Advice & advocacy

Academic and General Misconduct

Monash University Statutes govern cases concerning academic and/or general misconduct. Matters of academic or general misconduct are governed by Discipline Statute 4.1.

• 'Academic misconduct' means “cheating or assisting to cheat, whether in an examination or non - examination context”.

• ‘General misconduct' means “any behaviour which is contrary to a policy of the University or to generally accepted standards of behaviour.”

The definition of academic misconduct refers to cheating.

• ‘Cheating' means “seeking to obtain an unfair advantage in an examination or in other written or practical work required to be submitted or completed by a student for assessment;”.

Under the University Plagiarism Policy, “Plagiarism occurs when students fail to acknowledge that the ideas of others are being used. Specifically it occurs when:

• other people’s work and/or ideas are paraphrased and presented without a reference;

• other students’ work is copied or partly copied;

• other people’s designs, codes or images are presented as the student’s own work;

• phrases and passages are used verbatim without quotation marks and/or without a reference to the author or a web page;

• lecture notes are reproduced without due acknowledgement.

The University has defined procedures for cases of suspected plagiarism.

 

Research misconduct is dealt with separately in section 5.2.1.7 of the Doctoral handbook which states:

"Research misconduct procedures

• candidates are made aware of the University’s research misconduct guidelines and regulations

• there are clear guidelines for dealing with potential conflicts of interest.

Refer to Sections 9-12 (Research Misconduct) of Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research."

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If you have been accused of general or academic misconduct or both, the university can take action against you. The Faculty Discipline Committee powers in Statute 4 include:

14.3 Where a discipline committee determines that cheating has occurred the committee must impose one or more of the following penalties -

14.3.1 a reprimand;

14.3.2 disallowance of the work concerned by prohibiting assessment or, where the work has been assessed, annulling the result in the assessed work;

14.3.3 failure in the unit of which the work concerned forms the whole or a part;

14.3.4 suspension from the University for a specified period;

14.3.5 exclusion from the University.

Appeals

You can appeal any action taken against you to “the relevant faculty discipline committee” pursuant to section 8.3.2. This process can be extremely stressful for students and in particular as the penalties include suspension or exclusion from the university. It has been the experience of MPA that students who receive support from the MPA Advocate find the process less stressful and intimidating than those who have gone through the process alone.

MPA recommends that anyone facing discipline proceedings contact MPA immediately for an appointment.

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