Friday, June 24, 2011

U of A follow-up

      Well - the U of A response to the plagiarism issue (see post below) earns a C.  Fairly prompt - the Dean resigns - BUT only as Dean.  He remains in faculty and, after a summer off, will resume teaching duties in the fall.  Financial and other "penalties" seem minimal.  One wonders, for the sake of balance, how many medical / dentistry students were penalized for plagiarism in the past year?  What was the nature of those penalities?  Is this a case of fairly harsh penalties on paper morphing into cautious wrist tapping when applied in individual cases.  Enforcing rules always takes courage (the courage to be seen as "not such a nice guy") but it is enforcement which has the most impact on culture. 
     I worked in a school once where one or two teachers parked in the few stalls designated for visitors, perhaps because they were close to the school entrance.  The response of administration was: general memos read over the PA system "all those parking in the visitors parking spots should refrain from doing so" to increasingly larger signs being posted "Visitor Parking Only".  The culprits kept parking while the innocent resented being berated for something they were not doing.  How much more effective it would have been for the principal to go to Larry and Mo (they were easily identified as the offending parkers) and say "Stop parking in the visitors or your cars will be towed" and then making sure that the next time they parked there - the tow trucks were called immediately.

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