ACADEMIC INTEGRITY POLICY
At WSU, academic integrity is based on honesty. The University community requires that work produced by students in the course of their studies represents their personal efforts and requires that students properly acknowledge the intellectual contributions of others.
WSU students are required to adhere to the University's standards of academic integrity. The following are examples, not intended to be all-inclusive, of types of behavior that are unacceptable and will be viewed as violations of the academic integrity policy.
Examples of Academic Integrity Violations
Cheating: Using or attempting to use unauthorized materials in any academic exercise or having someone else do work for you. Examples of cheating include looking at another student's paper during a test, bringing a “crib sheet” to a test, obtaining a copy of a test prior to the test date or submitting homework borrowed from another student.
Deception and Misrepresentation: Lying about or misrepresenting your work, academic records, or credentials. Examples of deception and misrepresentation include forging signatures, falsifying application credentials and misrepresenting group participation.
Enabling Academic Dishonesty: Helping someone else to commit an act of academic dishonesty. This would include giving someone else an academic assignment with the intent of allowing that person to copy it or allowing someone else to cheat from your test paper.
Fabrication: Refers to inventing or falsifying information. Examples of fabrication include “drylabbing” (inventing data for an experiment you did not do or did not do correctly) or making references to sources you did not use in academic assignments.
Multiple Submission: Submitting work you have done in previous classes as if it were new and original work. Although faculty may be willing to let you use previous work as the basis of new work, they expect you to do new work for the class. Students seeking to submit a piece of work to more than one class should seek the permission of both instructors.
Plagiarism: Using the words or ideas of another writer without proper acknowledgment, so that they seem as if they are your own. Plagiarism includes behavior such as copying someone else's work word for word, rewriting someone else's work with only minor word changes and/or summarizing someone else's work without acknowledging the source.
Due process refers to the concept of fair treatment. Students accused of violating the academic integrity policy have the following due process rights:
•Oral or written notice of the charges from the faculty member
•An explanation of the evidence against the student
•An opportunity for the student to present his/her side of the story
•Notice of sanction(s) imposed (such as lowering a grade, failing the course, dismissal from a program, etc.)
•An opportunity to appeal the sanction(s)
Students accused of academic dishonesty have the right to appeal a faculty member's sanction to the Grade Appeals Committee. In cases involving accusation of academic dishonesty, the committee will make a recommendation to the appropriate academic dean rather than to the instructor, as is usually the case with standard grade appeals (page 25). The decision of the academic dean (or designee) is final.
Academic sanction appeals must be received in writing within five class days or, in the case of break periods, within five class days after returning from a break. A time extension may be granted upon request to the Grade Appeals Committee. Failure to submit a timely appeal, or request for extension, constitutes a waiver of any right to request an appeal. The written appeal must be based on one or more of the following reasons:
•The evidence from the meeting between the faculty and the student does not support the outcome
•There are new or newly discovered facts not brought out in the original meeting, which may substantially affect the outcome
•There was a procedural error, which could have substantially affected the outcome of the meeting
•The sanction was excessively severe
There may be circumstances when it may be appropriate for a more severe sanction(s) other than the academic sanction. The dean of the college(s) (or designee) where the alleged violation(s) occurred, in collaboration with the WSU Conduct Officer (or designee), will make the decision as to whether the case will be heard as a behavior discipline and be referred to the Office of Student Affairs to be processed under the guidelines of the WSU Student Conduct Policy. Students found responsible for a violation(s) processed under the WSU Student Conduct Policy face disciplinary sanctions (such as probation, suspension, etc.).
Information pertaining to the WSU Student Conduct Policy can be obtained in the Office of Student Affairs (Kryzsko Commons, Room 129) or website (www.winona.edu/studentaffairs).