Plagiarism/Cheating

Plagiarism and cheating has been a reoccurring issue among college and high school campuses for years. Academic boards have taken extensive steps to make cheating a thing of the past. However, despite their efforts, cheating is still very prominent. In an interview with a fellow classmate, several questions regarding this topic were presented, including their opinion about the topic and weather the punishments are to harsh or lenient.

This student clearly believed plagiarism should be taken more seriously than cheating. When asked about plagiarism she said, "I think plagiarism is wrong because its something I was brought up to believe. Since I’m a journalism major, I realized how hard it is to come up with your own content and its not fair to take it from someone else." However, when asked about cheating her response was "depends on how far you take it." This answer introduces some grey area because how can you distinguish what's acceptable and what isn't. If cheating and plagiarism fall under the same category of disciplinary action then they should have the same punishment, right? No, because you have to go more out of your way to plagiarize.

What about cheating? Should a person who lets someone cheat off them have the same punishment as someone who does the copying off someone else. According the rules, its all relevant, if your involved then your punished. My interviewee said "they're are different degrees of cheating and the punishments should be based on what you did." She went on to say "if you fail from looking on someone's paper, that's to much. Who doesn't look at other peoples paper?"

Instead of having definitive rules like 'if your involved in cheating, your expelled', university's should play each incident individually. It should start out falling under the teachers dissgresion. Something as small as looking on someone else's paper should be handled internally, but if a whole project is plagiarized then it can be brought up with the academic board.