A draft of the new SIU plagiarism policy, which officials said they would like to implement by February, could give administrators the power to take action against people who make "frivolous or malicious" charges of plagiarism against chancellors or members of the president's office.
The policy draft, which was handed out to constituency groups for review in early November, defines different degrees of plagiarism, establishes investigation procedures for plagiarism accusations and allows penalties to be handed out to those who make "frivolous or malicious charges" against chancellors or members of the president's office.
Haller said the president's office has only received two comments since the drafts were given to constituency groups for review and posted on the Faculty Senate Web site early last month. The original deadline for campus input was Nov. 20, but Haller said he would extend it.
Haller said he received an e-mail after the deadline from law professor Leonard Gross and would respond to those concerns soon. Gross said he was not made aware of to whom his concerns should be sent until after the deadline.
Gross, who is also chairman of the Southern Illinois Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said he was outraged by the portion of the policy that allowed the president's office to punish those whose allegations would be ruled as "frivolous or malicious charges" of plagiarism.
This portion of the policy gives officials power to initiate disciplinary action toward someone who has made accusations of plagiarism against chancellors or members of the president's office that are deemed "frivolous or malicious."
Gross said this provision could deter people from filing legitimate charges.
"Apparently you can file a truthful charge, but if they find it's malicious then they can charge you. This is just ridiculous in the extreme," Gross said.
The formation of the new policy was commissioned by SIU President Glenn Poshard in January, one day after the Board of Trustees approved a report that determined Poshard committed "inadvertent plagiarism" in his 1984 doctoral dissertation.
A glossary of terms in the new policy does not define "inadvertent plagiarism," but defines "unintentional plagiarism" as applying to one of four descriptions:
- Plagiarism that is due to carelessness
- A misremembering (believing some language or even a substantial portion of text is one's own creation when it is not)
- A misreading of context (believing one is producing a text within an institutionalized context when the context is actually competitive)
- An inadequate understanding of the citation requirements of authorship within a particular community.
The draft also specifies five factors the policy says should be considered in a response to plagiarism, including: the context in which the work was submitted; the intent of the author; the seriousness of the offense; the author's engagement with the source material; and the presence of extenuating circumstances.
The contents of the draft were the result of months of discussion, research and a variety of expert opinions, said Lain Adkins, chairman of the committee. The committee included 10 representatives from SIUC and 10 from SIU Edwardsville.
Haller said Paul Sarvela, who is scheduled to take over Haller's post Jan. 1, addressed one of the two faculty members who expressed concern Wednesday and would meet again with university lawyers to address the concerns.
Sean McGahan can be reached at 536-3311 ext. 254 or mcgahan@siu.edu.
