Academic Standards Committee Minutes
October 9, 2000
Present: Scott Bailey, Suzanne Barnett, Jo Crane, Alyce Demarais, Houston Dougharty, Julian
Edgoose, Ron Fields, John Finney, Robin Foster (chair), Doug Goodman, Kristi
Hendrickson, Steve Rodgers, Jack Roundy, Yvonne Swinth, Brad Tomhave
Absent: Katie Danielson, Tom Goleeke, David Lupher, Karen Porter
Foster convened the meeting at 8:03 a.m. and called attention to the minutes of the last meeting of the committee.
Minutes. Fields M/S/P approval of the minutes for the meeting of 25 September 2000 as distributed.
Barnett pointed out the need to correct the spelling of
“Millennium.”
PETITIONS COMMITTEE
Tomhave said that the PC has met four times since the last PC report and has acted on 60 petitions as indicated on printouts submitted to Barnett and summarized below.
Date
08/24/00-09/15/00
Approved
28 (18*)
Denied
3
No Action
0
Total
31
09/16/00-09/21/00
09/22/00-09/28/00
09/29/00-10/05/00
15 (9*)
4
2
4
2
1
1
0
0
20
6
3
* Parenthesized numbers indicate the number of the stated approvals done by the Office of the
Registrar as authorized by the Academic Standards Committee for resolution of specified issues of registration.
Of the 60 petitions, 49 were approved, and 27 of the 49 approvals were done by the Office of the
Registrar; 10 petitions were denied; 1 petition had no action.
Tomhave then distributed copies of a document entitled “Academic Standards Delegated
Authority as of Fall 1998,” which specifies the issues of registration in petitions the committee authorizes the Office of the Registrar to approve; the issues fall under three headings:
“Independent Study,” “Late Add,” and “Time Conflict.” (Note: The current committee renewed this delegation of authority at the meeting of 13 September 2000. Tomhave distributed copies of the document in response to the committee’s informal request at that meeting for reference copies.)
Fields wondered if this document should go to all department chairs. Tomhave and Finney each expressed the view that no real reason for such distribution seems indicated; the petitions approvable by the Office of the Registrar are only those in categories in which petitions always receive approval.
Foster raised the question of whether the committee should reevaluate the criteria for independent study in order to be more inclusive. In response to Barnett’s inquiry, Foster cited the recent case of a biology major who felt that the minimum GPA levels (2.67 cumulative, 3.00 in the major) deny independent study access to a number of students. Finney stated that the PC has waived the GPA standards more for biology students than for students in other majors. He added that sometimes independent-study students can be grouped as a class, so GPA would not be a factor. Barnett suggested that the committee might not need to reconsider the GPA levels for independent study for one case if the general need is being met.
ACADEMIC HONESTY AND THE WEB
Finney called attention to the draft he prepared, with Barnett’s concurrence, of added commentary in the “Academic Honesty” section of The Logger to accommodate the new electronic environment. The proposed additions are as follows: (1) Insertion of the phrase “the

2 responsible use of the internet and the world wide web” into the last sentence of paragraph one, which lists academic activities for which honesty is the expectation. (2) Insertion of the phrase
“images, video clips” into sentence two of paragraph two, which lists others’ intellectual items that when misrepresented as one’s own work constitute plagiarism. (3) Insertion of a new paragraph headed “Honest Use of the Internet and World Wide Web” just prior to the paragraph headed
“Honesty in Computer Programming.”
ACTION: Finney M/S/P to revise the “Academic Honesty” section of The Logger as proposed and adjusted by added parentheses around sentence three and added words “In addition” at the beginning of sentence four of the new paragraph.
The new paragraph now reads as follows:
Honest Use of the Internet and the World Wide Web
Contrary to a common misperception, the vast majority of material on the internet is not in the public domain. Materials acquired from the internet must be properly cited. (The following URL on the University of Puget Sound library web site contains examples of proper methods of citing web pages, electronic journals, newspaper articles, reference works, electronic texts, listserv messages, and email messages: http://library.ups.edu/research/guides/citing.htm
.) In addition, whenever one uses the ideas, graphic images, pictures, video clips, or any other material from the internet, that material must be properly cited. To fail to do so is to commit plagiarism. Faculty are aware of the term paper sites on the web that tempt students with the promise of readymade papers, and documents obtained in this manner are surprisingly easy to trace.
