Brunswick
School English Dept.
Academic Integrity
Reading great literature and struggling with the weighty
ideas contained in that literature has bought joy,
fulfillment and confidence to people for centuries. Not
surprisingly, the Brunswick School English Department is
committed to the idea that students should learn to read
and enjoy great works of literature and should then learn
to articulate in clear, concise writing the thoughts
inspired by that literature. The thoughts the students
generate, however, should be their own, derived from the
works read and the guidance provided by the English
instructors. The thoughts presented in their written work
should not be regurgitated thoughts culled from external
sources such as Cliff’s Notes, Sparknotes, or any of the
numerous sites devoted to providing students with
ready-made essays.
Because students are unfairly tempted to plagiarize, the
unacknowledged use of someone else’s work in place of one’s
own , by taking whole essays, parts of essays, or merely
bits of sentences from the websites they find, Brunswick is
now subscribing to an online service that will check the
authenticity of students’ written work either whole or in
part. All essays submitted to us will be checked by this
service, developed by a group of professors at The
University of California at Berkeley. Initially this may
sound like an extreme solution, but further deliberation
should bring students and parents to the realization that
the pressure to plagiarize in the quest for higher grades
has been lifted. The Brunswick English Department has
always preferred that students learn to think for
themselves and learn to articulate their thoughts in
original form rather than merely regurgitating the thoughts
of others. The adoption of the new technology merely
reinforces the preexisting policy.
Students who wish to use outside sources to assist them in
writing papers must cite those sources, and any member of
the English Department will gladly provide assistance in
doing so properly. Failure to cite a source will be
considered plagiarism. Any assignment found to be
plagiarized will receive a zero and the student will be
required to rewrite the essay. The maximum grade for the
rewritten essay will be a 50. The student will also face
serious official sanctions from Brunswick or Greenwich
Academy.
The same sort of standards that apply to the construction
of essays also applies to daily assignments. Any homework
of any sort that is handed in under a student’s own name
must in fact be work produced by the student, not through
collaboration with other students; some assignments may ask
students to work in a group, but such projects will be
clearly delineated as such. Any homework submitted that is
not clearly collaborative in nature must be original. We
would like students to learn to take pride in doing their
best on any given assignment. Parents are always welcome to
assist their sons and daughters in doing homework, but help
should be rendered with the understanding that homework is
an opportunity for students to strengthen their knowledge;
homework is not something that is merely to be completed.
One of the skills taught in a Brunswick English class is
the proper annotation of a text. These notes are valuable
during class discussions, the construction of essays, and
the preparation for semester exams. Oftentimes, students
are asked to write essays within the context of class and
are frequently allowed to use their texts which should
contain valuable annotations. Therefore, students will be
required to use only their own books, not books borrowed
from other students or siblings for writing "in-class"
essays. The annotations of others may indeed constitute an
unfair advantage and their use is considered plagiarism.
The Brunswick English Department takes very seriously the
issue of academic integrity, and we hope our strong stand
on this issue will help students avoid succumbing to the
powerful temptations with which they are
presented.