What exactly did she plagiarize and where? Politics doesn't influence the severity of plagiarism.
When my peers are found responsible for multiple instances of inadequate citation, they are often suspended for an academic year.
It would also help if the author or someone could give examples of specific instances and their punishments including this one (with the student anonymous and assignment vague enough that it's not identifying).
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Accidental plagiarism is real plagiarism, but in practice, not a big deal. Even a few instances like "two sentences from the acknowledgement section of her dissertation", over a 100+ page dissertation and 11 journal entries, seem OK to me. I'm in academia, still I probably don't know very much, but my understanding is that individual violations like this often end up with lost points, not even a 0 on the assignment. The author mentions that repeat violations carry harsher penalties, but doesn't mention that the next violation is usually made after the student has been cited for the previous one.
On the other hand, just because someone went out of their way to hunt down an instance of plagiarism, doesn't mean it should be downplayed. If she ever intentionally plagiarized, then I agree with the author. Or even if she only accidentally plagiarized, but it was several egregious instances like paragraphs copied verbatim, I'm also inclined to agree (then she's not malicious, but incompetent).
Comments
What exactly did she plagiarize and where? Politics doesn't influence the severity of plagiarism.
It would also help if the author or someone could give examples of specific instances and their punishments including this one (with the student anonymous and assignment vague enough that it's not identifying).
---
Accidental plagiarism is real plagiarism, but in practice, not a big deal. Even a few instances like "two sentences from the acknowledgement section of her dissertation", over a 100+ page dissertation and 11 journal entries, seem OK to me. I'm in academia, still I probably don't know very much, but my understanding is that individual violations like this often end up with lost points, not even a 0 on the assignment. The author mentions that repeat violations carry harsher penalties, but doesn't mention that the next violation is usually made after the student has been cited for the previous one.
On the other hand, just because someone went out of their way to hunt down an instance of plagiarism, doesn't mean it should be downplayed. If she ever intentionally plagiarized, then I agree with the author. Or even if she only accidentally plagiarized, but it was several egregious instances like paragraphs copied verbatim, I'm also inclined to agree (then she's not malicious, but incompetent).