ACADEMIC POLICIES AND PROCEDURES ACADEMIC INTEGRITY POLICY Holy Cross College is committed to intellectual development and the pursuit of truth and knowledge. In that pursuit, all members of the community, students, faculty, staff, and administrators, remain committed to honesty in all personal and professional activity related to the mission of the institution. As a Catholic community, faculty, staff, and students have a moral and ethical responsibility to uphold the principle of unquestioned honesty and refrain from any activity or behavior that would suggest academic dishonesty and lack of personal integrity. The expectation of the Holy Cross College community is that students will be honest in their academic work and will encourage and support the honesty of others. As trust is the foundation of any effective community, students will also guard against any appearance of dishonesty in order to maintain and enhance the trust within the community. Each faculty member has the responsibility to refer to the College’s Academic Integrity Policy at the beginning of each semester in every course. Faculty will foster the honesty of their students by conducting each course in ways that discourage cheating or plagiarism. Instructors are required to investigate thoroughly any potential violations of the College’s Academic Integrity Policy in their classes. The Academic Integrity Policy and explanations of violations must be provided to students at the beginning of each semester. The following academic policy statement is to be included in every syllabus: Cheating includes, but is not limited to, copying another person’s answers or allowing someone to copy your work on assignments, quizzes, or tests, whether in paper or electronic format. Plagiarism is presenting another’s words or ideas as one’s own, either paraphrasing or directly quoting, without proper citation. Academic dishonesty, including plagiarism, is a serious academic offense. As with all of your courses at Holy Cross, you are expected in this class to uphold your responsibilities as stated in the Student Handbook (https://www.hcc-nd.edu/studenthandbook/): “to uphold the principle of unquestioned honesty, and refrain from any activity or behavior that would suggest academic dishonesty.” Failure to meet this responsibility could result in an academic sanction and a disciplinary conference or Conduct Board. Three fundamental principles should guide your choices: (1) all assignments you submit must be your own; (2) when you present, quote, or paraphrase anything that is the work or idea of others, including other students—be it from print sources (books, journal articles, etc.) or electronic sources (websites, social networks, chats, comment sections, forum discussions, blogs, etc.)—you must give full credit using accurate and complete citations; and (3) if you are uncertain about ground rules for a particular assignment, ask the professor for clarification. Use an established citation format as directed by the professor. To avoid plagiarism, you must always indicate when the ideas or words come from another source. If you quote verbatim, you must use the exact words and punctuation (including mistakes) of the original source, and the text must be marked as a quotation through the use of quotation marks or block quotation format. If you paraphrase another person’s ideas, you must still cite the original source. For paraphrasing, it is not enough to copy the original verbatim and then make some small changes to wording and arrangement; a paraphrase is restatement or rewording in your words. To facilitate a common understanding of what constitutes a violation of academic integrity, refer to the following categories. 1.
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When a student submits any work for academic credit, the student makes an implicit claim that the work is wholly his/her own, done without the assistance of any person or source not explicitly noted, and that the work has not previously been submitted for academic credit in any other area. Group projects are essential to the learning process. Students are free to study and work together on their assignments. The submission of group work implies a collaboration of ideas and shared responsibility for the production of written and oral materials. Therefore, the violations of academic integrity listed below hold for the group as well as individual group members. In the case of examinations (test, quizzes, etc.), the student also implicitly claims that he or she has obtained no prior unauthorized information about the examination, and that he or she will neither give nor obtain any assistance during the examination.
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