Edina High School Academic Dishonesty Policy

Edina High School students are held to the same high standards in acknowledging the sources they use in their learning as men and women in higher education and the workplace. Understanding the appropriate use of sources and the customary manner of acknowledging these sources is essential to the life long success of each student.

The following information should help students determine the level of ethical scholarship expected at Edina High School.

The Rights, Opportunities, and Responsibilities for Student Management handbook states the secondary school policy:

"Scholastic dishonesty which includes, but is not limited to, cheating on school assignments or tests, plagiarism or collusion is prohibited. Academic consequences may also be assigned."

First offence: disciplinary action assigned by the building administration
Second offence: 1-3 day suspension
Third offence: 3-day suspension (9)

According to the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, academic dishonesty is "any act that violates the rights of another student in academic work, or that involves misrepresentation of a student's own work. Scholastic dishonesty includes but is not limited to cheating on assignments and examinations. Examples of academic dishonesty include talking during testing time, forging another's name, destroying or hiding computer files, or allowing a student to copy your work.

Plagiarism is the act of using another person's ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source. Alexander Lindey defines it as "the false assumption of authorship: the wrongful act of taking the product of another person's mind and presenting it as one's own." In short, to plagiarize is to give the impression that you have written or thought something that you have in fact borrowed from someone else" (MLA Handbook). Examples of plagiarism include copying or paraphrasing from a critical source such as Cliff's Notes or Twentieth Century Literary Criticism without citing the source, turning in someone else's homework as one's own or putting one's name on a group project in which you did not participate.

The short answer: Honor the sources that helped you construct your ideas along the way by acknowledging them in your work.

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