In discussion Bailey advised keeping an eye on the URL in the new paragraph because URL addresses often change. The committee considered omitting the URL and also reordering the paragraph, but in the end the committee affirmed the paragraph as drafted by Finney with the addition of the parentheses and the words “In addition.” Committee members thanked Finney for his effort in this matter.
PROBATION AND “REPRESENTATION IN UNIVERSITY ACTIVITIES”
The committee turned to discussion of restrictions on the activities of students on academic or conduct probation with specific reference to the paragraph headed “Representation in University
Activities” in the “Academic Policies” segment of The Logger (p. 46). Having been asked by
Foster to do some preparatory work on this issue, Dougharty reported that he had met with Kris
Bartanen and John Finney to talk about academic probation (which occurs if the cumulative GPA falls below 2.00) and conduct probation under the Student Integrity Code ( Logger , pp. 42 and 98, respectively). He added that the Student Life Committee also is now looking at the issue of probation by way of its review of the Student Integrity Code. Page 46 of The Logger puts academic probation and conduct probation together, but in fact the two may be very different.
Among other differences, the Dean of Students can permit waivers of restrictions on activities under conduct probation for participation in a particular activity and/or participation in activities for a specific time; this procedure is not stated in The Logger , but it is the practice. No such possibility of waiver exists in a case of academic probation. The central task could be to bring the two kinds of probation into line with reference to activities restrictions.
Dougharty continued by raising points for consideration: Should policy retain “gray areas” for interpretation, or should we develop a “laundry list” of what a student on probation can do and cannot do? What happens if probation status dictates that a student cannot perform music but the student has a scholarship for music performance and is expected to perform, thus to represent the University? How can and should academic probation be enforced in such a situation?
Implementation of activities restrictions for probation varies across campus.

3
Toward a plan for dealing with the matter, Roundy suggested attacking the problem philosophically, perhaps beginning by discussing educational aims; the point in each kind of probation is bringing the student back into the intellectual community. Foster supported this suggestion by observing that the question “What is the philosophy behind Academic Probation?” is item “b” under the probation matter as it appears on the agenda for this meeting; this could be the start of our deliberation. One thing to consider is that sometimes a student’s not being able to participate in activities is not helpful to the student’s progress. On the hand, said Finney, the incentive to perform again should help the student. Tomhave stated that the mechanism of activities restrictions does work, although the Registrar’s Office does not go beyond making appropriate faculty and administrators aware of the policy; no effort of enforcement is in practice.
[Barnett gratefully acknowledges the work of former committee secretary Roundy in drafting the record of the meeting after she had to leave at c. 8:51 a.m. Barnett has retained Roundy’s draft with minor adjustments of format.]
[Start of Roundy’s record:] Crane discussed a system at her former institution in which students returning from academic dismissal were required to account for all their non-academic involvements and make the case for permission to continue them. Tomhave described Puget
Sound's probation policy, and noted that probational students here are not required to make such a case; rather students are simply notified of co-curricular restrictions in their probation letters.
Dougharty returned to the question of how and to whom lists of probational students are distributed. We do not now distribute these lists to every organization or administrative unit whose student participants might be affected by our participation policy.
Crane asked how many students we were talking about on probation at a given time. Dougharty estimated that about 30 students are on conduct probation at any given time, and
Finney/Tomhave estimated that about 80 students are on academic probation at any given time.
Fields wondered, given the numbers, whether we could draw up "terms" for all of these students regarding their participation. Roundy explained that the Performance Agreement that dismissed and suspended students are required to complete has a companion document, the Academic
Self-Assessment, that has been available for use by advisors with their probational advisees.
This document offers an occasion for establishing such "terms." However, while the Performance
Agreement is mandatory, the Academic Self-Assessment is not, and is used by relatively few advisors. Further, neither of these documents has been provided with "teeth."
Edgoose remarked that what we're really concerned with in this area is student time commitments and how to engineer them for student academic success. Fields asked Tomhave whether he could give the committee a review of how our restrictions on student participation in co-curricular activities are working currently, and Tomhave demurred, unsure how that success could be measured.
With this, we adjourned at 9 AM. [End of Roundy’s record]
Respectfully submitted,
Suzanne W. Barnett
19 October 2000
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