A small percentage of students in one of the largest classes at the University of Wisconsin are suspected to have plagiarized materials from the Internet to write a paper due before Thanksgiving break.
Professor Kenneth Goldstein, who is teaching UW’s Political Science 104 this semester, announced to his class at the end of lecture this week that about two to four percent of the papers turned in were thought to have been created using online resources without proper citations. In a course in which more than 550 students are registered each semester, Goldstein’s announcement could implicate as many as two-dozen plagiarists.
Goldstein then announced he would give students an opportunity to come to his office after class to escape the maximum UW punishment for plagiarism: expulsion.
UW sophomore Molly Swank believed it would be better for the accused percentage of students to come forward and confess any transgressions.
“But nobody showed up,” Swank said, adding that her TA for the class Joel Rivlin sent an email to his section giving students a second chance to come to Goldstein to admit any wrongdoing.
Rivlin said in an interview that one student who had a “blatantly” plagiarized paper came forward, but, so far, there had been only one. He went on to say that other students had less obvious plagiarism infractions, but he was vague about the remaining students who are thought to have stolen work from online sources.
Rivlin also said the punishment for the student who came forward is still in discussion, and did not want to speculate on punishments before the student was informed.
“I really don’t know the details (of punitive measures),” Rivlin said.
Rivlin said the situation was a hassle for everyone reading the papers because they had to spend more time checking the originality of the papers than the content.
The College of Letters and Science Handbook recommends that a professor who suspects students of plagiarism consider imposing a mild sanction, such as a written warning, or file a required formal report with the Deans’ office that could lead to “a written reprimand to be placed in the student’s file and/or a reduced grade on the work or in the course, to probation, suspension, or expulsion.”
