Academic Honesty
College students are expected to do all academic work with integrity. This means that they should practice academic honesty without exception. Greenville University takes this so seriously, we ask all incoming students to sign a statement guaranteeing that they understand the notion of academic integrity and will commit to the ethical creation and development of their work.
All forms of academic dishonesty, which include cheating and plagiarism, are inappropriate on our campus. GU also forbids the unethical use of generative artificial intelligence (AI), such as ChatGPT. Students are responsible for understanding the instructor’s course AI policy. If the instructor has not included a course-specific AI policy after this section of the syllabus, then the university’s default is that AI use is not permitted.
Students cheat and/or plagiarize when they:
- Give or receive aid from another student or other person during a test, quiz, or homework assignment when they were told to work alone.
- Copy all or part of another student's work-an exam, worksheet, homework assignment, essay, speech, musical composition, web production, etc.-and submit it as their own work.
- Copy all or part of any published or copyrighted source such as a book, periodical article, or musical composition and submit it as their own work.
- "Cut and paste" information from a digital source and submit it as their own work.
- Steal ideas or conceptual frameworks from another source and submit them as their own without giving proper credit to the source.
- Submit other people's work as their own (e.g. a roommate's term paper or one purchased over the Internet).
- Ask someone else to complete a writing project for them and revise and edit the work in such a way that they are not really the one responsible for the final document.
- Recycle previous work, even it is your own work, is known as 'self-plagiarism.'
- Unautorized use of ChatGPT (or other AI tools) on assignments or other academic work.
This list is not exhaustive but should give a clear idea of what constitutes academic dishonesty. In general terms, academic dishonesty occurs when people knowingly or unknowingly take credit for words or ideas that are not their own in work that is produced for a class, presentation, publication, or other public domain. All forms of cheating and plagiarism involve intellectual theft.
At GU, academic dishonesty has severe consequences. If instructors discover any instance of cheating or plagiarism, they are well within their rights to assign a failing grade for that assignment or for the course. Furthermore, they must report the student to the department chair and the Office of Academic Affairs. If a second instance of academic dishonesty occurs, the student will receive a failing grade for the course, and the case will be forwarded to the Chief Academic Officer for review and possible further disciplinary action. If cheating or plagiarism is discovered after grades have been posted, it is within the discretion of the instructor to change the final grade. A student may be expelled from the institution for repeated or extreme violations of academic integrity. Appeals can be handled through the normal judicial process. To stay on the path of integrity, make sure you understand the definition of academic dishonesty. Visit our resources page at
www.greenville.edu/writingcenter.