She said, he said, but he has proof

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That sounds like a bad assignment and he should know to include works cited if he’s essentially using quotes regardless of rubric. However, the teacher sounds like she has no understanding of what plagiarism is if she thinks it can be identified by a subpar checker and then fixed in 10 minutes. If it was accurately picking up plagiarism the papers should be rewritten, not reworded.

He used quotes when given that final 20 minutes. Rubric didn't require works cited (though he does this for many assignments). What he did was state a policy, and include, "In accordance with Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990"

Rubric may not have required works cited, but if you cite someone else's work (even the American Disabilities Act), you need to include a works cited. If you continue to make excuses for him, as others have pointed out, he will figure it out the hard way in college.

Hmm... if this is really the case, then I would be hard-pressed to find a violation. If you haven't been given a particular style, a list of references may not be necessary. An inline citation, like the aforementioned, is probably sufficient. Most government documents or regulations do not have a singular authorship. However, if you do copy verbatim from the document, the quoted material must be surrounded by "'s. Even though the document is in the public domain, this is still done to prevent others from assuming you are the author of the phrase.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a dumb assignment to use a plagarism check for.
I’m a lawyer that writes these policies for companies. We all basically take the standards model language from internet sources (some of which he may have used such as SHrM, others of which would not be easily accessible to a non lawyer) and then edit for our particular client’s needs. You can’t ask someone to write a form policy and then ding them because their form policy follows the form.
This is a ridiculous application of plagiarism—you would not want a policy where people put things in their own words. The whole point of a policy is to use certain standard accepted terms so there is no later dispute about meaning.

Agree with this. It seems like using language from legal and accepted guidelines is kind of the point when a business writes policies to comply with those laws. Wouldn't written policies that hew closely to legal standards be the best way for a business to avoid liability?

Furthermore, if there is a dispute between teacher and student about plagiarism, then the teacher needs to read and assess the assignment herself, not rely on some computer program as the infallible last word.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a dumb assignment to use a plagarism check for.
I’m a lawyer that writes these policies for companies. We all basically take the standards model language from internet sources (some of which he may have used such as SHrM, others of which would not be easily accessible to a non lawyer) and then edit for our particular client’s needs. You can’t ask someone to write a form policy and then ding them because their form policy follows the form.
This is a ridiculous application of plagiarism—you would not want a policy where people put things in their own words. The whole point of a policy is to use certain standard accepted terms so there is no later dispute about meaning.

+1

[Anonymous]

Lawyer again. This just isn’t plagiarism in the usual sense. No lawyer or HR rep would cite a source when writing a policy. It isn’t done anymore than it’s done in form contracts. It’s pointless and counter-productive to come up with your own language for an HR policy. It’s not like a speech or research paper where originality is part of the assignment. This is just a weird and meaningless place to apply plagiarism standards.
It may however be a violation of the expectation for the assignment, if part of the goal is to ensure the student is using reputable sources for model policies, rather than a crazy random person’s blog. That I think would be reasonable for a student assignment. But it’s not a plagiarism issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lawyer again. This just isn’t plagiarism in the usual sense. No lawyer or HR rep would cite a source when writing a policy. It isn’t done anymore than it’s done in form contracts. It’s pointless and counter-productive to come up with your own language for an HR policy. It’s not like a speech or research paper where originality is part of the assignment. This is just a weird and meaningless place to apply plagiarism standards.
It may however be a violation of the expectation for the assignment, if part of the goal is to ensure the student is using reputable sources for model policies, rather than a crazy random person’s blog. That I think would be reasonable for a student assignment. But it’s not a plagiarism issue.

This whole assignment doesn't make sense, because what educational value is there in having a high school senior writing an employee handbook solely for the purpose of generating a legally adequate HR handbook? My guess is that the point of this assignment wasn't to find a bunch of sample text from SHRM or something, it was to think about the kinds of policies you might want/need for a particular type of business, what the pros and cons are of different types of policies on particular issues, and come up with more of a plan for an HR handbook based on students' learning about why business adopt different types of policies. If OP's kid came across as doing the former rather than the latter, that may be part of why his explanations/excuses are making things worse rather than better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That does not sound like a respectful dialogue, honestly, especially the “must be an idiot” and “expect to rewrite laws” stuff. He needs to apologize and accept the results.

EXACTLY. He is very lucky she hasn't taken it to her department head and the principal. There is no way that any 17 year old should be using that type of talk with a teacher. Wow.

