Part II: Student Responsibilities

Academic misconduct is defined as any activity that tends to undermine the academic integrity of the institution. The university may discipline a student for academic misconduct. Academic misconduct may involve human, hard-copy, or electronic resources.

 Policies of academic misconduct apply to all course-, department-, school-, and university related activities, including field trips, conferences, performances, and sports activities off-campus, exams outside of a specific course structure (such as take-home exams, entrance exams, or auditions, theses and master’s exams, and doctoral qualifying exams and dissertations), and research work outside of a specific course structure (such as lab experiments, data collection, service learning, and collaborative research projects). The faculty member may take into account the seriousness of the violation in assessing a penalty for acts of academic misconduct. The faculty member must report all cases of academic misconduct to the dean of students, or appropriate official. Academic misconduct includes, but is not limited to, the following:

1. Cheating
Cheating is considered to be an attempt to use or provide unauthorized assistance, materials, information, or study aids in any form and in any academic exercise or environment.

  1. A student must not use external assistance on any “in-class” or “take-home” examination, unless the instructor specifically has authorized external assistance. This prohibition includes, but is not limited to, the use of tutors, books, notes, calculators, computers, and wireless communication devices.
  2. A student must not use another person as a substitute in the taking of an examination or quiz, nor allow other persons to conduct research or to prepare work, without advance authorization from the instructor to whom the work is being submitted.
  3. A student must not use materials from a commercial term paper company; files of papers prepared by other persons, or submit documents found on the Internet. A student must not collaborate with other persons on a particular project and submit a copy of a written report that is represented explicitly or implicitly as the student’s individual work.
  4. A student must not use any unauthorized assistance in a laboratory, at a computer terminal, or on fieldwork.
  5. A student must not steal examinations or other course materials, including but not limited to, physical copies and photographic or electronic images.
  6. A student must not submit substantial portions of the same academic work for credit or honors more than once without permission of the instructor or program to whom he work is being submitted.
  7. A student must not, without authorization, alter a grade or score in any way, nor alter answers on a returned exam or assignment for credit.

      2. Fabrication
      A student must not falsify or invent any information or data in an academic exercise including, but not limited to, records or reports, laboratory results, and citation
      to the sources of information.

3. Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined as presenting someone else’s work, including the work of other students, as one’s own. Any ideas or materials taken from another source for either written or oral use must be fully acknowledged, unless the information is common knowledge. What is considered “common knowledge” may differ from course to course.

  1. A student must not adopt or reproduce ideas, opinions, theories, formulas, graphics, or pictures of another person without acknowledgment.
  2. A student must give credit to the originality of others and acknowledge indebtedness whenever:

  1. Directly quoting another person’s actual words, whether oral or written;

  2. Using another person’s ideas, opinions, or theories;

  3. Paraphrasing the words, ideas, opinions, or theories of others, whether oral or written;

  4. Borrowing facts, statistics, or illustrative material; or

  5. Offering materials assembled or collected by others in the form of projects or collections without acknowledgment.

 4. Interference
A student must not steal, change, destroy, or impede another student’s work, nor should the student unjustly attempt, through a bribe, a promise of favors or threats, to affect any student’s grade or the evaluation of academic performance. Impeding another student’s work includes, but is not limited to, the theft, defacement, or mutilation of resources so as to deprive others of the information they contain.

 5. Violation of Course Rules
A student must not violate course rules established by a department, the course syllabus, verbal or written instructions, or the course materials that are rationally related to the content of the course or to the enhancement of the learning process in the course.

 6. Facilitating Academic Dishonesty
A student must not intentionally or knowingly help or attempt to help another student to commit an act of academic misconduct, nor allow another student to use his or her work or resources to commit an act of misconduct.

The Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct. Copyright 2005 The Trustees of Indiana University
By action of the University Faculty Council (April 12, 2005) and the Trustees of Indiana University (June 24, 2005)