From the 2024-2025 Course Catalog, page 42-43:
Intellectual Honesty and Plagiarism
Bethel College believes intellectual honesty is a virtue central to the life of an academic community. All members of the Bethel community are held accountable for upholding that virtue. Academic misconduct, including cheating or plagiarism, will not be tolerated. An instructor may, with written notice to the student, treat as unsatisfactory any student work that is a product of academic misconduct. An instructor may impose sanctions ranging from failure on the assignment or test to failure in the course. All cases of plagiarism will be reported via form/email to the Vice President for Academic Affairs, the Vice President for Student Life, and the student’s advisor by the instructor. The Vice President for Student Life will visit with the student following the first offense. The Vice President for Academic Affairs will visit with the student on any following offense.
Plagiarism and Academic Misconduct
Plagiarism shall mean representing the words, creative work, or ideas of another person/AI system as one’s own without providing proper documentation of source. Examples include, but are not limited to:
- copying information word for word from a source without using quotation marks and giving proper acknowledgement by way of footnote, endnote, or in-text citation;
- representing the words, ideas, or data of another person/AI system as one’s own without providing proper attribution to the author through quotation, reference, in-text citation, or footnote;
- producing, without proper attribution, any form of work originated by another person/AI system such as a musical phrase, a proof, a speech, an image, experimental data, laboratory report, graphic design, or computer code, unless prior permission has been given by the professor;
- paraphrasing, without sufficient acknowledgment, ideas taken from another person/AI system that the reader might reasonably mistake as the author’s;
- and borrowing various words, ideas, phrases, or data from original sources and blending them with one’s own without acknowledging the sources.
Academic misconduct includes but is not limited to:
- unauthorized notes or aids;
- unauthorized collaboration with another person on coursework;
- unauthorized assistance on a take home examination;
- cheating on tests/exams;
- completing coursework assigned to another student;
- intention to obtain, or knowingly obtaining tests or other academic material belonging to a member of the College without permission;
- submitting research and assignments prepared by others (e.g. purchasing the services of a commercial term paper company or from the internet);
- and fabricating or falsifying data, research procedures, or data analysis.
