Speaker 1: So, you know, consider a med student who cheated on a part of an exam instead of mastering the material in that unit. And then they leave the university and they are in a diagnostic situation where they're going to diagnose an illness and it has to do with the material that they missed and they cheated on. It doesn't only hurt the community they were in here at Purdue when they cheated, it also hurts other people outside the community.

Speaker 2: Here at Purdue, there is little debate about why academic dishonesty is not tolerated. However, there is some confusion about its definition.

Speaker 3: Unfortunately, academic dishonesty varies from professor to professor. Some professors will say you can work together on projects or homework assignments or whatever it may be and some professors will say you can't. So, that discrepancy and that lack of uniformity causes a lot of confusion within the school.

Speaker 2: The inconsistency about the definition of academic dishonesty is a concern for faculty as well.

Speaker 1: That's really an important question for the community to define and to talk about. It's one thing to hold up honesty as a value in the community and I think that's a great thing to do and I think everybody wants to do that. But after that general value is held up, then I think it's very important to operationalize that value and to define for the community what it means.

Speaker 2: Purdue officials are also aware of these inconsistencies and are working with students and faculty to make the terms accessible.

Speaker 4: We encourage faculty to be very clear on their syllabus or at least in the first week of class about what is and isn't academic dishonesty.

Speaker 3: And we're always available to come talk to students and see what you have to hear, see what they have to hear and work on the problems that they present.

Speaker 2: Purdue officials take instances of academic dishonesty seriously and emphasize that these cases have consequences.

Speaker 4: Students need to know that we have a really low tolerance for that. We have that very low tolerance and, you know, escalating sanctions. So a first sanction might be you need to learn about this and take an ethics course. A very serious sanction might be that you're no longer welcome at this institution or even that you won't receive a degree from Purdue.

Speaker 2: Changing the way people think and talk about cases of academic dishonesty may be key in limiting them.

Speaker 1: I think it's important for everybody to talk about what are the potential harms of this. Because sometimes I think we think about it in a very narrow way as just an individual sort of behavior that doesn't really hurt anybody.

Speaker 2: Purdue's Academic Integrity Clause is available on the university's webpage. Reporting for Fast Track, I'm Erica Seifert.