Plagiarisms

Does anyone remember what led to the formation of the AHCPS?


The Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Standards [AHCPS] arose out of concerns expressed in the Faculty Senate that plagiarisms by a faculty member had been “addres­sed” in a manner that no senator was permitted to learn. Senators and other faculty al­lowed that it was so difficult to oversee this “addressing” that it was tempting for senators to overlook the whole matter. Despite claims that the University took faculty plagi­ar­ism seriously, senators wanted to know what “addressing” and “taking seriously” meant. To the best of my knowledge, no senator yet knows what apparatchiks and apologists meant.

The AHCPS did not address these questions, so let me do so here. One de­part­ment, two Power Committees, one Academic Vice President, and one President “ad­dres­sed” severe serial plagiarisms so assiduously and took faculty plagiarism so seriously that almost no one knew what, if anything, had been done. What more need we know or hear?

Thus, questions asked at senate on 14 November 2005 should answer themselves. The claim that instances of faculty plagiarism were “addressed” supplies no information be­yond the invi­ta­tion to stop asking embarrassing questions. To declare that the University takes faculty plagiarism seri­ously amounts to an account that itself obstructs accounta­bil­ity. Empty assurances supplant information. “Trust us” substitutes for justification. Thus is oversight defeated.

Before oversight could be evaded, some senators offered excuses for overlooking the whole matter in the senate. Perhaps the plagiarisms were few or minor, some naifs said. The plagiarisms were many and major, as multiple members of the senate might have attested if anyone present had cared enough to inquire sincerely. Even if the sets of plagiarisms had been a few tech­ni­cal mistakes or missteps, wouldn’t we hold our students responsible for such mistakes or missteps? Mightn’t a PhD be held to a higher standard than someone thirteen weeks removed from high school? Yet the first impulse of a few senators was to advance a cover story, any cover story. Perhaps they thought that the civil thing to do. Their evolution from apologists to apparatchiks will be interesting to observe.

About two years after the sets of plagiarisms had been discovered, the discoverer of the plagiarisms and his primary defender had been driven from the University of Puget Sound, yet the plagiarist was still on the faculty. Those facts should be enough to show the assurances to be meaningless and the communications to be counterfeit.

Did the AHCPS encounter multiple narratives about the sets of plagiarisms? When the besieged grievant told the AHCPS that he withdrew his grievance concerning the second set of plagiarisms –plagiarisms on a paper written with a student – after expressing reservations about the conduct of the Professional Standards Committee in other matters and pleading for someone to police acts of intimidation and reprisals to which he had been subjected, did the AHCPS discover some way to multiply narratives beyond the grievant’s own account?

The AHCPS has excused its failure to reach findings regarding the (mis)conduct of the Professional Standards Committee and assorted other faculty and administrators. The AHCPS has yet to explain away the absence of findings regarding what one member of the AHCPS has admitted to senators was the reason for the ad hoc committee’s creation. What an oversight!


Next – “Quibbles” – Nit-picking signals that nothing is substantially amiss.