The primary purposes of a research university, whether private, public, or of public land-grant status like the University of Minnesota, are the discovery, advancement, and dissemination of knowledge by all apt and available means. This compound effort includes the teaching of students enrolled for the purposes of learning and of taking degrees that certify the fields and quality of their academic achievements. As one of the nation’s leading research universities, the University has an obligation to communities not only local but national and international to ensure the integrity of its research and scholarship, and of its instruction and certification by degree. The integrity of a university depends especially upon the integrity of its faculty members, but necessarily also on that of its regents or trustees, administrators, and civil-service staff, and emphatically of its students.

I. CHARGES TO THE COMMITTEE

The Special Senate Committee on Student Academic Integrity was appointed by letter dated 15 July 1999 from the Chair of the Senate Consultative Committee, Fred Morrison. It was given three charges, two concerned with all students in the University, the third charge with the athletic programs of the Twin Cities Campus. We addressed the third charge first because it seemed most pressing and most readily addressed, and submitted our report on 1 November 1999. This is the second and final report, addressing the first two charges.

On these two charges we met fourteen times and consulted extensively by e-mail between meetings. We are gratefully indebted to the persons we interviewed for sharing their expertise and experience with us: Associate Dean Jean Cameron, College of Liberal Arts; Professor Virginia Gray, Political Science; Dr. Darwin Hendel, Institutional Research and Reporting; Associate Dean Peter Hudleston, Institute of Technology; Associate Dean Meredith McQuaid, Law School; Ms. LeeAnn Melin, New Student Programs; Ms. Jan Morse, Student Dispute Resolution Center; Associate Dean Gerald Rinehart, Carlson School of Management; Associate Dean Wendy St. Peter, College of Pharmacy; Ms. Barbara Shiels, Office of the General Counsel; and Professor George Spangler, College of Natural Resources.

Under charge 1 we were asked specifically to "review the policies and standards regarding student academic integrity and make recommendations for improvement of University policies. The task force should examine the standards in the Code of Student Conduct and in the various college policies." We have reviewed, examined, and recommended in response, not point by point according to the charges, but in the report as a whole. Under charge 1 we were also asked the following questions—to which we give (italicized) answers in brief here; we address them in effect in various parts of the report, not always directly in these terms.

The second charge, to "review the procedures for enforcement of the student academic integrity standards," asked six representative questions that are too complex to be answered in brief (except for no. 3, Yes) but are given here for the record and because all are addressed in effect in this report.

II. PRINCIPLES AND OBSERVATIONS

This report is intended to be the response of the University of Minnesota to a problem perceived as nationwide and very serious if not epidemic in American institutions of higher learning. It is concerned first and foremost with promoting academic integrity as the rule and only secondarily with detecting and punishing academic dishonesty as the exception, which is serious enough, however, to require addressing.

Integrity has become a buzzword more often conjured with than understood. Its essential meaning is "something undivided; an integral whole," wholeness, soundness. It has a special application in relation to humans that is succinctly expressed by the Oxford English Dictionary as "soundness of moral principle; the character of uncorrupted virtue, esp. in relation to truth and fair dealing; uprightness, honesty, sincerity" (OED2 3b). Integrity is more than what is left when cheating has been eliminated, and it is not passive. It is perhaps easiest recognized by its manifest distance from self-interest, and at its best it is ethical excellence in action. Not every institution, program, person, or act can be instantly assessed as having or lacking integrity; but these qualities constituting it are widely, not to say universally, recognized as of inestimable value in human relations and essential for a civil and orderly society. Without such qualities and corresponding actions, there is no "integrity."

Academic integrity is integrity in academia, and like integrity (or the lack of it) everywhere else, it is recognizable not as a passive state or attitude but by actions characterized by it. Student academic integrity is vital to the integrity of both the research and the instructional and degree-granting missions of the University. And it is essential if honest students are to have the benefit of due recognition of their own work uncompromised by the dishonest practices of students who cheat. Cheating undoubtedly hurts the cheater, because "he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much"; but cheaters most hurt other students, first in their individual courses, and on their projects and written work from freshman composition to doctoral dissertations; and again by devaluing and discrediting a university’s degrees. That society as a whole is affected for the worse by such practices is obvious.

