Academic Integrity

In your time at College you will come across many ideas. Some of them are potentially life-enhancing. Breaching academic integrity however can take you in the other direction. These FAQs are to help you to avoid travelling down that bad route, and to indicate what lies in store for those who are suspected of a wrong choice.

It consists in being honest and reliable about the information and opinions that you try to convey in your writings and presentations. That can take different forms in different situations.
If you are reporting an experiment that you conducted, you are obliged to be clear and honest about the conditions of the experiment and accurate in your reporting of its results.
For historical facts, where it is unlikely that you can directly verify them, you should clearly indicate your sources.
When you convey ideas, their source should be stated as clearly and candidly as possible. Failure to do so is known as plagiarism.
The guiding principle is never to give the impression that you are representing someone else’s ideas as your own. This applies even if that someone else has given their consent (e.g. collusion on an assessment). It also applies to recycling work you have submitted elsewhere without acknowledging the fact (known as self-plagiarism).
On any assignment, the stipulations of your instructor (often found in the course syllabus) should be followed in both letter and spirit.
Academic integrity also includes respect for others in the community, including fellow-students’ rights to undertake their own academic work.

In this College, they are thankfully rare. In a community as close as this one, its members tend to play fair. Yet, as one says in Singapore, “Low crime doesn’t mean no crime.”

First, check with Library and Writers’ Centre on good note-taking and citation practice. Make sure that what should be in quotes is in quotes, and every source is duly acknowledged.

Second, allow enough time for assignments. All-nighters may feel heroic, but it’s when students feel over-tired and overwhelmed that corners are most likely to be cut. Think of learning time management skills as an important part of your education.

If the alternative seems to be to miss a deadline, approach your instructor (or Assistant Dean if there’s a confidential reason for it). Very often an instructor will allow you to submit late, albeit perhaps for reduced credit. In any case, the assignment was set as part of your learning experience. If you evade that, then one of the people being cheated is you.

Likewise, allow sufficient time for exam preparation. Over-confidence before an exam can make the actual event so stressful as to lead to a foolish reaction.

Different rules may apply from different instructors (or even from the same instructor for different assignments). Get your instructor to spell out (preferably in writing) the rules on cooperation between students that apply to your assignments. Note that such rules apply in both directions: if work-sharing is forbidden, then it’s forbidden to a student to allow their work to be copied.

The instructor will take their suspicions and evidence straight to the Committee on Integrity and Discipline (CID). It may be that CID will respond to the instructor that a grade penalty, in accord with the assessment’s rubric, will suffice; or that CID will refer the student to the Writers’ Centre for remediation on citation practice. (A student who objects to such a penalty may through their Assistant Dean seek to proceed on paths (i) or (ii) below.)

Alternatively, the student will be called to a meeting with their Assistant Dean, who will present the student with CID’s Letter of Notification, advising that there are grounds for suspicion that an offence has occurred that requires investigation by the CID. The Assistant Dean will explain to the student their rights in this regard, as detailed in the Letter of Notification. The student may elect:

• for the full CID to hear the case after obtaining a written report on the matter from an independent College fact-finder appointed for this purpose; or
• for a “pre-disposition conference” to occur, involving the student, the instructor, the student’s counsellor and the Chair of CID; this does not prevent the student from requesting that path (i) subsequently occur, without prejudice.

In either event, the student is normally accompanied by the Assistant Dean as their counsellor, but has the option to request that another (non-student) member of the College community take this role. In case (ii), the identity of the student will normally not be revealed to the full CID.

In addition to a grade sanction or academic penalty such as withholding of certain College privileges, the CID may impose an institutional sanction. This can take one of the following forms.

• Reprimand. This is an internal disciplinary record only, and the student can accurately represent that he or she has no disciplinary record when applying to schools, jobs or other opportunities; however, an internal disciplinary record can be considered in other misconduct proceedings involving the student (academic or otherwise), if those proceedings involve a determination of appropriate sanctions.
• Suspension. This is a permanent disciplinary record, which in practice means that the College will retain a permanent record of the suspension and report that it has occurred if queried by potential employers, educational programs, scholarship boards, etc.  The suspended student is required to leave campus immediately (within 3 days of being advised of the suspension), thus ending the current semester without benefit of any final grades or credits being awarded; a suspension may, in addition to lasting the duration of the current semester, extend to an additional one (1) or two (2) additional semesters.  A student may be suspended for a first offence if, in the opinion of the Committee, the academic misconduct warrants such a sanction.
• Expulsion. This constitutes a permanent disciplinary record, which in practice means that the College will retain a permanent record of the expulsion and report that it has occurred if queried by potential employers, educational programs, scholarship boards, etc. The expelled student is required to leave campus immediately (within 3 days of being advised of expulsion) and is not eligible to re-enrol in the future.  A student may be expelled for a first offence if, in the opinion of the Committee, the academic misconduct warrants such a sanction.

At the discretion of the hearing panel, financial penalties may be assessed in addition to any of the sanctions listed above, including fees for tuition, housing, or reimbursement for destruction of property.

Following a decision of the full CID, the student still retains the option of an appeal to the College Executive Vice-President (Academic Affairs).