- Advertisement -

By Churchill Aguilar

I ONCE worked as the assistant prefect of XU High a few years back. Like any other typical huge school, dozens of cases are forwarded to my office everyday from petty things to serious infractions. In order to fulfill my function as a formator of values and character, I only have three guiding procedures in handling cases. These are:

- Advertisement -

1. Afford the student the due process of investigation. Even if the student is caught in the very act of committing a violation, I always make sure to give him or her chance to explain his or her side. I also work on the presumption that he or she is innocent until I gather enough data to prove otherwise. This way, not only do I get a better picture of the situation, I also get to measure the gravity of the offense. It also helps me to identify mitigating, aggravating and justifying circumstances that were at play thereby affording the student a just ruling.

2. Count the frequency of the offense. I deal differently with students who have violated a certain school rule for the first time compared to the habitual offenders. The former can easily be forgiven with just a stern warning while the latter needs more serious behavior modification approach. The frequency of offense is a good indicator if the student has understood the seriousness of the set rules or not. It can also size up whether the student can still be formed by the existing system or is better off in a different environment or school.

3. Detect signs of remorse. One of the things that can outweigh any serious infraction is a sincere remorse, at least in so far as I am concern. I personally find such element as the final redeeming value that an offender can do. If in the final run, the student admits his or her fault and owns responsibility over it and expresses to make amends then he has learn his lesson. After all who has not committed any wrong? Sadly not everyone owns his or her fault. Yet for those who do, it shows that they are learning and becoming better people. Such are the kind of leaders we hope to have in the future.

If Tito Sotto was a high school student in XU and was reported to my office to have plagiarized some of his projects then I will afford him my three guiding principles. Let us look at how he would have fared.

1. When asked about whether he committed plagiarism he vehemently denied all allegations saying he did not copy any thoughts. He even arrogantly said why he would copy from a “mere blogger” with an undertone of discrimination. As with the JFK speech, he said it was certainly not copied since it was in tagalog and JFK does not speak tagalog. Yet when the real texts were compared, it was a verbatim translation of the original text. What would aggravate the case is that he is a senator of our country and that he and his staff should have known better.

2. In his first case he got criticized already by media. Yet he never learned from it. Not only did Tito Sen plagiarize once but twice. This shows that he either has not realized the gravity of his crime or he is too arrogant to think that he can get away with it under the cloak of privilege speech. Either way, this shows recidivism, enough to justify a higher sanction.

3. As of this writing, Tito Sen never showed remorse of such offense. He never asked for apology or own his fault. Now, he is even dragging down the late JFK when he implied that JFK also plagiarized in his time and therefore he should get away with it too. If I handled his case, I would label it as beyond help and would recommend that he is better off in some other institutions, in his case in another country.

Plagiarism is a criminal offense in the academic world, it is nothing less that stealing. Anyone caught to have committed such gets stripped of from his or her office. I know at least two professors who lost their doctorate degree simply because they failed to site their sources in their paper. To tolerate such especially from a senator and let him get away with it unscathed would surely send a wrong message to the nation.

If Tito Sen was in my high school, he would surely have been kicked out.

Disclaimer

Mindanao Gold Star Daily holds the copyrights of all articles and photos in perpetuity. Any unauthorized reproduction in any platform, electronic and hardcopy, shall be liable for copyright infringement under the Intellectual Property Rights Law of the Philippines.

- Advertisement -