All acts of academic dishonesty are forms of cheating, which means essentially "to deal fraudulently, practice deceit" (OED2 4a). For students in the University that means to gain unfair advantage over other students—most often by plagiarism or by copying or sharing answers on examinations. Other ways to cheat include depriving others’ work of credit by preventing its reaching the instructor, for example, or falsely claiming a personal hardship to gain extra time on examinations. The present resources of the World Wide Web are only the beginning of sophisticated means of cheating that will continue to increase, multiply, and become more subtle with the advances of technology. But cheating is cheating, whatever the means, and it should be well understood by anyone capable of functioning in society, not to mention qualified to be a member of the University community. Anyone who has the slightest doubt about what cheating is should at once make the effort to find out, as by consulting the Office of Academic Integrity (OAI; see III.A). Instances of cheating will not be condoned when detected, whatever the explanation; and ignorance of what constitutes cheating is no excuse for cheating.

We have no compelling reason to think that cheating is epidemic at the University of Minnesota, but students have reported in surveys that they "saw another student cheat on a quiz or test in a University course" and "knew a student who handed in someone else’s work as their own (on a take-home test or assignment)." From a survey of freshmen we know also that for nearly 70% it was important or very important for "the University to take firm action to protect academic integrity and hold those who cheat responsible" (Cooperative Institutional Research Program Freshmen Survey, conducted 1999). And for only 3% was it "not at all important." Most cheating tends to be of two kinds: impulsive or "opportunistic" cheating; and calculated and deliberate, sometimes habitual, cheating. Neither kind can be tolerated, but the former is plainly less grave than the latter; it can probably be reduced or even eliminated by instructors’ taking reasonable precautions to limit the opportunity, and by the President’s and the University Senate’s regularly reminding all students to refrain from cheating in any form, for the sake of their fellow students, their university, and their own integrity. Deliberate and persistent cheating is an antisocial and destructive practice much more serious, and the University must make every effort to detect instances and their perpetrators, penalize them appropriately, and, if they offend egregiously or repeatedly, expel them.

The University assumes integrity as the norm of its students’ behavior. But even where there is thought to be no cheating, prudence argues for the precautionary benefit of an integrity code and a declaration of academic integrity to be signed by all students. This declaration should be signed during the academic part of their initial orientation to the University, as freshmen, transfer students, or entering graduate or professional students, or on an appropriate equivalent occasion in units where there is no formal orientation. Making such a declaration will alert students to their personal responsibility to their fellow students and the University as a whole, and to the penalties imposed for cheating when detected and proved. Ideally, this would confer lifelong immunity from cheating upon the signer; but because there are and will be exceptions, efforts to inform and prevent must be supplemented by those to detect and to punish as necessary.

In accordance with the foregoing discussion, we recommend that all students of the University sign this declaration upon their admission:

We also recommend that as a reminder and reaffirmation students sign and date the following statement to be printed on blue books and other examination forms:

Finally, we recommend that students sign the following statement for out-of-class written papers or projects:

III. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CREATING A CULTURE OF ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

The Committee firmly believes that civility and mutual respect, and the practice of academic integrity, are reciprocal. Although the University cannot strictly legislate and enforce civility and respect as such, it has a primary obligation to profess, practice, and promote academic integrity; to actively discourage violations; and to ensure that proven violations are suitably penalized. In some smaller and less complex institutions, these ends are accomplished by an honor system, which we considered but rejected as inappropriate in an institution as large, diverse, and complex as the University of Minnesota, where long experience has assured us all that there will be some cheating irrespective of steps taken to prevent it (on honor codes and systems, see further in Appendix B). We therefore give, in the Penalties section of the report (V), recommendations related to specific principles, policies, procedures, and infrastructures that we think need to be instituted (or reinforced where already existing) to facilitate investigation and take punitive measures as appropriate.

A. OFFICE OF ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

The Committee strongly recommends the creation of an Office of Academic Integrity (OAI). OAI should (1) be a central repository of resources to aid members of the University community in promoting academic integrity, (2) sponsor discussion across the University of reasons and ways and means to promote and defend academic integrity, and (3) develop and disseminate resource materials that promote academic integrity and condemn cheating. A primary purpose of this office should be to help the faculty by easing the burden of pursuing cases of suspected cheating, which in the past has been sufficiently onerous, time-consuming, thankless, and counterproductive that it has been less and less often undertaken. We assume that the office will not be involved in a case unless the faculty member chooses to involve it, but that it will be ready, willing, and able to help when consulted.

