Let’s begin with a framing question: What is the point of an “academic integrity” policy in higher education?
The core notion underpinning to concept of academic integrity is intellectual integrity, which minimally involves not passing other people’s intellectual work off as one’s own. It follows from this that, in intellectual work, we have an obligation to attribute credit to the author/creator of any intellectual work we use in our own work.
It may be the case that, in selective admission institutions, professors can reasonably expect students to understand and apply this concept. In my experience at a highly selective liberal arts university, that is not necessarily the case in practice, and so arguing from selective admission institutions to community colleges may sound plausible in theory, but it’s unlikely to shed light on academic integrity policies in community colleges.
In fact, in community colleges, we have an even greater challenge. We are not a selective admission institution precisely because our mission is to serve students who otherwise might not have access to higher education. This is particularly true for students who come from backgrounds and circumstances in which they’ve experienced a history of lack of access. Consequently, many of our students also lack the sorts of experiences in primary and secondary school that would adequately prepare them for college — including the development of habits and skills of intellectual integrity, like how to properly document the work of others.
For this reason, we have a specific obligation to ensure that our students are afforded opportunities for developing these habits and skills. This is the very reason we offer courses in “college readiness”: In community colleges, we do not teach college students; we make college students.
In our work as community college professors, we tread a fine line between this responsibility to make college students and our professional obligation to hold students accountable for violations of academic integrity, and this line is especially fine in gateway courses. Consistent with our mission and our aspiration to equip students for higher education, our presumption with students around academic integrity should be the same as our presumption around our disciplines: Our students are here to learn the skills associated with the subjectmatters and methods of our disciplines. Similarly , our students are here to learn the skills and habits of intellectual integrity. Just as an excessively rigid application of the standards of our disciplines to developing students deprives them of opportunities for formative experiences within our disciplines, a rigid concept of academic integrity deprives students of this opportunity to become college students.
The typical argument against this presumption is a form of Loki’s Wager: Since we cannot specify in advance precisely when a student’s work is the result of inexperience or ignorance and which is willful violation means we apply the standards equally to every student. The fallacious nature of this argument is revealed when we apply it to our own disciplines: The fact that a freshman cannot write a philosophy essay that meets the standards of the discipline is not evidence of willful disregard of the methods and content of philosophy.
Dealing with instances of academic dishonesty requires professional judgment, sensitivity to our students, and awareness of our mission as an open admission institution. Clear-cut cases are relatively easy to parse: It’s hard to see cheating on an in-class exam as a result of naïveté. It’s less hard to see plagiarism in a first essay as lack of preparation for college. The student who plagiarizes in an assignment may need coaching; the student who repeatedly plagiarizes — after the opportunity to acquire the needed skills and habits of mind — is a different issue.
Academic dishonesty does not occur in a vacuum: It happens to people, and where people are involved, there are nuances. One of my aims in writing this reflection on intellectual integrity is to encourage departments to engage these nuances head-on, and to formulate appropriate guidance for your own disciplines and courses. I would not expect the same guidelines for a gateway course in philosophy as for a course for philosophy majors, nor would I expect that same guidelines in a gateway mathematics course as one would find in comp 1 — but I would expect the same commitment to making college students. That commitment safeguards us against passing academic hazing off as “rigor.”
In LAHC, we teach gateway courses that offer students foundational college skills; again, we make college students. Our approach to academic integrity should be consistent with that goal. If a formal process resulting in an academic penalty is warranted, we follow the Academic Integrity Process documented in the Student Rights and Responsibilities. And in gateway courses, we better serve our mission by viewing that as a last resort rather than a first response.
