News

Plagiarism error worries colleges

Student takes blame in Connecticut since he had worse grades than his guilty peer

Colleges and universities might want to consider taking a different approach to cheating after a student at Central Connecticut State University was falsely accused of plagiarizing his final paper.

Matthew Coster was contacted by his professor after turning in the paper and was accused of plagiarizing the work of a girl in his class.

Although no evidence pointed to Coster, his mediocre grades fell short in comparison to the much better grades of his female counterpart, and Coster was immediately assumed to be the responsible party.

Upon losing the appeal to the university, Coster enlisted the help of lawyer Brennan Maki to plead his case.

“My client was accused of stealing another student’s final take-home paper, and he was found responsible of those charges by the university,” Maki said. “So we subsequently sued the other student, and she was found responsible for the plagiarism. She now owes $100 for the paper and $26,000 in legal fees.”

Maki said his client felt direct legal action was the only route to take after what he felt was an unfair university hearing.

“The school claims that they have a process by which evidence is gathered and that there is a fair and impartial hearing, but in the end they took the teacher’s word for it, who knew my client was a C student and the other student was an A student,” Maki said.

In response to the trial, University of Wisconsin spokesperson John Lucas said UW focuses more on preventing academic misconduct than teaching methods of prevention.

Lucas said the system provides faculty with the best methods of test distributing and paper correcting to ensure the minimal amount of cheating takes place.

“The number of sections per semester that a professor might have is a lot of responsibility to take on, so we do a lot of things to avoid problems to that plagiarism doesn’t even occur,” Lucas said.

Despite these precautionary methods, the occurrences of academic misconduct on this campus have increased, according to UW Assistant Dean of Students Ervin Cox.

“We are very concerned,” Cox said. “We do have a good amount of academic misconduct occurring, and research would show it going up, even though kids may not be getting caught. On the other hand, faculty is getting better at recognizing it.”

Cox added when a faculty member suspects a student of cheating he is told to speak with the student directly. If the student admits his or her guilt, the student will receive a written sanction. Students who plead innocent may request a hearing.

Cox also noted only occasionally does a student request a hearing and the sanction is actually changed, and that more often than not, the faculty member’s sanction is upheld.