OAI should be headed by an Academic Integrity officer reporting to the office of the Executive Vice President and Provost (with the Academic Health Center reporting to OAI on these issues). The Committee does not believe that the title and responsibilities of the office should be added to those of an existing position because there would be too much for anyone to do who already has a full-time position, and the responsibilities would not receive adequate attention as a consequence. We envision that the responsibilities of the academic integrity officer, if carried out fully and well, may consume more time than one person can give them. It will be essential to provide adequate staffing and resources for OAI; otherwise the effort will appear a mere façade and induce further skepticism about the University’s commitment to academic integrity. The responsibilities of the Office of Academic Integrity should include at least the following:

The Committee also recommends the creation of an advisory committee for the Office of Academic Integrity that would be composed of faculty, P&A staff, and students, the Academic Integrity officer as an ex-officio member, and at least one undergraduate adviser from one of the larger colleges. The specific bylaw recommendation we propose for submission to the University Senate is Appendix A of this report.

OAI materials might include but should not be limited to the following on an OAI Web site and otherwise (with OAI logo and telephone number wherever appropriate):

Our initial recommendation is that OAI serve the Twin cities campuses, because we did not have representatives from the other campuses on our Committee or have time to consult with those campuses. We believe, however, that they should be actively involved in the discussions and invited to advise the Senate, perhaps through the Committee on Educational Policy, on how they might best be integrated into the office and practices we have recommended. We believe that a revised set of recommendations, intended to embrace the coordinate campuses in whatever way they believe would work best for them, should be brought back to the Senate in Spring 2001.

B. OTHER STEPS TO PROMOTE ACADEMIC INTEGRITY AND PREVENT ACADEMIC FRAUD

The Committee recognizes that the entire University community has a role to play in preventing cheating. We can publicly, explicitly, and frequently assert that academic integrity is important. Discuss it at every opportunity. Say WHY it is important. And we can carry these efforts into our every activity. For example, the President should discuss academic integrity in his annual address and at least briefly at Convocation. The University should mandate printing the affirmation-of-honesty statement (end of II, above) on all blue books and other examination forms. Other ways to communicate this message include the following.

A. Admissions

Each application packet should include a brief discussion of the integrity code and the declaration to be signed early in the first year.

B. Orientation

Orientation sessions should devote time to explicit discussion and examples not only of cheating but of academic integrity. What does academic integrity look like? Why is it important? These sessions should be interactive, so that students start to internalize the meaning and value of integrity. They should talk about it with each other.

IV. RIGHTS, RESPONSIBILITIES, AND REASONABLE EXPECTATIONS OF ALL PARTIES

After its detailed and ranging investigation, the Committee concluded that the most effective way ultimately to promote academic integrity is to cultivate an environment, or culture, of civility in which acts of mutual respect and responsibility are the daily routine of University life and academic integrity is a natural corollary. To that end we provide here a series of recommendations aimed at promoting rights, responsibilities, and reasonable expectations among all those who make up the University community—faculty, staff, students, administrators, and Regents. In the following sections we have delineated these rights, responsibilities, and expectations for each of the three major groups who are directly responsible for maintaining the academic integrity of the University.

A. THE FACULTY AND OTHER INSTRUCTIONAL STAFF

Faculty vigilance is the most important defense against cheating. Faculty members can create an environment that promotes academic integrity in the classroom, the seminar room, the laboratory, and every other place in the University. And it is they who must take the lead, who can best model academic integrity, and who can best articulate what academic integrity is designed to protect and achieve. The faculty should aim not just for the absence of cheating, but to get students to value integrity and practice it beyond the merely academic because it is an important moral and social value of worth to all.

If faculty members are to be the line of defense against cheating, they need somewhere to turn for help in dealing with students who cheat. They also need support from department heads and deans in making decisions about dealing with cheating. There should also be the help and support from the Office of Academic Integrity that we have recommended above.

The Committee recommends that faculty members report all incidents of cheating to OAI, and that they consult with OAI on penalties. If a faculty member chooses not to consult with OAI and a student later grieves the process, the faculty member bears the burden of proving in any subsequent grievance process that the penalty is appropriate. The concern here is to ensure consistency in decisions and penalties, allowing for appropriate variations for different kinds of offense (e.g., first-time plagiarism by a freshman should not be treated the same as plagiarism by a doctoral student).

Classroom practices that discourage or prevent cheating are the faculty member’s

B. STUDENTS

Students have a responsibility not to cheat and to act with integrity generally. They have the right to expect that instructors will provide guidance on academic integrity and cheating, and will use classroom measures that protect students who do not cheat from those who do or might.

Students have the due-process right to be informed in writing when they are accused and of what as soon as the accusation is taken beyond professor-student interaction. And they are entitled to information about the process.

Students must be responsible in particular for academic integrity within their own realm. They should protect their own work from being drawn on without acknowledgment by others. When in doubt, they should take responsibility for asking what constitutes cheating or inappropriate sharing. They should also report others if they are cheating. This is public citizenship. Students can encourage others to maintain academic integrity, and not to cheat. Peer pressure is powerful.

