A provision that would give administrators the power to punish people who make "frivolous or malicious" charges of plagiarism against top university officials would not apply to several high-profile investigations, including that of SIU President Glenn Poshard, the university's plagiarism expert said Thursday.
Gerald Nelms, an associate English professor who helped draft the new policy and reviewed allegations of plagiarism against Poshard's 1984 doctoral dissertation, said the policy provision is meant to discourage accusations of plagiarism without sufficient proof, to which Poshard's case would not apply.
"It (Poshard's case) warranted investigation," Nelms said. "There's nothing wrong with having an investigation if there is what appears to be, to some people, evidence of plagiarism. We did the investigation. The results were the results. I thought it all worked out."
Poshard committed "inadvertent plagiarism" by failing to attribute sources in the work that earned him his Ph. D in SIUC's Department of Educational Administration and Higher Education, a committee ruled in October 2007.
In an eight-page report Nelms constructed at Poshard's request, the scholar said he found 40 "infractions" in the dissertation, none of which constituted plagiarism.
Nelms said the new policy, which Poshard asked for one day after the Board of Trustees accepted the findings of the plagiarism investigation, was meant to safeguard against illegitimate accusations.
"I think the whole faculty and student body deserves to have something in place where we all know what the ground rules are and we all know what to expect and if something like this occurs we all know the right way to deal with it," Poshard said after he announced Oct. 11, 2007, he would correct his dissertation.
The intent of the accuser, as found through an investigation, would determine whether a penalty should be handed down, Nelms said.
"That's the key to if something is frivolous - that there's simply not enough evidence there to warrant an investigation," he said.
Nelms said he seriously doubted this would come up, but it is possible.
The overarching goal of the new policy is to discourage a knee-jerk response to plagiarism accusations, he said.
The word "plagiarism" itself has a negative stigma to many people, and the policy aimed to show that not all cases that are referred to as plagiarism are necessarily cheating, Nelms said.
"The term is weighted, and so when people hear it, they tend to automatically associate it with unethical behavior, basically intentional cheating, and it doesn't have to be," he said.
Plagiarism should be looked at as an educational issue, not a moral one, he said. The key should be educating people how to properly disseminate information and cite sources, he said.
Having dealt with plagiarism at nearly every level of education, Jan Waggoner said those who plagiarize usually do so because they lack the critical thinking skills to apply the information they've read in their own words.
The main victim in plagiarism is the writer who commits it, said Waggoner, director of teacher education for the College of Education and Human Services.
Many classes in the program train future teachers how to detect plagiarism, which makes it more disappointing when those in the program are found to have committed it, she said.
"We expect a higher level of ethical responsibility, because they themselves will be in the position of being role models for their students," she said. "It's particularly disappointing when we have someone in the College of Education and Human Services who cheats or is caught for plagiarism."
She said she has confronted many students with charges of plagiarism in 30 years teaching at the university, high school and middle school level. Most say they've never done it before and will never do it again, she said.
The key for teachers to know students well and being able to detect what is characteristic of a student and his or her level of work, she said.
"The cheating often takes the same form in all three," she said. "As they get older, it just gets more sophisticated."
Sean McGahan can be reached at 536-3311 ext. 254 or mcgahan@siu.edu.
