My life is possibly ruined

[Xterminator]

Alright maybe some of you konw that i have a prof who dislikes me. Our entire program has had problems with this prof and we all hate him as much as he hates us. So this past semester we went to our program chair to complain. I guess this teacher found out and now is trying to get back at us.

 

To make a long story short. He is trying to nail me and 3 friends on plagarism. First of all it's a lab that we did last semester which is about 2 months ago. School has been done for 3 weeks. Marks were due last week. He did not say anything when he handed back the labs.

 

No i did not plagarize. I told him face to face that i worked on this lab with these people.

 

So he's taking this to the registrar's office. I dont konw the procedure but i do know the penaltry for plagarism. If i get expelled and lose 3 years of my life.....i really dont know what i will do. I've never hurt anyone in my life but i will seriously go crazy if we get expelled.

 

My buddy said that 1st time offence is a 0 on that assignment/lab. So i dont have to worry about expulsions i guess.... but still this could set me back another year if i fail this course now. All the lab marks for everyone were poor in that class.

Edited May 17, 2005 by Xterminator

[Rashad]

That's too bad, fortunatly for me I haven't had the pleasure of having a psycho for a professor yet...I'm sure you'll come out on top though. You did the right thing by going to the "program chair". Is there a person or group of higher power you can bring this issue up to such as a board or chancellor?

[Fatty]

If it's your work, gather all your evidence that you did the work. Make lists of who know you worked on it, including family and friends, etc.

 

PM mrX and ask him for some advice.

 

If you did the work, don't accept anything but the original grade that he handed to you. He already graded it....almost sounds like double jeopardy, so to speak. Then again, if you DID cheat, it won't matter that he already graded it. If he can prove it, he'll have to do so clearly.

[werD]

something like this happened at my college

 

the professor failed like 3/4 of a class because they went to the head of the department and complained that he was often late to class and extremely unorganized

 

this happened first semester....the students went to the dean of the department and some other people higher up and last i heard the professor was on probation and may possibly be fired

 

 

make sure you talk to everyone you can...someone like this should not be a teacher at all

 

Even go to the local newspapers with your story and they may even help you out...our campus newpaper did an article on it and it forced the adminstration to really look at this guy that was failing kids

[Unclean]

Just out of curiosity, do you know how your professor is trying to prove you and your friends plagiarized?

 

Generally speaking, it would be very difficult for a professor to forge a plagiarized document. To understand this, you'll have to know some of the ways people can identify a plagiarized paper. It's actually very similar to spotting an aim botter: by identifying inconsistencies. I worked at my college's writing center for 3 years, and this is how we could/would spot it:

 

1. inconsistencies from paper to paper. In other words, one paper is poorly written, and the next has beautiful prose and no errors

2. inability to define words used or explain concepts in the paper

3. similar phrasing, order, (since students are doing the same assignment, many will have similar answers. This makes #3 hard to prove)

4. references to non-existent parts -- e.g. "see fig. 1-C", and there IS no fig. 1-C. (rare, but it happens)

 

If I were to take a stab at it, your professor would have to re-create your lab and change wording/ideas/etc. He would then have to do the same for your peers. Anything else would make it difficult for him to make a case for plagiarism. If your college is anything like mine was, you'll have a chance to respond to the claim. That'll be your opportunity to make your professor squirm or look worse. Start with the motive -- why would I cheat when I'm getting a solid B in the class? Doesn't it seem suspicious that we filed a claim against the professor and he's now charging us with plagiarism? Perhaps he's pulling a red herring?

 

Bottom line: I know it seems dark right now, but your prof doesn't have much of a case. Wait it out rather than worrying about what might happen. After all, maybe he'll get you and you'll be expelled. Maybe he'll get hit by a falling airplane part. Maybe this post is getting too long. You get the idea.

[Xterminator]

Hey Unclean..thanks for the input.

 

This is the situation

 

We have a lab class. He says we can have 1 partner. In this case for this lab it was a bad week at school and nothing was working (which is always the case). So i asked him if we could all work on the lab together to acquire the waveforms. He said yes no problem.