C. ADMINISTRATORS

The administration has a significant stake in the integrity of the institution, and thus has the right to require preventive classroom practices. It can also expect faculty and student cooperation with guidelines and processes to promote academic integrity. The Committee strongly recommends that the administration support funding for OAI staff and associated resources and activities.

The administration’s contribution to promoting academic integrity might include most if not all of the following:

The administration can and should set expectations for all, repeat these publicly and often, and establish rules and procedures for meeting them. It should develop guidelines, processes, and procedures for enforcement that are not onerous. It can support, praise, and reward faculty members who are vigilant, responsible, and proactive about academic integrity. It must also defend publicly and explicitly the due-process rights of students.

V. PENALTIES

A. GENERAL PRINCIPLES

In order to minimize cheating at the University, everyone—students, faculty, staff, and administrators—must contribute to creating a culture in which academic fraud is neither committed nor tolerated. The most important step in doing this is to make cheating difficult and thus prevent it in the first place. But, both as part of the prevention effort and in order to maintain publicly our norms of integrity, there must be a system for exacting penalties when cheating does occur. The three major desiderata are:

B. SPECIFIC PENALTIES

We believe that the nature and range of penalties should be developed by the new OAI in consultation with the Senate committee that will be advisory to it. But we lay out here a few specific principles and suggestions that we think should guide OAI in doing this.

C. PROCEDURES

In order to ensure that the basic principle of fairness is maintained (like cases treated alike, different cases treated differently), the assignment of penalties should be done exclusively by OAI. Individual professors cannot know what penalties are being imposed elsewhere in the University, so if they try to assign penalties for offenses they have discovered, the overall result will inevitably be unfair—at least in the sense that a student might receive a penalty very different from that given a roommate for the same offense. The only way we see to achieve consistency is to have this done at one place, in one office.

The general procedure for dealing with an instance of cheating, then, should be:

VI. CONCLUSION

The Committee does not wish to dictate all of the particulars and is only making general recommendations to set in place implementation machinery. We are not recommending an honor code per se (see Appendix B). Moreover, while there are honor codes in place within the University that appear quite effective, they are in small colleges or professional schools. We also recognize that there are different categories of severity of cheating; they need to be linked to the reasons why academic integrity is important and why some are more of an offense against it than others. We recognize that, if the system proposed here functions well, even if there are more reports of cheating, there need not be more hearings; perhaps the existing Campus Committee on Student Behavior (and corresponding bodies on the coordinate campuses) should handle any that are required.

APPENDIX A

The Academic Integrity Committee is an advisory body to the Executive Vice President and Provost and to the administrative officers responsible for education, outreach, and sanctions related to issues of academic integrity.

The Academic Integrity Committee shall be composed of 6 faculty/academic professional members (including at least one from a coordinate campus and at least 4 of whom must be members of the tenured or tenure-track faculty) and 3 students (at least one of whom shall be a graduate or professional student and at least one of whom shall be an undergraduate student). The chair of the committee shall be a member of the tenured faculty. The academic integrity officer shall be an ex officio member. The chair and committee members will be appointed by the Executive Vice President and Provost with the advice and consent of the Committee on Educational Policy.

a. To advise the academic integrity officer on all matters the committee deems appropriate, including but not limited to (1) ways to make academic integrity an abiding concern of the University, (2) the development and dissemination of best practices to ensure academic integrity, (3) processes and procedures for considering allegations of student or faculty academic misconduct, and (4) the nature of sanctions that should be imposed on those who are found to have violated University rules concerning academic integrity.

b. To advise the academic integrity officer on the disposition of specific cases of allegations of academic misconduct, at the discretion of the academic integrity officer.

c. To recommend to the Senate such actions or policies as it deems appropriate.

d. To submit an annual report to the Committee on Educational Policy and to the Senate.

[Note: this bylaw and references to academic misconduct are not to be construed as conflicting with, or superseding, other bylaws or University policies related to research misconduct, conflict of interest, or the ethical conduct of research and scholarship.]

COMMENT:

The Special Senate Committee on Student Academic Integrity recommended the creation of an Office of Academic Integrity and an advisory committee to work with the proposed office. This proposal implements that recommendation.

