Two Students Kicked off Semester at Sea for Plagiarism

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There is something missing in this story. Those three phrases would not cause a professor to say "I think this is plagiarized" and go searching the internet. I would love to hear the whole story from both parties. I'm also an SAS alum and I know they don't just go kicking people off left and right. It took A LOT to get kicked off my voyage, and students were for various reasons. It's a lot of money and time that these students are losing for ISE to be acting so quickly and irrationally.

SAS alum of WA 8:04PM January 10, 2009

If only there were an organization like Amnesty International to protest the discriminatory actions of school or collegiate university administrations.

j. carter of MO 1:41AM January 10, 2009

Assuming the only plagiarized material is the three sentences quoted,
"when the Germans attacked the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa"; "German-speaking minority outside of Germany"; and "who had just been released from a concentration camp."
then there should not have even been a question of whether to cite or not. These are stock phrases that anyone writing on the subject of the Holocaust, WWII, or similar subject could be reasonably expected to construct. They are also very simple phrases that would sound awkward and probably uncollegiate (sp? word?) if
worded differently. None of these are opinions, they are either fact or a statement of fact. While this case became news because the girl got expelled, the real news here is how a college professor could find a problem with these sentences.
An even more pronounced example would be if "Vice-President Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral college" was charged to be plagiarism because someone else had written it once. This case truly is a farce and a stain on UVA's otherwise professional academic record.
I have serious concerns for the University of Virginia's English department if they sanction not only extreme cases like expulsion but also consider "german-speaking minority outside of Germany" to be plagiarism.
TO UVA if you are reading.... get your ducks in a row in regards to what is done in your name on Semester at Sea. I would also advise you to publicly apologize to the girl expelled and swallow your pride. You messed up, deal with it.

Dave of DC 1:40AM December 13, 2008

Given what I have read so far about this situation, I find it bizarre that UVA could get away with this expulsion. If I were a student on this program I would be scared to write a paper on any topic for fear that those words would have been put together in order ever before in the history of writing. Does anyone know if the family took action and if so, what the actual outcome has been?

of 4:16PM November 04, 2008

I am trying to submit this comment anonymously so that my son doesn't face any retribution.
I understand the need for an honor code. All schools (from middle school on up) should have one and elementary schools should teach the students how wrong it is to cheat and what honor actually is.
It almost sounds as if there is more to this than we are reading. But, I will give Allison the benefit of the doubt, especially since she has gone public with such an embarrassing situation.
My concern is the inadvertent omission of citing that may occur. Can a student be expelled for making a simple mistake without being given the chance to correct it? That is very scary and Draconian to me. Is that what happened here? Did these students miss citing their source?
If Allison's dad is correct in that citing wasn't required or requested for the paper that was done, then there is no violation. The terms that were used are fairly common and could have been Allison's actual words. Where is the evidence that she intentionally used these quotes from Wikipedia?
I would press ISE, SAS and the University of Virginia for their complete records regarding the event and seek counsel for legal advice and possible action.

I'd prefer to remain anonymous to avoid retribution of AL 4:05PM September 04, 2008

To Allison and Allison's father:
As a U.Va. graduate (1974), I am outraged by this injustice, which needs to be set right by officials at the University. I have written the Dean of Students a detailed email to express my concern. I find it absurd that a minor dispute over attribution in a paper of this sort is being turned into an Honor Code issue in the first place. Most of the historians, writers, and journalists in the country would be out of business if the rule applied in this case were applied mercilessly to their own published work.
If some satisfactory explanation for this apparent travesty is not offered quickly by the University, I will not be recommending U.Va. to any prospective students. I urge Allison's dad to send his letter to the Cavalier Daily, the student newspaper. If they will not publish it, I urge him to photocopy a few thousand copies, go down to Charlottesville, and hand them out on the lawn in front of Mr. Jefferson's statue. Students need to know what the Honor Code has become: a cruel and arbitrary trap.
David Burns

David Burns of VA 11:51PM August 20, 2008

Students can avoid the single sanction by coming forward and admitting violations of the code as long as it is done in good faith and before they have knowledge of being under suspicion.
There is no honor code for drinking, carousing or skinny-dipping.
The standards are high and the lessons are stern. But if these students were from UVa they would be facing permanebt expulsion.

