Why the zero score for plagarism?

Yesterday, a couple of your fellow students said something in the plagiarism conferences about which I spent the night thinking, namely a statement to the effect of: "It was only a single/couple of lines/paragraph. Why didn't I get credit for the rest of my work?"

First, you should know that Jen and I didn't come to the "zero/conference/allow revisions with a 'C' cap" policy with any ease. We spoke with colleagues and our program heads. We talked in the office and then spent most of an afternoon in an email exchange that included Tom. What we were looking for was a policy which would drive a crucial ethical lesson home. Many of our colleagues suggested just a zero for the paper. Some suggested dropping the offending student from the course. However, Jen and I wanted to send the message that even when compromised, reputations/images/ethos can be rebuilt. The student comments got me to rethink the policy.

When I was at the National Portrait Gallary in Washington a few weeks back, I read a quotation by John Randolph, one of your fellow Virginians. It said, "To ask any State to surrender part of her sovereignty is like asking a lady to surrender part of her chastity." Randolph's notion is that sovereignty is an absolute. One either possesses it or one doesn't. The quote stuck with me because it resonated with the basic idea behind the old joke about being a little bit pregnant. Over the past week, as I've discussed and pondered the problem of how best to teach academic integrity, I found myself thinking several times of the Randolph quotation and wondering if having a little bit of integrity is like being a little bit pregnant. I've come to the conclusion that the analogy is not a perfect one.

I think a better analogy is that of monogamy in a committed, monogamous relationship. As I began thinking of the students comments from yesterday, this was the analogy to which I returned. Suppose, in a monogamous relationship one gives the appearance of being monogamous 95 percent of the time. What happens? It is possible to rebuild a relationship based on trust into which one has introduced an element of doubt. It is even possible to rebuild such a relationship if one partner knows the other has cheated. However, in the short term, doubt colors each interpretation of the other.

If a person has integrity, then she is trusted. Her actions aren't given the additional scrutiny needed once one perceives a reasonable reason to doubt. However, once doubt in introduced into the relationship, all things change; and, at least in the short term, each word and action is weighed with the possibility in mind that the other may well act in such a way that their good intent should be questioned. Over time, doubt may be turned back into trust and one's ethos, one's reputations and credibility, rebuilt; but, everyone's life is made much, much easier if even the appearance of a lack of integrity is preserved.

Receiving a zero and a chance to revise to a "C" is meant to drive home the point that in most academic discourse your reputation, that is, the appearance and maintenance of integrity, is an assumption readers have to make. Otherwise, the ability to share research or to make crucial decisions involving the work of those one doesn't know personally disappears. Quite literally, our technological, over-populated society depends on everyone policing and protecting everyone's reputation for integrity. This policing is especially true in the academy.

Why? Because in a global world economy, we have to work at a distance. Those with whom you work don't have the luxury of knowing you well enough to use your work if there is *any* reason to distrust it. Professionals regularly make decisions which will change or cost other's lives. We depend on each other to weed out those who don't show academic integrity. There isn't any room for partial credit or even the appearance of a lack of integrity. This is the reason that those the academy accredits, that is, those the academy says are worth trusting with professional decisions, are taught to police each academic paper, to document early in the process, and when making the decision to document or not are taught to err on the side of being a tad paranoid about one's reputation.