahold of him.
  • There was a collective "ooh, so that's what happened..." from the hearing people and they gave him the absolute minimum allowed under the applicable rules, once something has reached the hearing phase. Not sure if the "warning" was verbal or written and didn't follow up with my BIL or my wife.
At least that's the story as was related to me.
So he ended up with a warning with no adverse effect on his grade for the semester and no requirement to re-do the assignment or otherwise do anything else.
THanks again to everyone for your thoughts and help.
Glad it worked out for him. Sounds like the professor is a fucking idiot. It didn't occur to him that he may have the wrong email address? If I don't get an expected response I always double check I had the correct email address. Rage.
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  • 9 months later...

That's awesome.  In reading the thread I'm convinced that if this had all been in-person it would have been settled in 5 minutes over a conversation.  Electronic communications are bereft of context and make people do unhinged ragey stuff that they'd never do in person.  Giving the prof the benefit of the doubt for half a second, he probably felt pretty stupid walking out of the hearing and if he had any introspection at all realized that this was a tempest in a teapot of largely his own making.  Hope he gains that insight.

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