Posted on 10/12/2007 11:15:43 AM PDT by Froufrou
Southern Illinois University President Glenn Poshard has homework to do.
A committee of faculty leaders at SIU announced Thursday that the university's top official committed "inadvertent plagiarism'' in his doctoral dissertation, which he wrote as a student at SIU in 1984. The paper therefore needs to be corrected, but he will remain the university's top official and face no further repercussions.
The committee's recommendations were approved in a closed meeting Thursday of the university's board of trustees.
Poshard said he took "full responsibility'' for the mistakes and cried at one point during a news conference in which he read an apology to the university community.
The former Democratic gubernatorial nominee later said he feels "a sense of relief this is finally coming to a close. It has been difficult for my family and me. . . . This has been a blow to our name and our family, but more importantly to the university. That's what concerns me.''
That also concerns some of Poshard's critics, who said they were outraged by the decision.
"SIU has been deeply disgraced,'' said Robert Ware, a philosophy professor at the Edwardsville campus who along with 38 other faculty members supported a petition calling for an outside, independent review of the charges. "Damage was done to SIU today that will hurt us for years.''
University leaders repeatedly defended their decision not to refer the case to an outside panel, saying they had enough expertise on the committee.
The committee's report comes after allegations that Poshard plagiarized his dissertation on gifted children's education.
A committee of seven faculty leaders was appointed by the Carbondale chancellor -- who also works under Poshard -- and they met eight times over the past three weeks. They found nearly 40 instances of citation errors or other problems in the paper.
The committee found no specific style was required by the SIU Department of Higher Education, where he studied at the time. Instead, Poshard used an "informal style'' used by other graduate students then.
But there also were "many instances in the dissertation where the words of others are present in a continuous flow with student Poshard's own words, so that readers cannot distinguish between those sources,'' the report states. The instances of unquoted and uncited texts are "pervasive'' and "significant,'' it said.
In an interview with the committee, Poshard said he couldn't recall "hearing instruction on the meaning of plagiarism'' but simply thought it was intentionally stealing others' work. The committee found there was no definition of plagiarism in the graduate student handbook at the time.
Ware questioned relying on Poshard's word in this case, considering students Ware has caught plagiarizing almost always claim they did so inadvertently. Ware now wonders if he can hold those students to a higher standard than the president. If not, "We have told the entire country that we have no standards or abysmally low standards at SIU,'' he said.
But Poshard said it's simply a matter of being a more "humane university'' that seeks to be fair.
"We can't be a university that only decides things on the basis of our head,'' he said. "We also have a heart.''
“Poshard said he took “full responsibility’’ for the mistakes and cried at one point during a news conference ...”
This man’s got a real future in the Democrat (women, gays and lesbians, blacks, and unions, according to Gore’s campaign manager Donna Brazile) Party, hayna? Or no?
The standard applied to Democrats fraud.
Dittos.
Anybody who is ignorant of the meaning of word “plagarism” is not worthy of an advanced degree (or even an undergrad degree for that matter).
Two words:
Admiral Boorda
/s
Yeah, Boorda. Sad, sad, sad. But you’ll never find that kind of honor among civilians, especially not among journalists or academics.
It was dumb, that’s for sure. Whether it was anything more is uncertain.
That being said, while in Congress, Poshard wasn’t the worst of his party.
Glen Poshard is going to get the Martin Luther King scholastic achievement medal for this year.
ping
Plagiarize,
Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize...
Only be sure always to call it please, "research."
(Sarcasm tag not really necessary, is it?)
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