The amended Cal State Long Beach Cheating and Plagiarism Policy was presented to the Associated Students, Inc. Senate Wednesday afternoon.
Dean of Students Mike Hostetler outlined the amended policy that came as a result of the Chancellor’s Executive Order and an Academic Senate ruling in December last year.
The amended policy entails that “academic dishonesty cases that occur in the classroom shall be handled by faculty members,” which hands more power to the respective faculty member to decide on the best punishment for students caught cheating.
Faculty members will be able to fill out a Student Academic Integrity form, which will be passed on to the Academic Affairs office as an official record of plagiarism and the action taken.
“For research purposes, we did not have a good handle as a university on exactly how many cases of cheating and plagiarism were occurring on campus,” Hostetler said. “We will be able to gather statistics on whether or not plagiarism is going down and how it compares to other campuses.
“We don’t really have a good idea of how many times a particular student is cheating… now we can see if a particular student is cheating or plagiarizing all over the campus environment in our database.”
In other ASI Senate news, the bylaw amendment that would ban ASI staff members from serving on the Senate, USU Board of Trustees and the AS Judiciary was tabled until next semester after being resurrected in the second to last Senate meeting of the year.
The amendment failed in only its first reading at last week’s Senate, and faced some opposition this week as Sen. Cody Fitch stated that he believed the amendment would simply be “taking jobs from over-achievers.”
The BeachBoard Flag, Information and Polling/Surveying resolution was also passed, which will create an ASI Flag in the My Organization section of the BeachBoard/Learning Management System and allow students to have access to information about ASI and pending legislation in the Senate.
