Academic dishonesty strikes at the heart of a university's function and self-definition. When you suspect academic dishonesty, it is your obligation to investigate and, if suspicions are confirmed, to confront the student with the fact and determine an appropriate penalty. Of assistance at such times is the Office of Student Judicial Affairs (SJA), formerly the Office of Student Conduct. At the request of the instructor, SJA will investigate and help resolve suspected violations of the Code of Student Conduct, including both academic and non-academic issues.

Even if you don't engage SJA to help you resolve a violation, you are encouraged to report cases of academic dishonesty to SJA so that its files will be as complete as possible.

The Help Desk recommends that all instructors get a copy of the Instructor's Guide for Addressing Student Academic Dishonesty, available from the SJA website. The Guide is sensible, systematic, and detailed and is the source of much information here.

The SJA recommends the following measures:

• Inform students of academic standards for scholarship and conduct;
• Explain how cheating harms students and describe campus sanctions;
• Minimize the opportunities for cheating and plagiarism;
• Take visible actions to detect dishonesty so that students know you will not tolerate cheating;
• If cheating occurs, respond swiftly with disciplinary measures.

Cheating is defined as fraud, deceit, or dishonesty in an academic assignment, or using or attempting to use materials, or assisting others in using materials, that are prohibited or inappropriate in the context of the academic assignment in question. This includes but is not limited to:

• Providing answers to or receiving answers from others;
• Using notes, information, calculators, or other electronic devices or programs during exams or for assignments from which they have been prohibited, expressly or implicitly;
• Improperly obtaining or using advance knowledge of an exam or assignment;
• Putting one's name on another student's exam or assignment;
• Altering previously graded work for submission in a grade appeal.

Yes, if you feel that meeting with the student will be (or has been) adequate to the situation. The Office of Student Judicial Affairs (SJA) may or may not become involved, at your discretion. (The office does, however, encourage professors to report violations and their resolution, partly to discourage repeat offenders.) You may of course consult with experienced colleagues and/or your department chair, preserving confidentiality. If you think the matter requires a non-academic penalty, or if you feel uncomfortable about confronting the student, or if the student maintains innocence or protests the academic sanction you imposed, get in touch with the SJA.

All written work submitted for a course, except for acknowledged quotations, must be expressed in the student's own words. It must also be constructed upon a plan of the student's own devising. Work copied without acknowledgment from a book, from another student's paper, from the internet, or from any other source is plagiarized. Plagiarism can range from wholesale copying of passages from another's work to using the views, opinions, and insights of another without acknowledgment, to paraphrasing another person's original phrases without acknowledgment.

The Office of Student Judicial Affairs (SJA) has many good suggestions, including the following. Please see the SJA faculty handbook available on the SJA website for many other useful strategies.

• Clarify the distinctions between plagiarism, paraphrasing and direct citation;

• Ask students to seek permission before resubmitting previous academic work to you;

• Change your paper topics and exam questions as often as is practical;

• Request that students submit rough drafts before or along with final versions of papers;

• Assign a variety of short in-class papers during the term.

The submission of such work will, under University rules, render the offending student subject to an F grade for the work in question or for the entire course, at the discretion of the instructor, and will also make the student liable for referral to the SJA.

If possible, yes. Students who have plagiarized often confess when the evidence is clear, or after judicious questioning about their topic, style, etc. If you feel threatened or for some other reason uncomfortable, refer the matter to the Office of Student Judicial Affairs (SJA).

The GSI is no different from any other instructor and may follow the course of action outlined above, including referral of an uncertain case.

Please see the Office of Student Judicial Affairs' Instructor's Guide for the following transgressions, with helpful subheadings:

• Furnishing false information in the context of an assignment;
• Creating an unfair advantage for oneself or a disadvantage to another, e.g. contaminating a lab sample;
• Theft or damage to intellectual property, e.g another student's paper;
• Selling or distributing course lecture notes, etc. without the permission of the instructor.

Such cases are among the most distressing of an instructor's experiences in the classroom, not to mention the effect on the class as a whole.

If the student exhibits threatening behavior towards you or other members of the class, call the Threat Management Division of UCPD at 643-1813.

If the disruption is non-threatening, try to meet privately with the student to review what is and is not acceptable behavior. Document all contacts with the student, including dates, times, and locations when incidents occurred, and your response. It is your right to expel a disruptive student from your classroom—but only for that day's session. He has the right to return to class the following day, and may remain so long as the disruptive behavior is not repeated. If it is, the instructor should contact Office of Student Judicial Affairs, which can coordinate campus-wide resources to assist the instructor and the student involved.