SIU President Glenn Poshard wanted a do-over for his plagiarized 1984 doctoral dissertation.
His employees granted him one.
When someone cried "double standard," he launched a system-wide review of plagiarism policies.
The rewritten policy gives Poshard and his administration even more elbow room than they had before.
In the draft of this new policy, the university administration has given itself the power to punish people who make "frivolous or malicious charges" of plagiarism against chancellors or members of the president's office.
And if you cross the administration, "... the University may initiate any and all appropriate action, including but not limited to disciplinary action against an employee or civil action against a member of the public."
In other words, catch me once, shame on me ... catch me twice, prepare to be punished.
This policy puts into black and white what previously was only in gray - that a double standard exists, and administrators should be held less accountable for their actions than the faculty and students who fall under their realm of power.
Further, this policy fails to define what constitutes "frivolous or malicious charges."
The Daily Egyptian wants to know who the Frivolous Officer will be. Will President Poshard appoint a blue ribbon committee of which he is the head? Or better yet, maybe the chancellors and president will be the only ones with the power to determine whether charges are frivolous or malicious.
Administrators - their own judge and jury.
The new policy also conveniently includes Poshard's excuse for the plagiarism in his dissertation in its definition of inadvertent or unintentional plagiarism - "misremembering" where the information came from.
According to the new guidelines, an unintentional plagiarist can believe "some language or even a substantial portion of the text is one's own creation when it is not."
Dictionary.com defines "misremembering" as 1. to remember incorrectly or 2. to fail to remember, forget.
Maybe the authors misremembered what the word forget means.
This policy is meant to keep SIU's history of embarrassing and shameful plagiarism from repeating itself.
If this draft is passed, it will make this university look more foolish than the light sentences received by administrators who plagiarized in the past already have.
SIU Vice President John Haller has extended the deadline to respond to concerns about the policy.
Haller can be reached at jhaller@siu.edu, 536-3479 or drop a note in the mail addressed to: John Haller, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale Mailcode 6801, Carbondale, IL 62901.
The whole policy can be found at http://www.siude.com or the Faculty Senate's Web site, http://www.siu.edu/~facsenat/.
