dealing with plagiarism in CHICO STATE. Help!!!

Parents Forum
1

Hello,
I am currently a freshman in college in Chico, CA. I just had finals and I had a mistake on one of them and its the worst thing of my life. I didn’t delete some of the code that I had from another website. 2 days later after i turned in the final. I get a mail saying I need to meet with Student Judicial Affairs. I have no idea what is going to happen. I agree to what I did was wrong and I have learned my lesson. Anyone know whats going to happen to me? Are they gonna take away my financial aid? Are they going to place me under disciplinary probation? Anyone please let me know, if you have some info on this matter just in general or, if you have info from chico about this stuff.

This is the mail i received from my college’s Student Judicial Affairs:

NOTICE OF CONFERENCE

December 16

The Student Judicial Affairs office has received information from Computer Science Department concerning your involvement in an incident referred on December 12

Standards of Student Conduct Violation(s): Your misconduct violates CSU Executive Order 1098 and California Code of Regulations, Title 5, Article 2, Section 41301 (b) (Student Conduct Code):

Title 5, California Code of Regulations/(1) Dishonesty, including:/(1A) Dishonesty, including: Cheating, plagiarism, or other forms of academic dishonesty that are intended to gain unfair academic advantage.

Factual Description of Alleged Conduct:

Plagiarism on project for class.

Range of Sanctions:

Violation(s) of the Student Conduct Code subjects you to a range of sanctions from educational remedial sanction to expulsion (see attached CSU Executive Order 1098). The severity of the sanction(s) depends on the particular facts and circumstances of your case.

Meeting Time/Location:

Please contact our office by Thursday, December 22 to arrange for a conference. The Conference will take place in the Student Services Center, Room 190.

Failure to Respond To This Notice:

If your appointment is not scheduled by the date specified above, you will forfeit your right to this meeting and a hearing on the charges will be scheduled. Please note that failure to respond to this notice may result on a registration hold on your record which may prevent you from registering for classes or obtaining transcripts until this matter is resolved.

What to Expect at This Conference:

This is an informal meeting with a Student Conduct Coordinator/Administrator. It is your opportunity to respond to the charges of misconduct and to discuss possible resolutions to this matter. The meeting is meant to be non-confrontational and educational. The goal of our office is to educate students and to reinforce and uphold campus and community values.

Know Your Rights:

You have the right to bring an Advisor to any meetings, conferences, interviews or hearings. An Advisor may serve as an observer and support you during the process but may not speak for you or on your behalf.

You have the right to view your disciplinary file prior to the conference. If you wish to view your disciplinary file, please call the office at 9830983457, and will have the information ready within five (5) working days. You may view your file in the Office of Student Judicial Affairs located in the Student Services Building, Room 190. If you would like to request a copy of your file, you must submit a request in writing (email is appropriate) and a copy will be prepared within fifteen (15) working days. There may be a fee assessed for copying.

Sincerely,

Student Conduct Coordinator/Administrator

2

Hwo do we know what the consequences are? I think you just have to wait to find out your fate. If it’s a first violation, it may not be so bad, but prepare for the worst. If it doesn’t happen, then you have a bit of comfort. As far as financial aid, why don’t you call the FA a offcie and ask what happens in these situations? Good luck. Hopefully you learned a lesson.

3

I don’t go to that school, but I can tell you what would probably happen at mine. You would get an F in the course for sure, and who knows, they might take away financial aid.

4

No one can tell you ahead of time what the ramifications will be, but I think it’s a good idea to do the following at the meeting: take someone along for moral support, if you think that will help you remain composed; be extremely apologetic; acknowledge that what you did was wrong; have a plan for never doing it again; don’t give excuses. Good luck. this is a tough situation but it doesn’t mean you’re a terrible person or that your life is over.

5

Everyone’s advice is good. I would add 2 things:
It sounds a tiny bit as though you think your biggest mistake was in not deleting the copied code. Get clear on this.

Think about why you’re in school. Be clear on this before the meeting.

6

^ Yes, the OP suggests that the big mistake was not deleting the plagiarized code. I would
assume that you are getting an F for the course.

7

So are you going to straightforwardly admit to cheating? Have you done it before? Did you know you were cheating or would education have helped you avoid it? Why did you do it? I think you will have an “informal” discussion that will clarify the situation and then you will hear the consequences.

8

more info on the student judicial affairs: (link down below)

https://www.csuchico.edu/sjd/documents/sja-conduct-faq.pdf

Also, this is my first time ever that this has happened to me. Also, I’m going to be extremely apologetic, honest and tell them everything just a 100%, when i go to the meeting. Please keep me updated people if this has ever happened to you and let me know happened.

Here are some of the possible punishments:
What are possible Sanctions?
Restitution
• Compensation for loss, damages or injury. This may include appropriate service and/or monetary material replacement.
Loss of Financial Aid
• Consistent with California Education Code Section 69810 et seq., scholarships, loans, grants, fellowships, and any other types of state financial aid given or guaranteed for the purposes of academic assistance can be conditioned, limited, canceled, or denied.
Educational and Remedial Sanctions
• Service to the University or the community, training, counseling, or other remedies intended to discourage a repeat of the misconduct or as deemed appropriate based upon the nature of the violation.
Denial of Access to Campus/Stay away orders
• A designated period of time during which the student is not permitted: (i) on University Property or specified areas of campus. (See California Penal Code section 626.2.); or (ii) to have contact (physical or otherwise) with the Complainant, witnesses or other specified persons.
Disciplinary Probation
• A designated period of time during which the privileges of continuing in student status are conditioned upon future behavior. Conditions may include the potential loss of specified privileges to which a current student would otherwise be entitled, or the probability of more severe disciplinary sanctions if the student is found to violate any University rule during the probationary period.
Suspension
• Temporary separation of the student from active student status or student status. • A student who is suspended for less than one year shall be placed on inactive
student status but remains eligible to re-enroll at the University (subject to individual campus enrollment policies) once the suspension has been served. Conditions for re-enrollment may be specified.
• A student who is suspended for one year or more shall be separated from student status but remains eligible to reapply to the University (subject to individual campus application policies) once the suspension has been served. Conditions for readmission may be specified.
Expulsion
• Permanent separation of the student from student status from all twenty-three (23) campuses in the California State University system.

