1. Do you think the University’s honor code is too harsh? Should the students have been given another chance or some other penalty?
I do think the university was too harsh on the students. The amount of punishment the students recieved for their actions was unjust, and did not match the petty crime. The professor claimed that his phrase, "who had been released from a concentration camp", should have been sited, but if students are expected to site every phrase their professor says than papers will begin to look more like works sited pages than the actual assignment.
The two students also agrued that they were never fully informed about what the difference between plagiarism and paraphrasing was, and so they were innocent to the actions. If this actually is the case (even though there's really no way to be sure), than it gives even more reason that the punishment from the school was too harsh. The instructors should properly explain what they consider plagiarism and how to site it at the beginning of the course.
Overall I think both the students and the school are at fault. The school should have made clear their policies on plagiarism and the students should have taken it upon themselves to find out.
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I agree that if so many things need to be cited than the page will look like a works cited page. i have read essays that exemplify this and they are much more confusing to read than other esssays that cite only what is truly neccessary. I think that although the students stated they did not understand the whole plagiarism thing it is their responsibilty to figure it out.
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