Academic Dishonesty
Any case of academic dishonesty, such as plagiarism or cheating, should be referred to the Yale College Executive Committee through the secretary of that committee, Dean Jill Cutler, 110 SSS, 432-2914. Yale College policy requires that any allegation of academic dishonesty be resolved, for the sake of equity and uniformity, through the Executive Committee and not by private arrangement. If an instructor discovers a case of plagiarism or cheating and reports it to you or seeks your counsel about it, you should advise the instructor to get in touch immediately with the secretary of the Yale College Executive Committee. The secretary will advise the instructor how to bring the matter before the Executive Committee. The disciplinary procedures of the committee require that the instructor forward a formal charge of academic dishonesty to the committee, accompanied by the materials that describe and support it. One of the reasons an instructor might be reluctant to forward a case of plagiarism or cheating to the committee is the well-known fact that the penalty in Yale College for academic dishonesty is required withdrawal for a period of a year. It should therefore be emphasized that while a year's suspension is the ordinary penalty, the committee always takes into account the seriousness of the offense and the student's personal and academic situation, and that the ordinary penalty is not the inevitable one. A first offense may, in extenuating circumstances, result in probation, and sometimes the committee suspends a student for only one term. You should therefore urge instructors to trust to the committee's judgment and common sense. And in any event, the faculty has designated the Executive Committee as the agency to review cases of academic dishonesty, and other means of dealing with them should be energetically discouraged. The DUS or an instructor should never hesitate to seek advice on this matter from a student's college dean or from the secretary or chair of the Executive Committee.
