Pacific Index

Issue date: 2/15/08 Section: Opinion

Don't do it!

There have been two major incidents involving academic dishonesty at Pacific since December. One incident cost a professor his contract, and another has become a major controversy at the School of Professional Psychology (see page 3 for more details).

The details of both situations are unclear as to exactly what the individuals did that was academically dishonest, but one thing is clear: the university is taking the violations seriously.

What's important to keep in mind is that these situations were not black and white. But the academic dishonesty policy at Pacific allows for punishment that is stiff, even if the perpetrator did not intend to break the rules.

Everyone at the university has signed their name accepting the plagiarism policy. But who bothers to read it?

However, the longer you attend classes here, the more stories you hear about students getting F's on papers because they cited their sources using MLA instead of APA.

And if you are the type of person that buys essays from websites or lifts large portions of text from sources you don't cite, it's going to be easier to catch you in the act soon.

Pacific is in the process of enlisting the help of turnitin.com, a website that searches the internet and its own database to catch students trying to pass off someone else's work as their own.

As the technology gets better, your knowledge of university policy should too.

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