I caught a student who plagerized (sp?) his ENTIRE paper. I mean he took another student's paper (in the same class- mind you) and put his name on it. He had access to it because his girlfriend is the sister of the girl he stole the paper from and they both used the sister's computer to type their papers. I mean he took the entire paper, changed the name and deleted maybe two sentences. He even kept her typos. He even copied and pasted two more whole paragraphs from another website and he's so dumb that he didn't even pay attention to the fact that he got the info from a website that had a darker/ colored background and when he copied and pasted it, it had a background shadow. That is bad enough, right? Well, when I caught him, I told him that we are all going to talk (me, the girl and the boy). He had a "coughing" fit and ran off, allegedly to the bathroom. Well, I got a male security guard to go check and lo and behold he had disappeared!!! Well, I write him up for insubordination, cheating and lying (to another person regarding the same issue).
Well, I was told that he can't get in trouble for plagerism!!! REALLY!!! Okay, lying is against the rules but stealing someone else's work isn't? This is why our students has such a disconnect between the real word and school. How is plagerism any different than lying!?!?! He did get two zeros though.
Re: Opinions needed!!!!
What grade level do you teach? In college, you automatically failed the class and got put on academic probation for cheating or plagarism. Were were allowed to use material from other sources, but we had to either footnote it or name the source in the body of the paper.
In high school, I don't remember there being an "official" school wide policy, but most of my teachers had some kind of classroom policy and made us sign a paper at the beginning of the school year stating that they had gone over the policy with us and that we understood it. Some of them just gave you a 0 for that assignment, for others it was automatic failure of the class. I can't believe your school is telling you that you can't punish him for plagarism! Plagarism is both stealing (you are taking someone else's work) and lying (trying to pass the work off as your own)
Is there a rule in the handbook stating it? If not, he may not be able to get in trouble. I thought all schools had that rule. In my school, you got a 0 on a paper/test if you cheated/plagerized. Unless you were dating the teacher's son. (A girl got to keep her perfect 4.0 for this and beat me out for top rank bc I got a B in the same class.)