We recently acted for a student accused of plagiarism due to failure to quote appropriately from sources used in assessed course work. We assisted our client in preparing his statement of defence in relation to the allegations highlighting that any errors were inadvertent and unintentional and highlighting the impact of any penalty upon him given his previous good character and strong marks.
The Misconduct Panel’s decision appeared to apply a double punishment to our client; it sought to deduct marks from our client’s work, however the marker had already deducted marks before the allegation of plagiarism was even brought. We subsequently appealed the decision with the University accepting its error and reconvening a fresh Panel. The fresh Panel gave our client a lower sanction of just a formal warning. Given the fact that the work did contain plagiarism this was a positive outcome for our client as it represented the least severe of all sanctions available to the University and allowed him the chance to still get his degree.
