Academic Integrity

Academic dishonesty is prohibited in The City University of New York. Penalties for academic dishonesty include academic sanctions, such as failing or otherwise reduced grades, and/or disciplinary sanctions, including suspension or expulsion.

Academic integrity is at the core of a college or university education. Faculty assign essays, exams, quizzes, projects, and so on both to extend the learning done in the classroom and as a means of assessing that learning. When students violate the academic integrity policy (i.e., “cheat”), they are committing an act of theft that can cause real harm to themselves and others including, but not limited to, their classmates, their faculty, and the caregivers who may be funding their education. Academic dishonesty confers an unfair advantage over others, which undermines educational equity and fairness. Students who cheat place their college’s accreditation and their own future prospects in jeopardy.

1. Definitions and Examples of Academic Dishonesty

1.1. Cheating is the unauthorized use or attempted use of material, information, notes, study aids, devices, artificial intelligence (AI) systems, or communication during an academic exercise.

Examples of cheating include:

• Copying from another person or from a generative AI system or allowing others to copy work submitted for credit or a grade. This includes uploading work or submitting class assignments or exams to third party platforms and websites beyond those assigned for the class, such as commercial homework aggregators, without the proper authorization of a professor. Any use of generative AI tools must be in line with the usage policy for specific assignments as defined in the course of the syllabus and/or communicated by the course instructor.

• Using artificial intelligence tools to generate content for assignments or exams, including but not limited to language models or code generators, without written authorization from the instructor.

• Unauthorized collaboration on assignments or examinations.

• Taking an examination or completing an assignment for another person or asking or allowing someone else to take an examination or complete an assignment for you, including exams taken on a home computer.

• Submitting content generated by another person or an AI tool or any other source as solely your own work as your own, including, but not limited to, material obtained in whole or in part from commercial study or homework help websites, or content generated or altered by AI or digital paraphrasing tools without proper citation.

• Fabricating and/or falsifying data (in whole or in part).

• Giving assistance to acts of academic misconduct/dishonesty.

• Altering a response on a previously graded exam or assignment and then attempting to return it for more credit or a higher grade without permission from the instructor.

• Submitting substantial portions of a paper or assignment to more than one course for credit without permission from each instructor.

• Unauthorized use during an examination of notes, prepared answers, or any electronic devices such as cell phones, computers, smart watches, or other technologies to copy, retrieve, generate or send information.

1.2. Plagiarism is the act of presenting ideas, research or writing that is not your own as your own.

Examples of plagiarism include:

• Copying another person’s or an AI tool’s actual words or images without the use of quotation marks and citations attributing the words to their source.

• Presenting another person’s ideas or theories in your own words without acknowledging the source.

• Failing to acknowledge collaborators on homework and laboratory assignments.

• Internet plagiarism, including submitting downloaded term papers or parts of term papers, paraphrasing or copying information from the internet without citing the source, or “cutting & pasting” from various sources without proper attribution.

• Unauthorized use of AI-generated content; or use of AI-generated content, whether in whole or in part, even when paraphrased, without citing the AI as the source.

1.3. Obtaining Unfair Advantage is any action taken by a student that gives that student an unfair advantage in his/her academic work over another student, or an action taken by a student through which a student attempts to gain an unfair advantage in his or her academic work over another student.

Examples of obtaining unfair advantage include:

• Stealing, reproducing, circulating or otherwise gaining advance access to examination materials.

• Depriving other students of access to library materials by stealing, destroying, defacing, or concealing them.

• Retaining, using or circulating examination materials which clearly indicate that they should be returned at the end of the exam.

• Intentionally obstructing or interfering with another student’s work.

1.4. Falsification of Records and Official Documents

Examples of falsification include:

• Forging signatures of authorization.

• Falsifying information on an official academic record.

• Falsifying information on an official document such as a grade report, letter of permission, drop/add form, ID card, or other college document.

• Falsifying medical documentation that has a bearing on campus access or the excuse of absences or missed examinations and assignments.

Please review the flowchart linked below.

Please review the PDF linked below.