Former North Carolina defensive end Michael McAdoo’s lawsuit against UNC and the NCAA has brought to light the issue of plagiarism and how it is defined and monitored by the University and other institutions.
The paper on which McAdoo was found to have received impermissible academic assistance also appeared to have several plagiarized sections.
But in October, McAdoo was found guilty by the UNC Honor Court of only one count of academic fraud — having his citations formatted by former tutor Jennifer Wiley.
At the end of the NCAA appeals teleconference in December, McAdoo stated he was not aware that he had done anything wrong in receiving help on his paper in a Swahili class.
“I would like to clarify one thing,” he said. “I wrote the entire paper and found all my sources and identified them. The tutor helped me with formatting because I thought that was OK. I did not intentionally seek out impermissible assistance.”
According to the Instrument of Student Judicial Governance, “academic dishonesty” is comprised of plagiarism, misrepresentation of data, unauthorized assistance, cheating and falsifying information or documents.
But NCAA bylaws define academic misconduct only as “knowing involvement in arranging for fraudulent academic credit.”
Deborah Gerhardt, a professor in the School of Law, said that this discrepancy in definitions is common with cases of plagiarism.
“Plagiarism is not always defined by the same standards. Schools define it differently and apply their own penalties to it.
