Marietta Academic Misconduct Defense

Being accused of academic misconduct is a serious matter.

If you’re a student at UGA, Georgia State, or one of the other colleges or universities in Georgia and you’ve been accused of academic misconduct, your school has to meet very specific standards in order to make a case for academic misconduct.

The Frye Law Group attorneys are well-versed in the codes of conduct for Georgia college and universities and can help you protect your reputation and your future employment if you’re facing these types of accusations. Call today to talk with one of our attorneys.

What Is Academic Misconduct?

Every college has an official code of conduct that students are required to abide by.

Often students are required to sign a pledge or an agreement that explains the school’s academic code of conduct and what will happen to students that violate it before they are allowed to register for classes.
Academic misconduct occurs when students violate the school’s official student code of conduct.

This may not seem like a big deal to a college student, but the consequences of being found guilty of academic misconduct can follow you for years.

Students that want to enter career fields where integrity and honesty are considered essential to the job may find that they can’t work in those fields after being found guilty of academic misconduct.

Just one academic misconduct conviction can prevent you from working in the following fields:

• Law 
• Social Work
• Psychology
• Some medical fields
• Teaching
• Finance, and more

Academic misconduct can even keep you from entering the military or other public service.

What Is Considered Academic Misconduct in Georgia?

Each school or academic institution has their own unique academic code of conduct that lists the institution’s expectations of students and the actual academic code for that institution. The code of conduct also will explain the penalties for academic misconduct.

In general, however, there are some things that almost every school considers to be academic misconduct. These include:

Cheating or Unauthorized Assistance

While the specific definition of unauthorized assistance may have variations from school to school, most schools consider it to occur when students engage in activities that include:

• Using tools like a calculator to solve math problems on a test when the professor has said no calculators allowed.
• Copying other people’s answers or allowing others to copy your answers.
• Distributing the answers to a test before a test.
• Using the Internet to look up the answers to questions on an exam.
• Allowing someone to complete and turn in an assignment in your name.
• Turning in a group project where multiple people get credit but only one person has done the work.
• Having someone text the answers to an exam during the exam or texting someone answers to an exam.

It’s always a good idea to check the school’s code of conduct documents to find out what exactly is considered to be unauthorized assistance at that particular school.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a violation that most schools take seriously and violators are punished harshly.

Plagiarism is when a student uses entire paragraphs that were written by someone else and turns them in as original work claiming that they wrote them. Students are allowed to use large sections of material that were written by someone else but only with proper citation and formatting. Even if you didn’t mean to substantially copy from someone else, if you do it, this can be considered academic misconduct.

Lying

In an academic setting lying usually refers to things such as:

• Falsifying lab results or the results of experiments.
• Lying about why you have not completed work on time, such as claiming that a relative has died when they did not.
• Falsifying attendance records for yourself or someone else.
• Submitting work that you turned in for one class in another class, such as reusing a paper that you wrote for an English class and submitting it in a History class.
• Impersonating another student or lying about your registration for a particular class.

Note: Lying in any capacity is considered academic misconduct, but in order for lying to be a violation, you have to know that what you’re doing is false or that what you’re claiming is untrue.

Theft

In terms of academic misconduct, theft can mean stealing physical items from a teacher or other students, or it can mean stealing ideas and academic work from someone else.

Impersonation

Impersonation has become more of an issue in recent years in conjunction with online academic misconduct.

For example, impersonation could be when you sign into a Zoom or other online class as someone else so that they get credit for attending the class, even though they did not attend. Taking a test for someone else either on campus or online is also impersonation.

For in-person situations, this can mean impersonating another student to get access to places like labs or high security areas.