A couple days ago, my school uploaded a lengthy document that summarized all the cases of student discipline and inappropriate activities that happened from 2016-2017. The document can be found here.
Reading about how students broke academic rules and their penalties was very interesting. Most of the disciplinary cases were related to plagiarism, unauthorized collaboration on assignments, and submission of “fraudulent documents in a petition”. The penalties ranged from a deduction of 5% from the final course grade to suspension for a term to even expulsion.
I feel that it is incredibly stupid to submit fraudulent documents. It is one of the few disciplinary cases that presented potential legal liabilities, contained undeniable proof of wrongdoing, and could really come back to haunt the perpetrators in the future. Plagiarism is also bad but if it’s done simply for finishing school assignments, as opposed to writing published articles, it doesn’t hold much legal liabilities. On that vein, unauthorized collaboration is almost a trivial problem because it is a concept that nobody cares — outside of lonely academics who think it’s their purpose to uphold idiotic rules. Collaboration is often encouraged in the workplace and it is ridiculous to punish someone for initiatively working with other students to complete tasks. It’s what happens in real life. “Unauthorized collaboration” is almost an oxymoron.
A student also committed admission fraud and was expelled. I’m not surprised that someone committed admission fraud, but am intrigued as to how did the University find out about it after the student was already enrolled. Did the student admit to it or did it slip out? Strange.
There were several interesting disciplinary cases:
- “The student posed as a fictitious co-op advisor who corresponded (both by email and apparently by telephone) with an employer indicating that the student was allowed to resign current matched job and take up a job with them for a 3 month co-op term”.
- Wow, this is intense and reminds me of the movie “Catch me if you can.” Ideas really do start here.
- “Student unethically rejected a job offer during co-op term”
- Based on my personal experiences of having been lied to, gaslight, and faced retaliation from CECA staff, I highly doubt the student did anything unethical. I bet CECA is just doing what they are good at: screwing students
- “This student was hired as a marker and student unethically marked assignments without reviewing the correctness, and gave 100% to each student.”
- According to the document, the student is in 3rd Undergrad, which leads me to suspect that the student was marking PD course assignments. Many students and I share the same opinion on PD courses: they are as useful as bullsh*t and the only reason the university mandates students to enrol in them is to claim that we’re part-time students during co-op and receive government funding.
- “Student offered sexual favours in exchange for a higher mark.”
- Ummm, no comments.
- “This student reneged on a matched co-op job in order to take a more desirable job”
- If the student didn’t sign an offer letter, which, based on the sentence’s wording, appears to be the case, then this is standard practice. After all, what’s wrong with taking a better job when you didn’t sign any contracts? It’s human nature to look out for our best interests.
- “This student sent University staff an email with profanities hidden in the message. Student thought it was funny and didn’t see an issue with the email.”
- Maybe the student was a fan of Scharzenegger? Check out the hidden message Scharzenegger wrote in his response to a lawmaker’s bill!
Overall, this was an entertaining read and I encourage you to check it out too. A list of past summaries dating back to 2009 is available at https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat/committees-and-councils/university-committee-student-appeals