Students who violate the Honor Code are subject to a grievance being filed against them. The grievance will be reviewed by the Judicial Board of the College. The exception is the case of academic dishonesty.
With respect to academic dishonesty, faculty members of Cottey College are responsible for determining if a situation has risen to the level of academic dishonesty (cheating) and for the discipline of students whom they believe to be guilty of academic dishonesty in their classrooms.
The consequence of academic dishonesty at Cottey College will depend on whether the violation is a single incident in a class or is the result of multiple violations that occur in one or more than one class. The result of a single violation in a class should be appropriate to the level of the violation. In cases that seem as somewhat careless or uninformed failures to cite sources appropriately, the instructor may opt for a mild consequence or even just a warning and a careful explanation. However, in cases in which the violation was clearly intentional and knowingly deceptive, the consequence should be more serious. In such a case, an instructor may choose to give either no credit on the work that was involved in the violation (with no possibility of redoing that work) or may even choose to give the student a course grade of F and expulsion from the course. A student found to have violated the Honor Code in a class may not withdraw from that class to avoid a reduced grade.
Any student found to have committed an act of academic dishonesty will be reported by the faculty member to the vice president for academic affairs. If it is determined by one or more members of the faculty that a student has been responsible for academic dishonesty more than once during enrollment at Cottey, the vice president for academic affairs, at their discretion, will determine, in consultation with the faculty members in whose classes the academic dishonesty occurred, whether the consequences for the dishonesty will exceed those for the individual class or classes. Depending on the severity of the violations, the vice president for academic affairs reserves the right to expel the student committing the offenses from the College. Students are ethically responsible under the terms of the Honor Code for reporting occurrences of academic dishonesty to the faculty member in whose class(es) the alleged cheating may have occurred.