Plagiarism Awareness Contract
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Using someone else's ideas or phrasing and representing those ideas or
phrasing as our own, either on purpose or through carelessness, is a
serious offense known as plagiarism. Plagiarism is literary theft.
"Ideas or phrasing" includes written or spoken material, from whole
papers and paragraphs to sentences, or even phrases, but it also
includes statistics, lab results, art work, etc. "Someone else" can
mean a professional source, such as a published writer or critic in a
book, magazine, encyclopedia, or journal; an electronic resource such
as material we discover on the World Wide Web; another student at our
school or anywhere else; a paper-writing "service" (online or
otherwise) which offers to sell written papers for a fee; a tutor;
parent, sibling or other family member. Any time you use someone else's
work, you must explicitly give him or her credit using standard methods
of attribution, either in the body of your work or as a citation which
refers to a Works Cited page or bibliography.
At Agoura High School, students are expected to express their ideas in
their own words, using the composition skills they have been taught
over the years. Students are also, however, encouraged to research the
words and ideas of others. If students choose to use those words or
ideas in their own writings, they are expected to give credit (in the
form of parenthetical documentation and/or bibliographic citation) and
thereby avoid the act of plagiarizing. The temptation to plagiarize can
be significant, especially with increased access to technological
advances such as the internet and other computer-accessed sources of
information. The consequences for plagiarizing, however, are not worth
the risk.
At Agoura High School, a student caught plagiarizing or cheating in
some other way will participate in a parent/administrator conference
during which a letter will be placed in his/her cumulative file
indicating that a second incident of cheating in any course during the
following 365 days will result in a drop fail from the course in which
the second incident occurs. In addition, the plagiarized work or test
on which the student cheated will be assigned a grade of zero or fail.
Do not:
- Submit anything orally or in writing as representing your own
words or ideas, when, in fact, it does not
- Participate in the plagiarizing acts of others
- Lend your work to, or borrow work from, another student
Remember to:
- Provide formal credit for words or ideas taken from outside
sources, or any source that is not you
- Provide formal credit for individuals who contribute to your work
- Use quotation marks when using anotherМs exact words
- Always question yourself as to your literary ethics, and ask your
teacher if you are in doubt as to the validity of your work.
- Be proud of the work you have accomplished and the knowledge you
have gained, particularly that you have done it on your own
Whether or not a student intends to plagiarize will not be considered
as part of the plagiarism discipline process. Agoura students are
responsible to give appropriate credit to ideas that belong to others.