Andy of VA 2:46PM August 18, 2008

First, I want to disclose that I am Allison's father.
This was not a research paper. Students were told that they didn't even need citation pages. The paper was meant to be the student's opinion and it was.
The movie was a subtitled movie shown on a loop so students who sat down in front of a screen might be seeing it in the middle, at the end, etc. It was hard to track the events chronologically.
Plagiarism means taking someone's ideas, opinions, or meaningful units of language without attribution. Ms. Routman did not use Wikipedia's ideas or opinions, and there is not a single Wikipedia sentence that appears in her paper. These are short, factual sentence fragments.
"Brief, factual phrases do not belong in quotation marks, and
they do not require attribution, because they are merely building blocks of language that cannot be owned by anyone. Also, when one is reading written material in work on one's own manuscript, it is a banal waste of time to make minor modifications in phrases that fit both documents. The
way to refer to someone who had just been released from a concentration camp is to identify them as someone "who had just been released from a concentration camp." What would the university suggest a student do: Find a way to change a word or two in the above phrase? That is pointless.
Currently, universities are understandably terrified of plagiarism because one can purchase complete term papers on the Internet. This is a real danger to the academic enterprise; fortunately, search engines have been developed to help professors deal with this danger. What we have here is an example of mindless, grossly illogical overkill that will
seriously injure some innocent students while doing nothing to stop the serious malfeasance." Jeremy Shapiro.
Finally, isn't it possible that a reasonable person wouldn't know that such limited factual statements might be problematic?
Even if a student "should have known" the UVA Honor Code specifically requires that act has to be shown to be non trivial BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT. Isn't use of the three factual sentence fragments trivial?
Remember, at least 5 students admitted to intentionally cheating and they are still on the ship. Why target a student who innocently included factual sentence fragments?
If you're going to move the UVA Honor Code to the ship, then it should be the real UVA Honor Code, with student advisors, student juries, student defenders, etc.
The fault here lies with UVA for not using judgment and maturity in determining what was, and in this case, was not an intentional, non trivial act.
If you want to expel cheaters, then pick on those students who really intend to cheat.

Brent of MN 9:41PM August 15, 2008

My son is on that cruise and he was upset with the situation. He will never recommend someone to go on it. This wasn't the only thing that had happened. Some other kids got in trouble for drinking and fell into the water in Russia and they only got a slap on the hand. To me that was a lot worse than what this girl did and a lot more dangerous to be so drunk in another country. Who knows what could of happened to them. I hope her parents fight it all the way.

of CA 9:23PM August 15, 2008

The UVA honor code requires that students not lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate those that do. We live in a society where whistle blowers are dimly viewed, and young people in particular are loathe to "rat" on anyone. This is the likely reason the student run process on the UVA campus seems to rarely find students guilty of honor code violations - the single sanction of explusion is a "death penalty" that is viewed as too severe. The variation of the process on Semester at Sea had faculty finding the students guilty and casting them away.
It is ironic, however, that UVA students themselves routinely vote to keep the their code in place despite the disagreement of its validity that exists among UVA's own faculty and administration. Students say that it means something special to be a graduate of UVA and its honor code. Does it really?? Are we to believe that no UVA student has ever feigned illness to miss a class, or even miss an exam do the mythical illness or death of a distant relative? The zero tolerance policy would require expulsion for such a crime. One could think of many white lies or cutting of corners (i.e. cheating, not to mention more serious infractions, that undoubtedly occur even on the hallowed Grounds of UVA. Could Mr. Jefferson himself have stood the test of this code of honor?
The student's involved needed to learn a lesson about something they perhaps should have already known. It is difficult to accept that the punishment they received was just.

of VA 5:50PM August 14, 2008