We have seen an up-tick in student issues and want to clarify how to handle them—contact the Student and Academic Services team for help. Especially those situations you believe could easily escalate, they can help you navigate the different avenues you can take.

Disruptive Students

This can be anything from a student disrupting class, being disrespectful in person and/or via email, making inappropriate comments, threats, etc. If you feel in immediate danger, call 911. However, in other situations the student should be given a warning in person (if possible) and followed up in writing about what parts of their behavior were inappropriate and told that it won’t be tolerated further and they risk being withdrawn from the class. This is important because the student must be provided with an opportunity to cease the disruptive behavior (if haven’t already) before removing them from the class. If you are worried about the student’s reaction we can arrange for someone to be there with you or close by. The Dean of Students also has a reporting system.

ASU has a policy in place for disruptive student behavior in a classroom. "An instructor may withdraw a student from a course with a mark of "W" or "E" when the student's behavior disrupts the educational process. Disruptive classroom behavior for this purpose is defined by the instructor."

Step 1

Generally, the procedure to follow is to have the instructor first discuss behavioral issues with the student. If the instructor is uncomfortable approaching the student alone regarding this, they may have an advisor (another faculty member or administrative representative for the school) present. Also available is that an officer from ASU Police Department can do a civil standby and be posted right by or around the office. At that time, the instructor may give the student a warning that any further disruptive behavior will result in administrative withdrawal.

Make sure you notify the Student and Academic Services team that you have a disruptive student. They will alert a representative from the dean’s office if necessary.

Step 2

The meeting would need to follow up with a letter. Any oral warning needs to be accompanied by a written letter to the student, documenting the student's disruptive behavior. Be sure to copy the Assistant Director of Academic Services on this email. Here is a template for such a letter which can be modified to a message of your own:  

On [DATE], you disrupted my [COURSE TITLE] class lecture by [INCLUDE DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR]. Your actions were inconsiderate of the other students in the class, and this behavior will not be tolerated. Please be advised that as we discussed on FILL IN DATE, if you disrupt class in this manner again, you will be administratively withdrawn from the course under the University's disruptive student policy (www.asu.edu/aad/manuals/ssm/ssm201-10.html).

Step 3

Any further disruption is grounds for removal. Work with the Assistant Director of Academic Services to move forward with this.

Academic Integrity

How you handle plagiarism violations is up to the faculty and is outlined on the college website (where you can also report students who have plagiarized into a college-wide database). However, here are some options that you can employ depending on the severity of the situation.

• Give the student a chance to correct the assignment and only grade the correctly sited materials (see email template below)
• Fail the student for the assignment based upon your statement in your syllabus
• Fail the student for the class with an XE, meaning expulsion from the university (this takes a process outlined on the college website)

Any students who have a grade grievance that cannot be resolved by first talking with the instructor can be referred to the Student and Academic Services Team.

Suggested Email Template:

ASU’s plagiarism evaluation tool flagged your paper due to large portions of text (XXXXXXXX) that appears to be directly reproduced from secondary sources without quotes or proper citation. This is particularly serious because the bulk of text flagged appears to be identical to text available on various internet sources.  Please see attached document, which you can also view by clicking on the “SafeAssign” icon.  

The typical penalty for plagiarism at ASU range from failure on an assignment (assignment grade of E) to removal from a course for academic dishonesty (transcript grade of XE). As the syllabus for our course states: “Academic dishonesty includes borrowing ideas without proper citation, copying others’ work (including information posted on the internet), and failing to turn in your own work for group projects. If you are caught plagiarizing, you may fail the assignment and be reported to administration.”

I would like to give you the opportunity to correct these errors by placing quotes around any text that was copied from another source and properly citing that source. I can allow you until XXXXXXXX to resubmit your corrected essay. The purpose of the revision is for you to demonstrate that you understand the principles of proper citation and to avoid the very serious penalties associated with plagiarism at the university level.

To be clear, any plagiarized work will not be graded in the corrected version of your essay. You will not be able to recoup any points lost on the rubric for ungraded text. Additionally, if your paper length falls short of the pages required, once the plagiarized text is removed, you will also lose points.  If you believe that your paper has been flagged in error, I invite you to submit a response to me.

Grade/Teaching Grievances

Students who wish to file a grievance should follow the procedures located on the college website. The process is to (1) discuss with the instructor; (2) if not resolved the student can contact the Student and Academic Services team to facilitate an appeal; (3) if needed, student can contact the college to appeal further.