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The following statement of principles is excerpted from the University’s Faculty Policy Series #11, “Procedure for Handling Violations of Academic Honesty by Undergraduate Students at Hofstra University.” The complete policy, including a partial list of violations, procedures for handling violations, and the right of appeal, can be found in the Guide to Pride.
Hofstra University places high value upon educating students about academic honesty. At the same time, the University will not tolerate dishonesty, and it will not offer the privileges of the community to the repeat offender.
It is the responsibility of the faculty not only to share knowledge, but also to communicate understanding of, and respect for, the process and ethics by which knowledge is produced. Faculty are obligated to promote awareness of, and to educate all students about what constitutes academic honesty. Faculty should provide students with helpful sources of information on the subject such as the Hofstra Writer’s Guide, the New College for Interdisciplinary Studies’s Writing Program Manual, and Web sites covering issues related to academic honesty. Faculty can disseminate this information through a variety of media, including course outlines and handouts, discussions regarding acceptable classroom behavior, and explanations of grading policies and the consequences of dishonesty. Faculty are also asked to encourage students to take advantage of structured opportunities to learn about academic honesty such as workshops offered by the Center for Teaching and Scholarly Excellence or by the Writing Center. And, faculty should teach by example, with instructors’ teaching materials including appropriate citations. Such educational efforts will foster a cooperative climate that deters instances of academic dishonesty.
To assure impartiality in the classroom, instructors should provide students with an explicitly stated grading policy. Such a grading policy may also include an academic honesty policy, which provides for specific penalties for certain academic honesty violations.
When deciding how and when to disseminate the ethics and processes by which knowledge is produced, faculty are encouraged to use their judgment and to confer with their colleagues in arriving at a conclusion as to what constitutes a reasonable penalty that is neither too harsh nor too lenient.
To ensure that the University appropriately responds to students who repeatedly violate the principles of academic honesty, it is incumbent upon faculty to report all violations by completing the “Report Form on Violations of Academic Conduct.”
The academic community assumes that work of any kind - whether a research paper, a critical essay, a homework assignment, a test or quiz, a computer program, or a creative assignment in any medium - is done, entirely and without assistance, by and only for the individual(s) whose name(s) it bears. If joint projects are assigned, then the work is expected to be wholly the work of those whose names it bears. If the work contains facts, ideas, opinions, discoveries, words, statistics, illustrations, or other elements in any media form (including electronic) that are beyond the assumption of being common knowledge, these must be fully and appropriately acknowledged, following a prescribed format for doing so. They may be acknowledged through footnotes, endnotes, citations, or whatever other means of accreditation is acceptable according to the format prescribed in that particular field of study.
Students bear the ultimate responsibility for implementing the principles of academic honesty. Students must understand that it is not enough to identify the source of quoted material; it is also necessary to indicate when one is paraphrasing (restating in other words) material found in a source. Thus, the use of other’s ideas as well as their words needs to be acknowledged.
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