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Plagiarism is not something anyone wants to get caught doing— just ask Melania Trump. While Mrs. Trump was not expelled from school for plagiarizing parts of First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech, she was publicly humiliated by the media and criticized on almost every social media outlet.

Plagiarism has different implications for students at the University of San Diego. Before starting at USD, every student has to read and sign an Academic Integrity Policy (AIP). In the most recent AIP section 4.8, I, subpart d discusses academic dishonesty and plagiarism.

The AIP explains to students the potential consequences of plagiarism. For example, a student could face expulsion, suspension for up to one year, letter of censure, a requirement to complete extra academic classes to graduate, probation as deemed fit by the hearing committee, or failure of class.

What students may not know is the varying types of plagiarism. According to unplag.com, a plagiarism detection engine, there are varying types of plagiarism.

Direct plagiarism is the word-for-word transcription of a section of someone else’s work, without attribution and without quotation marks. This is the most severely punished kind, which, according to USD’s AIP, will result in a failure of the class and possible expulsion of the school upon meeting with the Hearing Committee. The hearing committee consists of five members, the dean, a professor from the department in which the plagiarism is alleged to take place, two students who are also from the department, and a professor from and outside the department.

Self-plagiarism occurs when a student submits his or her own previous work, or mixes parts of previous works, without permission from all professors involved.

Mosaic plagiarism is the borrowing of phrases from a source without using quotation marks. This can also occur when someone finds synonyms for the author’s language, while keeping to the same general structure and meaning of the original. This can be construed as paraphrasing; a way to avoid it is to rearrange ideas and sentence structure.

Accidental plagiarism occurs when a person neglects to cite sources or misquotes her or his sources, or unintentionally paraphrases a source by using similar words, groups of words, and/or sentence structure without attribution.

A senior communication studies major at USD explained that plagiarism can be difficult to discern. She chose to remain anonymous because she was found guilty of plagiarism.

“It can be hard to juggle each professor’s preference for citation use and how assignments are to be turned in,” she said.

The student explained that there was confusion over the use of a plagiarism checking site that did not recognize her citations.

“Professors should be more specific when informing students what type of citation is necessary,” she said. “It’s not fair that most teachers want a hard copy, while other professors use plagiarism check websites, such as Turnitin, then students have to figure out how to use the site to turn in assignments. If there is so much discrepancy, then there needs to be consistency.”