PLAGIARISM AND ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

1. PLAGIARISM AND ACADEMIC INTEGRITY A PROFESSIONAL SCHOOL PERSPECTIVE Jim Gardner Vice Dean for Academic Affairs UB Law School

2. Outline • Academic integrity issues at the professional level • Ethics in the legal profession • Plagiarism: causes and contexts • Institutional responses

3. Academic integrity is a problem at the professional school level too • Not immune from broad social trends • Heard problems were coming long before they arrived

4. Recent scandals at professional schools • 2007 Duke Business School: 34 students disciplined for cheating on a take-home exam • 2009 Syracuse Law School: widespread stashing of cell phones and papers in restrooms during closed-book exams • 2010 Univ. of Central Florida: 200 business students cheated on an exam by obtaining answers in advance

6. Academic dishonesty • Similar incidence as undergraduate • But . . . • Cheating in professional school presents a more acute kind of problem

7. Ethics in the legal profession:Binding rules • Official position: “officer of the court” • Stewardship of client funds • Honesty and sincerity in communicating with client, court • Requirements of best efforts • Charged with protecting long-term interests of public, judicial system • Disciplinary system with penalties including disbarment

8. Bar admission gatekeeping • Licensing requirement • Character and fitness assessment by bar examiners

9. Mandatory ethics instruction

10. Mandatory reporting on character and fitness • Law schools must report information that reflects adversely on character and fitness • Stakes of misbehavior, even while still in school, are high • Yet students misbehave

11. Plagiarism: causes and contexts

12. Paradigm case • Deliberate appropriation of work of another • Represented as one’s own work

13. Nancy Smith

14. Paradigm case • Pure venality – intent to deceive • Very rare!

15. Plagiarism almost always result of PANIC

16. Pure case: panic from delay results in lack of effort and forethought • Cut-and-paste job, thrown together at the last minute • Plagiarism typically result of haste and sloppiness • Often no intent to deceive

17. Panic plus cover-up • Student at some point recognizes that the product contains no original contribution • Proper quotation and attribution would reveal the student’s work as composed entirely of the work of others • complete cut-and-paste job

18. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government. Democratic systems will thus produce a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. But the primary system may fail: men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests of the people.

19. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government. Democratic systems will thus produce a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. But the primary system may fail: men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests of the people. • The Federalist Papers, No. 51 (Madison) (Clinton Rossiter, ed. 1961), at 322. • Ibid., No. 10 (Madison), at 82. • Ibid.

20. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government. Democratic systems will thus produce a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. But the primary system may fail: men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests of the people. • The Federalist Papers, No. 10 (Madison) (Clinton Rossiter, ed. 1961), at 82.

21. Panic plus cover-up • Cover-up by selective non-attribution • Limited intent to deceive

22. Contexts of plagiarism

23. Lack of basic research skills • Students increasingly report graduating from college without ever having undertaken: • a significant research task • a substantial paper • They claim (plausibly) lack of familiarity with basic conventions of research and attribution • Special problem in law school: conventions of attribution are different, complex, professionally meaningful

24. The web • Overreliance; discomfort and unfamiliarity with other sources • Pathological beliefs: • research and writing means cut-and-paste from web • the difference between good and bad work is the difference between clever and inept cutting-and-pasting

25. “Hard work” in the web environment • Does not mean internal reflection or self-struggle • All answers are external; they already exist and are out there waiting to be discovered • Hard work means sitting at the computer looking for such an answer for as long as it takes

26. Erosion in personal values that undergird professionalism

27. Self-indulgence • Increasingly, students cope with the world by resolving all doubts and ambiguities in their own favor • less work and fewer demands, not more • where responsibility is divided or not clearly allocated, as much as possible is assumed to fall on others

28. Self-indulgence • This is the antithesis of professionalism • Professionals resolve all doubts and ambiguities against themselves • Professionals see responsibility as a valuable opportunity to control a situation • seek it out • Students behave passively, when what’s required is an impulse to control

29. Lack of reciprocity • Education as a one-way street • Declining receptivity to modeling • Lack of respect for the relevant institutions (education, professional training, apprenticeship)

30. The “take-out” degree • “Hello, Law School? I’d like to order a Juris Doctor degree. I’ll be there in 2012 to pick it up. Thanks, see you then.”

31. Institutional responses -- procedure • Referral to Vice Dean for Student Affairs for factual investigation • Results to Vice Dean for Academic Affairs for recommendation of sanction • Opportunity to appeal recommendation to faculty adjudication committee • Dean decides

33. Future measures • Law School committee currently reviewing entire policy • Likely will move to Honor Code model with significant student ownership and involvement