Page 11* Thursday, September 11, 2003
NEWS
The Pendulum
Plagiarism more prevalent
From page 1
Wse said more students are relying on
the Internet as a source of information when
conducting research. She explained there is a
strong indication that high school students
use the Internet heavily as a source of infor
mation and that this behavior is carrying
over as students enter college.
“It’s not the Internet that is the problem,”
Wise said. “It’s just that the technology
allows for students to just cut and paste with
out really thinking about the consequences.”
Elon’s academic honor code leaves no
room for plagiarism. Any professor that sus
pects a student of plagiarizing or cheating is
obligated to contact Wise directly without
contacting the student. Wise is then able to
contact the student in order to discuss the sit
uation. If the student denies responsibility,
judicial action is taken.
Cases of plagiarism and cheating are
brought in front of the academic honor
board, comprised of both students and facul
ty, for evaluation. Students who are found
guilty of plagiarism most often receive an
irreversible failure in the course for which
the material was submitted.
Wise explained that using the Internet is
not the source of the problem. She said that
as long as students correctly cite the infor
mation and ideas they use from online
sources, there would not be a problem.
It’s not the Internet
that is the problem, it’s just
that the technology allows
for students to just cut and
paste without really thinking
about the consequences.
—Mary Wise, assistant vice president
for Academic Affairs
Trouble arises when students fail to accurate
ly give credit to their sources or copy com
plete works from places on the internet.
Elon is a member of the Center for
Academic Integrity, an oiganization that pro
motes integrity in academic communities. A
committee of both students and faculty has
also been formed on campus to discuss
issues pertaining to the honor code.
The full text for Elon’s academic and
social honor code is available online at:
http://www.elon.edu/students/handbook/hon
code.asp.
Contact Matt Belanger at
pendulum@elon.edu or 278-7247.
Students forced offline after
worm overwhelms network
Steve Earley
News Editor
The latest variation of the Internet worm
disrupted the campus computer network
Tuesday, forcing students offline for about
an hour.
The worm pushed core network routers
to 98 percent capacity by drastically
increasing pinging - a common Internet
command in which one computer verifies
the existence of another.
Excess pinging is particularly disruptive
because for every ping request sent out, 10
replies are sent back.
Eccles Wall, assistant director of infor
mational systems and technologies for net
working, said routers normally operate
around 50 percent capacity.
With problems starting to appear in the
80 percent range, the increased traffic was
enough to shut down the routers.
To get the network working again, resi
dence halls were taken offline. Chris
Fulkerson, director of instructional and
campus technologies, said student comput
ers were identified as the source of most
worm activity.
Wall said a scan on Wednesday revealed
300 potentially infected student computers.
The worm enters a network through
Protecting Your System
Students with Windows 2000 and
Windows XP operating systems
may download a patch to protect
against the worm at:
http://www. elon. edu/computersupport
holes in users’ Windows 2000 and Windows
XP operating systems, Fulkerson said.
It then carries out the associated exe
cutable file. The file may delete files, or in
this case, create excessive pinging.
To combat future attacks, Fulkerson said
a weak point in the network monitoring
software, which forced the routers to shut
down, has been fixed.
However, both Fulkerson and Wall said
the key is that students protect their sys
tems.
“A network is kind of a community
resource,” Wall said. “A few people who
don’t protect their computer can bring us all
down.”
Patches to protect against the worm may
be downloaded at Elon’s computer support
Web site.
Contact Steve Earley at
pendulum@elon.edu or 278-7247.
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