Week 3: Free Rant (on Copyright...continued)

I have served as a faculty advisor to our student-led Honor Council for the past six years.  As I wind down the end of our school year, I have reflected back on all of the cases of plagiarism that have occurred over the year.

Without doubt, plagiarism runs rampant not only at the collegiate level but also through the secondary school system.  Our school is no different than any other school in this regard.

After watching the Good Copy, Bad Copy video, I started putting the correlations together and realized that much of our problem dealing with plagiarism is due to cultural differences in copyright protection.  We are primarily an international boarding school and each of our students have a different perspective and interpretation of copyright.  Too bad for us in this aspect but this does not give us the excuse to dismiss the educational opportunities that it presents.

Many of our students come to the United States because this is an easier avenue to get permitted to American colleges and universities.  Our school takes a proactive measure in holding the students responsible for upholding our Honor Code (lying, cheating, stealing and plagiarism).  Our headmaster-appointed student board puts many hours into hearing cases that have potentially broken the honor code.  If found guilty, demerits are issued.

While plagiarism cases are usually easy to convict, sometimes students lack the education on how to properly cite another authors work or sometimes they find their content in a Google search and cite Google as the author.  In either case, our Honor Council tries to educate them that they are essentially violating the copyright laws that are set forth in the United States.

I feel that the time we spend in each Honor Council session is time well spent as it truly is our responsibility to educate our students not only in the core subjects but also prepare them to be a productive citizen once they leave high school.   Getting sent to the Honor Council for plagiarism will not get you dismissed from school per se but it will hopefully guide you in the right not to repeat this mistake.  High school is where you learn how to be an adult and follow adult guidelines; college on the other hand is where they expect you already know these guidelines.