The Word - 2007

Cheating and Plagiarism

This policy is available on line: http://cmu.edu/policies/documents/Cheating.html

Students at Carnegie Mellon are engaged in preparation for professional activity of the highest standards. Each profession constrains its members with both ethical responsibilities and disciplinary limits. To assure the validity of the learning experience a university establishes clear standards for student work.

In any presentation, creative, artistic or research, it is the ethical responsibility of each student to identify the conceptual sources of the work submitted. Failure to do so is dishonest and is the basis for a charge of cheating or plagiarism, which is subject to disciplinary action.

Cheating includes but is not necessarily limited to:

  1. Plagiarism, explained below.
  2. Submission of work that is not the student's own for papers, assignments or exams.
  3. Submission or use of falsified data.
  4. Theft of or unauthorized access to an exam.
  5. Use of an alternate, stand-in or proxy during an examination.
  6. Use of unauthorized material including textbooks, notes or computer programs in the preparation of an assignment or during an examination.
  7. Supplying or communicating in any way unauthorized information to another student for the preparation of an assignment or during an examination.
  8. Collaboration in the preparation of an assignment. Unless specifically permitted or required by the instructor, collaboration will usually be viewed by the University as cheating. Each student, therefore, is responsible for understanding the policies of the department offering any course as they refer to the amount of help and collaboration permitted in preparation of assignments.
  9. Submission of the same work for credit in two courses without obtaining the permission of the instructors beforehand. Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to, failure to indicate the source with quotation marks or footnotes where appropriate if any of the following are reproduced in the work submitted by a student:
    1. A phrase, written or musical.
    2. A graphic element.
    3. A proof.
    4. Specific language.
    5. An idea derived from the work, published or unpublished, of another person.