Plagiarism
Stone Child College defines plagiarism as portraying or presenting another’s words or ideas as one’s own. Plagiarism can be intentional or unintentional. SCC believes that there are various levels of plagiarism and therefore, the consequences are increased for more significant or severe levels.
The first level of plagiarism is considered least severe. There may be no awareness or intent on the part of the student and the cause of the plagiarism may be a genuine misunderstanding. This includes poor or insufficient citations or a misuse of sources and no prior incidences of plagiarism. The student may acknowledge that the work is someone else’s and the citation may not have been available.
Consequences for the least severe cases of plagiarism include: (a) participating in an online tutorial (such as the one at: http://www.cws.illinois.edu/workshop/writers/citation/); (b) correcting the errors and resubmitting the paper or receiving a failing grade for the assignment; and (c) placing a copy of the incident in the student’s academic file.
The next level of plagiarism is considered severe. Behaviors at this level include copying segments of work found from the internet, another student, print materials, or other sources without any citations and having an awareness of the problem. It also includes providing work to another student to use as theirs.
Consequences for severe cases of plagiarism include: (a) participating in an online tutorial (such as the one at: http://www.cws.illinois.edu/workshop/writers/citation/) and writing a summary of how to properly cite future work; (b) rewriting the assignment with the citations or removal of the material; (c) meeting with the Academic Dean and the Department Head to explain the circumstances which led to the plagiarism, what was learned from the incident, and what will be done to prevent any future plagiarism; and (d) placing a copy of the incident in the student’s academic file. The Academic Dean may provide additional consequences, such as failure of the assignment or course.
The most serious level of plagiarism is extremely severe. Extremely severe cases of plagiarism include students who: (a) plagiarize large amounts (25 words of more) or entire works of material; (b) have repeated offenses of plagiarism; or (c) create work for another student to use as his/her own; or (d) purchase work to use as one’s own. These students have a full awareness of the offense.
Consequences for severe cases of plagiarism will be referred to the Academic Dean for resolution. The student, instructor, Department Head, and the Academic Dean will meet to review the plagiarized work and determine the consequences, which may include: (a) failure of the course; (b) applying the consequences for intermediate cases of plagiarism; and (c) in extreme cases, suspension or expulsion. SCC students have the right to due process, as explained in the SCC Catalog (2018) on page 31.