Appendices

For the most up to date information on Student Education Records Policy and FERPA, please see the Office of the Registrar FERPA website.

The following guidelines encourage practices that will help you avoid plagiarism when working on writing projects. Many college assignments require that you draw on outside sources to build your argument, establish your credibility, and demonstrate your knowledge of the subject. Using these outside sources correctly requires careful attention to how you are appropriating them from the original source and how you are integrating them into your own work. The following tips will help you write plagiarism-free papers in which all of your sources are acknowledged.

Procrastination Can Lead to Plagiarism: Waiting until the last minute to write a document will increase the likelihood that you do not cite sources in an acceptable manner. It might also increase the temptation to lift material from others and claim it as your own in a last-ditch effort to finish the assignment. Avoiding procrastination is key to avoiding plagiarism. If you do not think you will finish an assignment by the due date, contact your professor. It is far better to be penalized on a single project than it is to engage in a last-minute act of academic dishonesty in hopes of completing an assignment, an act that could ultimately result in expulsion from Lafayette. Assistance and strategies to effectively deal with procrastination are available through the College Counseling Center as well as the Academic Tutoring and Training Information Center (ATTIC).

Take Meticulous Notes: As you read material to prepare for writing, take meticulous notes and record where the notes came from as you work. This will decrease the likelihood that you inadvertently use the ideas from something you have read and then forget to cite them. Careful note taking means recording full bibliographic information for the source and noting whether the copied material is quoted, paraphrased, or summarized. If you copy and paste material directly, it needs to be quoted, and you need to include all of the relevant bibliographic information.

Use the Appropriate Citation System: While many students learned the MLA citation style in high school English class (the citation system of the Modern Language Association), in college you will often be expected to use a different citation system depending on the discipline for which you are writing. For example, you may be expected to use APA style for a psychology course or Chicago style for a history course. Each citation system has its own guidelines for citing material. You will need to consult the appropriate style guide to learn the system, and they are available in the library.

Follow a Key Guideline to Avoid Plagiarism: Although citation systems differ, there is one principle to which all systems adhere: You must write in a way so that your reader always knows when she is reading your ideas and when she is reading the ideas of others that you have appropriated to complete your paper.

1. Do Not Wait until the Last Draft of the Paper to Place Your Citations in the Text: Students will sometimes wait until they have finished a draft of an assignment and then return to place the citations in the text. This will increase the probability that you forget to include a citation.
2. Learn the Differences Among Summary, Paraphrase, and Quotation: When you appropriate the writings or ideas of others, there will be times when you need to summarize their material and times when you need to quote their material. This sometimes depends on the discipline. Scientists, for example, rarely use quotations in their work. You can learn the difference among summary, paraphrase, and quotation by consulting the appropriate style guide.
3. Know that “Patch Writing” Is a Form of Plagiarism: According to Rebecca Moore Howard, “patch writing” is a form of dubious or sloppy paraphrasing. It happens when you borrow the sentences of others and then change just a few words without fundamentally changing the structure of the sentence. You can avoid this by changing the sentence fundamentally (paraphrasing) or by using the sentence exactly as it was written with quotation marks around it.
4. Use Campus Resources: If you are having difficulty with a project, visit your professor, consult a research librarian in Skillman Library, meet with a faculty member or writing associate in the College Writing Center or talk with your class instructor. There are resources on campus to help you learn how to cite material correctly. Using them, however, takes careful planning. This is one more good reason to avoid procrastination!

Official communications from the College may be sent to students via their Lafayette email account, campus mailbox, and/or home address. Students are expected to respond to these communications in a timely manner and will be responsible for complying with any information contained therein.

The Student Government constitution, including bylaws, can be found on studentgovernment.lafayette.edu.

GREEK LIFE AT LAFAYETTE COLLEGE

A social Fraternity & Sorority Life “Greek Life” system is available on Lafayette’s campus for students who wish to participate in it. Fraternities and sororities are living-learning communities focused on academic integration, leadership development, civic engagement, intercultural development, and character/values congruency. It is the mission of Lafayette College’s Fraternity & Sorority Life to create an atmosphere in which fraternities and sororities will make a lasting positive impact on their membership and on the Lafayette campus community. The fraternity and sorority members of Lafayette College are dedicated to intellectual, leadership, community, chapter, and personal development of their members and the campus.

Information pertaining to Fraternity & Sorority Life, including the organizations, how to join, and leadership development can be found on https://greeklife.lafayette.edu/.

Lafayette’s libraries provide students with a wide range of information sources and services developed to support their educational pursuits. The libraries provide print and electronic resources for the use of all Lafayette students. The theft, mutilation, or defacement of library materials is therefore a very serious offense against the academic mission of the College; such acts deprive others of access to these materials. A student who steals, mutilates, or defaces library property is subject to disciplinary action and may be subject to legal action. Acts of mutilation include, but are not limited to, removing pages from or otherwise damaging library materials, Acts of defacement include, but are not limited to, highlighting, underlining, or writing in or on library materials.

Food and beverages are allowed only in the Skillman Café. Beyond the Café, small snacks and beverages with tight-fitting lids are permitted provided they are consumed neatly and all remainders are disposed of properly.