Syracuse University may see significant changes to its Academic Integrity Policy if a proposal is fully approved by faculty and staff.

The new proposal, which came out of a year’s worth of review by the Academic Integrity Office, was presented by the Committee on Instruction at Wednesday’s University Senate meeting. It suggests several changes to the original, 11-year-old policy such as using three levels to determine the severity of academic integrity violations, allowing a no-hearing appeals process and bringing the process of judging violations back to individual schools and colleges, among other points.

Near the beginning of the meeting, Chancellor Kent Syverud gave a few updates on various dean searches that are currently underway. The search committee for a new College of Law dean has chosen three finalists, and Syverud said he expects a decision to be made within the next week. Dean search candidates for the College of Visual and Performing Arts and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs are currently being reviewed.

Syverud added that the next senior vice president for student affairs will be announced at the end of the month.

After a few minor agenda items, Director of the Academic Integrity Office Margaret Usdansky gave a report on the department’s proposal.

The proposal is multifaceted in that it will aim to encourage greater reporting of violations by professors, but also give those students who are guilty of violating academic integrity policies a second chance.

With the current policy, Usdansky said faculty members are sometimes afraid of bringing forth charges because they feel the punishment is too severe compared to the violation. The new system would use small, medium and large violations to ease those concerns and give the student a better idea of how they’ll be punished, she said.

“I think the best way to describe what we have right now is a ‘one or two strikes you’re out’ approach,” Usdansky said. “And we know that that approach is not working as it’s intended.”

She went on to say that of the 200 to 300 violations reported annually, only one-third of them result in the presumptive penalty, or the general punishments laid out in the current Academic Integrity Policy. This is because professors and the panel of students and faculty who judge the cases often don’t feel that the punishment fits the violation.

The new policy will give some protections to professors who fear retribution for reporting violations. Deborah Pellow, a professor of anthropology at SU, said the reporting process as a whole is uncomfortable and, at times, upsetting.

“Everyone who reports a case feels beaten up,” Pellow said. “I know many a person, myself included, who have not reported because of how unwell it ends up for us.”

Whether a student plagiarizes one paragraph or the whole paper, Committee on Instruction Chair Robert Van Gulick said the new policy will give them another chance, while still ensuring repercussions.

“It’s important that all undergraduates get a second chance even if they have an egregious violation,” Van Gulick said.

Published on April 13, 2016 at 10:38 pm

Contact Annie: apalme05@syr.edu