Rules, if not enforced, lose their value—so is true of an academic integrity policy. I recently interviewed a university professor, we’ll call him Professor Thomas (not his real name), who followed his university’s sanction policies as written and intended, and found himself reprimanded by faculty colleagues for doing so. As a result Thomas took the initiative to try and change a strict and rigid policy, into one that offered flexibility, remediation, and learning.

The sanction guidelines for undergraduates were straightforward—the first offense was a zero on the assignment, the second offense was a failure in the course, the third offense was suspension for one full semester, the fourth resulted in suspension for two semesters, and beyond that was permanent expulsion. The guidelines were even more strict for graduate-level students, whereby the first offense resulted in failure in the course, and a second offense would result in expulsion.

Last year, Professor Thomas had nine instances of plagiarism out of 28 students on the first assignment in a graduate level course—they ranged from very minor (a cited, but non-quoted, copied sentence) to quite serious (multiple paragraphs) cases. Thomas reported all nine cases to the academic integrity committee per the policy.

Upon review, the minor cases were disallowed and only three students were issued failing grades. Two students appealed to the review board and were granted the undergrad sanction (a zero on the assignment), though Thomas counter-appealed to the Provost that it was outside the review board’s authority to alter the sanctions so the failing grades were reinstated.

Thomas commented, “That resulted in a visit by a department chair and colleagues in which I was literally yelled at and called names for not showing any faculty tolerance of first time offenders who hadn’t been taught what plagiarism was.”

Though he stood by his ethics and the university’s academic integrity policy, he felt that in order for the policy to truly be effective, there needed to be uniform adoption by faculty. Most faculty he spoke with agreed that the first-time penalties, especially for graduate students, were too harsh, leading faculty to deal with it internally and off the books. The problem that arises, as students move on from course-to-course and instructor-to-instructor, is there exists no formal record of this misconduct.

Thomas took action, proposing a change to the policy in which a first reported incident would result in required education, but not sanction. That way if a student plagiarized in one class, she would take an additional class on plagiarism, cheating and academic integrity (think traffic school), and then if a second offense occurred (even in another class with a different instructor) she would receive the full sanction. Faculty would be more inclined to follow the policy knowing that if it was a first offense there would be remediation, and if it was a second or third offense, penalties would be imposed on the student.

“The irony is that even though I totally agree with our current policy, I was proposing changes to weaken it,” said Professor Thomas, “in order to try to gain uniform application across our institution.”

A committee considered Thomas’ proposed changes, but chose not to recommend implementation. “So right now we have a system that I know is not uniformly implemented, and is therefore by definition unfair.”