 

As for the plagarism. Since we all acquired the same waveforms he is seeing that as plagarism. Every single person did their own lab report write up, with their own analysis of the waveforms and completely independent. So he's trying to nail us on these stupid waveforms.

 

I havn't heard of anything yet from school or my prof. He has to make contact with us and tell us about this, he can't just go about and do this. We have our plan of action, but we will not do anything until we have a writen accusation or whatever we're supposed to get from the school.

 

My other dilemna now is that his class was hard and majority of the class did very poorly because he taught the wrong stuff and didn't follow the curiculum. So us 4 (that are accused) and another guy went to complain about him and we got a summer course out of it. We thought that ok...if we pass the class we'll just audit the class and learn the material we didn't 1st time around. No...college says if u take the course u take it all and it counts as a mark. So if i passed it, i'm not gonna risk taking it so i can fail it. So i dont learn what i need.

 

Now this course starts next saturday. We still havn't gotten marks from school. I recieved an unofficial mark that wasn't finalized. But this plagarism claim could fail me, that's how close i am to the edge. 1st offence is a 0 on the report, but all our reports were marked very badly by him, not just our 4 reports but everyone in teh class. So this could fail our lab section, thus we fail the course.

 

ugh...i hate school

[appalachian_fox]

I had a friend who had a very similar thing happen to him just recently, lab section and everything, except the person who alleged that he plagiarized was a TA, not the section professor. His allegation actually came in a month before school ended, though, but very similar circumstances and it was an early lab. You may take heart to know that when it went in front of the student judiciary (or whatever the big panel is called at your school) it was thrown out very quickly and everyone was exonerated.

[gOOters]

yuck. some teachers are amazing. but some are wacky infantile kooks. generally its college profs.

[Xterminator]

I had a friend who had a very similar thing happen to him just recently, lab section and everything, except the person who alleged that he plagiarized was a TA, not the section professor.  His allegation actually came in a month before school ended, though, but very similar circumstances and it was an early lab.  You may take heart to know that when it went in front of the student judiciary (or whatever the big panel is called at your school) it was thrown out very quickly and everyone was exonerated.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

that's good to hear. See we have something going for us. One of the accused (my friend) she is on the student panel for the appeals committee at school. So everyone knows her well and they know she wouldn't do something like that.

 

I'm just worried cuz i havn't heard anything yet from the school. Neither has anyone else. Usually they're supposed to get back to us within 10 days of the appeal submission. Now we might have submitted it past the deadline (we dont know 4 sure) i got mine in the mail late so i dont know what' s gonna happen. But usually the committee informs you whether or not u get a hearing. So since we havn't heard anything we're gonna assume that "no news is good news"

[Xterminator]

update:

 

So i was informed by the appeals committee that this will not go on our transcript. So if i apply to another college/university or a job and they ask for a transcript, this wont show up. It's kind of like a slap on the wrist. It will be in my record and i still plan on fighting it cuz we're innocent.

 

It's more so important we clear this cuz my friend is on the appeals committee and this could get her kicked off and she doesn't want that. Ugh...i hate dumb teachers

[appalachian_fox]

Woohoo! That sounds pretty good! Hope there aren't serious repercussions in-schoool, but congrats that it doesn't go on the transcript!

[J. Dunlavy]

update:

 

So i was informed by the appeals committee that this will not go on our transcript. So if i apply to another college/university or a job and they ask for a transcript, this wont show up. It's kind of like a slap on the wrist. It will be in my record and i still plan on fighting it cuz we're innocent.

 

It's more so important we clear this cuz my friend is on the appeals committee and this could get her kicked off and she doesn't want that. Ugh...i hate dumb teachers

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Fight it. Don't let the idiocy of a simpleton cause you to take a step backwards. Let this be a future lesson, however, to keep your nose clean. You never know when someone can and will use past dirt to cause problems for you.

[Sir Shertown Pimp]

check the dates on this homes, X what was the verdict.

[Tek-Almighty]

It's plagiarism btw...

 

That is how I know you didn't plagiarize that from the dictionary...

 

heh...

 

 

I suggest you flaming dog poop bag his doorstep...

 

after that...it should get real nasty...