Academic Integrity

Plagiarism is deliberately passing off someone else’s words, ideas or work as your own while not acknowledging where they really came from. In other words, it’s cheating. And cheating is unacceptable at DCIS. It violates several of our core values and contributes to a culture of apathy and mistrust.  

Students who willingly share their work to be copied are as guilty of plagiarism as the students who copy others’ work. Other examples of cheating are:

• Changing the answers on an exam for regrade.
• Misrepresenting a family or personal situation to get an extension.
• Using prohibited resources during a test or other academic work including notes, books, calculators, phones, photos, computers, websites, tweets, social media or any other aids during a quiz or exam when not allowed by the instructor.
• Forging a parent’s or faculty member’s signature on a permission form.
• Falsifying data or claiming to have done research/work you did not do.
•  Assisting another student in doing any of the above.

Here are the consequences:

First offense: The student will fail the assignment while forfeiting the chance to make up the points and must attend a conference with the teacher that will underscore the severity of the offense. Following that conference, the teacher will call the parents/guardians, and the student will serve two days of lunch detention.

Second offense: The student will fail the assignment while forfeiting the chance to make up the points and must attend a conference with the parents, the teacher and administrators. In addition, every coach or club leader will be notified, and the student will serve a week of lunch detention.

Third offense: The student will fail the assignment while forfeiting the chance to make up the points and must attend a second conference with parents and DCIS personnel. Coaches and club leaders will be notified, and the student must complete an online ethics course during lunch detention (which will continue until the course is completed).

All incidents will be documented in Infinite Campus. If a clear pattern of academic dishonesty emerges, consequences will continue to escalate and may include failing a course, not graduating on time or not graduating at all.

Students who believe they have been unfairly accused of cheating can request a meeting with their teacher and an administrator to make their case and find a resolution.

Students can maintain academic integrity by following these steps:

• Ensure that all ideas, justifications and words/computations that they turn in are their own.
• Refrain from copying/pasting into their work ANY words from a website, another application or any other source without citation.
• Research plagiarism to better understand it; some helpful websites include Defining Plagiarism and Ten Tips on How to Avoid Plagiarism.
• Properly cite/reference others’ words and/or ideas that they use.
• Accept responsibility for not finishing an assignment on time, and tell the truth. 
• Improve their time management skills — stop procrastinating!
• Ask their teacher questions if they’re unsure about any of the foregoing.