APPENDIX B

The Committee began its work by defining its ends—above all to promote academic integrity across the University but also to provide for detecting and penalizing violations—and then considering means to achieve them. Prominent among them was an honor system, which we carefully considered at great length for the University as a whole but rejected in favor of a system combining students’ signing declarations of integrity with a streamlined system of administration centering on the recommended new Office of Academic Integrity and fortified by the active participation and leadership of the faculty. Such a system seems optimal for the University of Minnesota. This will no doubt disappoint those who cherish the idea of an honor code, some of whom also have fond recollections of their experience of it. But the venerable term often elicits more nostalgia than understanding, because it may refer to anything from the bare signing of a declaration to "a system (as at a college or prison) whereby persons are trusted to abide by the regulations (as for a code of conduct) without supervision or surveillance" (honor system n, 1904, in Merriam Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed., 1994). The Committee was not deterred by the slightly disconcerting association here, and it is in fact noteworthy that one who escapes from prison does not necessarily affect the lot of other trustees (though emulation might be stimulated), whereas a cheating student in a college or university inevitably does, even if he or she is caught.

A true honor system of this sort is nowhere to be found, so far as we know, except perhaps at a prison, especially a country-club prison. In fact, the distinguishing characteristic of the contemporary honor system is less its lack of "supervision or surveillance" than its being legislated, administered, and executed by students elected for the purpose by their peers. We were told by representatives of intra-University units having an honor system that it works well, and we were given good reasons to believe that. But these units—Law, Natural Resources, Pharmacy, and the like—are all relatively small and the student body constituted of majors or professional students unified by their discipline and by close identification with their unit and association with each other. Furthermore, even in these the honor system applies only to courses for majors, not to service courses for non-majors; and we might add (with tongue in cheek) that a law school has a natural affinity for any kind of legal form, apparatus, and activity.

Beyond the University it may be seen that at Caltech, for example, all students are expected to conform to a uniquely brief and binding code (pre-1920): "No member of the Caltech community shall take unfair advantage of any other member of the Caltech community"; but Caltech is an elite and specialized university—and it has a student Board of Control. The University of Maryland’s Code of Academic Integrity (1990) is complemented by a student Honor Council of appointed members; "Faculty members remain responsible for the diligent proctoring of examinations, the security of exam questions, grade books, answer sheets, and the like" (Faculty Handbook). Cal Tech has a true honor system, Maryland has not, as the name of its code acknowledges (this observation is of course not meant to fault it).

Many institutions that pride themselves on their honor codes are small and located in the South, like Washington and Lee, whose honor code goes back to Confederate Army General Robert E. Lee’s presidency in 1865-70; and whose student body is substantially homogeneous, as is true of most institutions with student-administered honor systems. If not all student bodies in such institutions are economically, socially, ideologically, intellectually, and professionally homogeneous, it seems likely that all are at least one of these and that most are more than one.

By contrast, the University of Minnesota is very large, spread across five campuses, ethnically and otherwise diverse, multicultural at every degree level, and the more complicated for the variety of degrees and levels in themselves. To this already high order of complexity might be added the special problem said to be posed by fraternities and sororities with their alleged files of recyclable papers. Since there is no proof of this process readily available, such allegations must be taken with a grain of salt—but cannot be dismissed out of hand. Nor can the implications be ignored of such a communication as this from a professor in one of the military academies (11-15-99):

In such circumstances, achieving true representation and full responsibility and effectiveness by students elected by and electing their peers would be not just difficult but virtually impossible. Perhaps far more students could be rallied to vote in favor of an honor system and volunteer to participate in it than run for student office or even turn out to vote in the annual elections—on the Minneapolis campus, anyway—but we doubt it. Not running for office or voting for officers in student government, or declining to participate in the designing and administering of an honor system, is not necessarily a sign of apathy; in most cases it may be due to students’ concentrating on their studies, which is primarily what they are or should be at the University for. But even if lack of participation were due to alienation, work-schedule conflicts, or for that matter the weather, indifference, or downright sloth, the effect would be the same: too few willing or able to "represent" all too many, and elected by all too few to do so. Appointing student representatives may serve a purpose in lieu, but it is plainly not democratic, while serving no better the demanding and complex purposes that must be served if a university is to discharge its responsibilities fully and equitably. We know of no research university approaching the size of Minnesota that has or has even tried a student-administered honor system for the whole.

We concluded unanimously that in order to promote and protect academic integrity, and to do so with justice, equitability, and efficiency, the University needed a system more comprehensive, sure, and circumspect than a student-administered honor system could possibly be; and we think we found something like the optimal one. We are convinced that with effort and good will—and with modification based on experience over time—this system will work well for everyone, and in due course may indeed transform the ethical environment and our students. If it does, student academic integrity, and with it civility and mutual respect, will have a whole new lease on life at the University of Minnesota.