Academic Honor Code
The education of the conscience guarantees freedom and engenders peace of heart.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1784
ARCHES strives to help its students develop intellectually, spiritually, and morally. By setting high ethical standards for our students, we call them to personal responsibility for their behavior which helps them grow into a life of true freedom in service of what is true and just (see CCC 1733).
ARCHES's Academic Honor Code obliges all students to complete their work honestly, to the best of their ability, and to take action when they see dishonesty occurring. This will help build trust and respect in the classroom. Breaches of the Academic Honor Code include plagiarism, cheating during quizzes and tests, failure to cite sources, or otherwise representing the work of another as one's own.
Plagiarism
To help you understand plagiarism and how serious this offense is, ARCHES curriculum advisors are including the following guideline from the University of Notre Dame. Please read this through and make sure you and your student understand it.
The following entire document is taken from the Notre Dame Philosophy Department:
Philosophy Department Guidelines Regarding Plagiarism
ARCHES's Academic Honor Code obliges all students to complete their work honestly, to the best of their ability, and to take action when they see dishonesty occurring. This will help build trust and respect in the classroom. Breaches of the Academic Honor Code include plagiarism, cheating during quizzes and tests, failure to cite sources, or otherwise representing the work of another as one's own.
Plagiarism
To help you understand plagiarism and how serious this offense is, ARCHES curriculum advisors are including the following guideline from the University of Notre Dame. Please read this through and make sure you and your student understand it.
The following entire document is taken from the Notre Dame Philosophy Department:
Philosophy Department Guidelines Regarding Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the use of another person's writings, ideas, insights, analyses and arguments without giving proper credit to the original source. It is a growing problem at universities; much of it resulting from students relying too heavily on the internet. You may think that plagiarism only happens when someone directly copies from another source without any citation. However, plagiarism can occur in a variety of different ways. Here are some of the more common forms.
Directly copying from any other source, such as a book, article or a website, without using quotation marks. Explanation: This is plagiarism even if you include a reference after the passage. Why? Because you are claiming to have used another source only for information, but in truth you used it to provide the actual wording. Since you are using not just another's ideas, but also their writing style (a process that requires no understanding of the material or composition skills), this needs to be signified with quotation marks.
Somewhat rewording a passage, changing the occasional word and/or rearranging the sentence structure. In short, very closely paraphrasing another's writing. Explanation: This is probably one of the most common and insidious forms of plagiarism. It can still qualify as a violation of the honor code even if you provide a citation. The reason is this: Even when you are writing a full-blown research paper, professors expect you to do at least two things: a) acquire a greater understanding of the material as a result of your research, and b) organize and express this enhanced understanding through your writing. This expression may indeed incorporate the ideas or analyses of other sources. However, when you closely paraphrase someone else's writing, you can actually bypass both understanding the material and figuring out how to synthesize and present it. Instead, your energy is devoted to the linguistic task of just rewording what is before you-a job that requires little more than basic knowledge of language and a good thesaurus. When you do this, even when citing the source, you are misrepresenting your comprehension of the material and pretending to have composed something you haven't. If you must lean quite heavily on another source while writing some part of your paper, then it is better to simply provide a lengthy quotation.
How do you know if you are leaning too heavily on another source? For most assignments, it should be possible to write the bulk of your paper without other sources directly before you. The writing process should be driven by your own grasp of the issues, something that resulted from your prior research. Periodically, as the need arises to integrate the ideas of others in your writing, you may need to turn to other sources for quotations and citations. But most of your writing should not require the direct consultation of other sources.
Adopting the ideas or analysis of other writers (though not their writing) without proper citation. Explanation: When professors read your papers, one of the things they look for is not just comprehension of the material, but the ability to say something about it. Most professors want to see that you have reflected on the topic enough to construct your own analysis. When you take analyses, ideas, commentary and arguments from other writers without proper citation, you are deceiving your reader by creating the impression that you came up with this on your own.
However, there are some claims that you may have learned that do not require any sort of citation when reproduced in your paper. These are the very basic "common knowledge" claims about a given subject that are available from several sources and were probably included as part of the course readings and lectures. Claims like, "Aristotle was an influential philosopher" are so uncontroversial and elementary that no one will take these as expressions of your own unique analysis. When in doubt, cite your source. You can also consult with your instructor if you have questions.
ARCHES Plagiarism Policy
- Notes can not be downloaded (such as Spark Notes or Cliff's Notes) and turned in as student's own work.
- The same penalty applies to individual work or group work. Thus the entire group will be penalized for an offense committed by one or more of the group members. This will be examined on a case by case basis by the ARCHES administrator and the ARCHES curriculum committee.
- For a first offense, the student(s) will receive, for that assignment, a grade of 50%, an "F".
- For a second offense in the same school year, the student will receive a grade of 0%.
- For a third offense in the same school year, the student will receive a grade of 50%, an "F", for the entire semester in that course and will be expelled from that course effective immediately. They will be given no credit for the course and no work can be made up.
- After subsequent offenses the student will be expelled from ARCHES classes permanently.