[Anonymous]

OP: I’m still having a very hard time understanding what the alleged violation was. Did he copy an existing company’s sexual harassment policy word-for-word or did he copy the Civil Rights Act or state law word-for-word but without saying it was the law explicitly? The former is plagiarism as we normally think of it (albeit extremely low level plagiarism that I could see a student not understanding was plagiarism as long as they didn’t take all or most of their policies from one or two companies). The latter is not plagiarism, it just isn’t. It may be sloppy and not great high school work product, but it’s not academically dishonest especially if the rubric didn’t require sourcing (after all, very few company’s actual handbooks would cite all sources — meaning laws, court opinions, etc — the way that an academic text would). Saying that a company’s sexual harassment policies should mirror the law is not plagiarism. That’s idiotic. As the lawyer noted upthread, changing the wording a bit could actually take you out of compliance with the law. To me, it sounds like he’s not being frank about — or maybe doesn’t realize — how badly their zoom meeting went. That’s what the teacher is mad about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP: I’m still having a very hard time understanding what the alleged violation was. Did he copy an existing company’s sexual harassment policy word-for-word or did he copy the Civil Rights Act or state law word-for-word but without saying it was the law explicitly? The former is plagiarism as we normally think of it (albeit extremely low level plagiarism that I could see a student not understanding was plagiarism as long as they didn’t take all or most of their policies from one or two companies). The latter is not plagiarism, it just isn’t. It may be sloppy and not great high school work product, but it’s not academically dishonest especially if the rubric didn’t require sourcing (after all, very few company’s actual handbooks would cite all sources — meaning laws, court opinions, etc — the way that an academic text would). Saying that a company’s sexual harassment policies should mirror the law is not plagiarism. That’s idiotic. As the lawyer noted upthread, changing the wording a bit could actually take you out of compliance with the law. To me, it sounds like he’s not being frank about — or maybe doesn’t realize — how badly their zoom meeting went. That’s what the teacher is mad about.

I am confused as well. I’m not sure what happened. I am a lawyer as well and I find this whole thing weird.

If it was just about a grade, I’d be inclined to just drop it. But the fact that he is being accused of plagiarism is alarming to me. That could have consequences. And it’s unclear to me whether he truly deserves that accusation. I think that he should write a 1 to 3 page summary of what happened and attach any relevant evidence and explaining how he does not think that he should have anything about plagiarism on his record from this or be penalized in terms of a scholarship or anything. Let the grade part drop. That’s not as important. He needs to do this in a way that is respectful to the teacher so that the teacher can potentially save face rather than digging in further. I’m not sure how to accomplish that tone.

But this is important enough to fight back. It’s not just about a grade. He should sit down on his computer right now and start drafting this and you and your husband should review it.

[Anonymous]

16:18 - Policy handbook. 10 policies, index, one page for each policy with header 1. Sexual harassment, quid pro quo, rights of accuser/accused and lots of other legal jargon.

In this example here's what was flagged: quid pro quo, sexual harassment, and much more.

[Anonymous]

Teacher here. Sounds like a bad assignment with unclear expectations. There are so many ways the teacher could have designed the assignment to avoid this outcome. Some people just do not know how to simplify. I admit to being confused by some details of your post but bottom line the assignment sounds weak and ripe for this kind of confusion.

[Anonymous]

Is there any way someone can rewrite the telling of the story while a) using both subjects and verbs in all the sentences, b) leaving out the irrelevant asides (such as "double jeopardy," which does not fit the setting), and c) cutting out the chaff?

If someone does, I will be your fervent admirer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is there any way someone can rewrite the telling of the story while a) using both subjects and verbs in all the sentences, b) leaving out the irrelevant asides (such as "double jeopardy," which does not fit the setting), and c) cutting out the chaff?

If someone does, I will be your fervent admirer.

Kid cheated, got caught, made up a bullshit story to excuse his cheating and convince his mom that the teacher was to blame.

[Anonymous]

Ah, thanks. I fervently admire you!

[Anonymous]

I'm really confused. Are they accusing him of plagiarizing the phrase "sexual harassment"? Or is there more?

What is the longest portion of text that was allegedly plagiarized?

[Anonymous]

Or, are they accusing him of plagiarizing the topics of the handbook? As in, the students were supposed to come up with 10 policies but your son just used the same 10 policies as some company?