9

$20 says your punishment is an F in the class

10

Just another caution on your wording:

That makes it sound like you are not taking responsibility. If you did cheat/plagiarize, it didn’t “happen” to you; you did it. I think like was said above, you need to have that clear in your mind.

Otherwise, what it sounds like you are saying is that it’s the first time you got caught–I sure hope that’s not what you mean!

11

I want to elaborate a bit on my posting about having a long think about why you’re in school.

I don’t know if you are a CS major, or if this was just a one-off CS class, but since others read here, I’ll assume that you’re a CS major for the purposes of my answer. This is somewhat of a rant.

Between my wife and me, we have nearly 50 years experience in hiring software developers. My wife still works and has a couple thousand developers working for her, so she obviously no longer interviews every one, but her people do it. The shorthand initial impression they have is whether someone is a “poser” or the “Real Deal.”

A person’s degree means nothing if they can’t get through a half hour tech interview without failing. DS’s interviews have ranged from 45 minutes with one interviewer to 4+ hours with 4 sets of PhDs, in pairs (one asking questions, the other taking notes). It wasn’t expected that he knew every answer; they were trying to see how he thinks. A whiteboard was expected to be filled with pseudo-code, formulas, etc.

If you’re just looking to have an empty diploma, it will be worth approximately what you put into it. If you really belong in college, act it. I’m showing my age, but I went to college when student deferments kept kids out of Vietnam, and I had lots of empathy for kids who were in college for ambiguous reasons. We’re not in Vietnam any more, and if plagiarism is within your personal sense of what’s acceptable, maybe you shouldn’t be in college.

I’m sorry to be harsh. Someone (school, you, parents, government) is paying tuition. Own it. Be ethical.

[/rant]

12

If you waltz into the meeting saying you’re very sorry you didn’t cover up your cheating, you will get a frosty reception from Judicial Affairs.

You make it sound like you accidentally included some code you had copied from another source: you included some foreign router code, when your assignment was to write code that randomly shuffled cards, or something of that nature. But if you did that, you’ve done nothing wrong and have nothing to apologize for.

Let’s assume, however, that you would be disciplined for plagiarizing an assignment, because you plagiarized an assignment. In that case, your mistake was not failing to hide your cheating by deleting the evidence. Rather, your mistake was cheating. Schools don’t like cheaters, and they really don’t like unrepentant cheaters.

13

I have a clear mind now that all I need to do now is:

I need to admit to all the mistakes that I have committed to because after all this incident would of not happened if I had not cheated. Also, in the future I’m gonna go to my professors office hours if I’m having trouble with assignments. Also, I’m going to focus on whats going to help me in the workforce later after college, I’m going to start putting in extra effort and I’m going to try to stay on top of my classes by reviewing or studying the material before the teacher teaches it so I understand it even better once they go over it.

14

That sounds more like it. Remember, the professors are not out to get you. They want you to succeed and if you are confused or can’t figure something out, most will be only to happy to help you.

15

If you are repentant, you’ll likely get an F on your transcript. If not, they may kick you out of the school altogether.

Own your mistake, learn your lesson and move on.

Good luck with the hearing.

16

How much code are we talking about? 5 lines? 50?

17

@turbo93 , just how pregnant is she?

18

Depends on the definition of pregnant.

If I copy one line of code from stackoverflow.com that, say, breaks up a double precision number into 8 bytes, that’s cheating. If I copy a few lines of code that does the same in a loop, that’s cheating. If I copy a screen or two worth of code, that’s cheating. If I find half the assignment and copy it, that’s cheating.

Well… I’ve been in the software development business since 1985. If I was a TA grading such assignments (and I was) or prof I would encourage the use of sites like stackoverflow.com because that’s how you learn real world stuff. Try doing PHP or Javascript or Python (just examples) and you’ll quickly find that the originality aspect of it goes out the window after about one line of code. There isn’t a day where I don’t use such sites. And it’s not just me, it’s all my colleagues and millions of developers world wide.

Next, move on to reference sites like cplusplus.com; let’s say I want to see an example of a set iterator. Plenty of examples there (used one today at work). But I’m not a professional, but a college student. These 4 lines of code I copied (plagiarized?) should be the end of me? I hope not.

We can discuss morality all we want or we can find ways to teach real life skills, so that I don’t get new interns every summer who cringe when they ask me a question and I casually refer them to the Omniscient Google. My very first professor of computer science back at Cajun State told us, first day of class, that only the first program you’ll ever write will be yours 100%. Everything else…

Bottom line… One line or a few lines, in my moral compass, OK. Anything more, not OK, and blatant copying, definitely not OK. But I would not give an F to a poor student if all they did was to copy 3-4 lines off an example web site or an online tutorial.

19

What ever happened to you?

20

What was the process, and did you get kicked out?