Last Thursday, a committee of seven senior faculty members at Southern Illinois University issued a report clearing University President Glenn Poshard of plagiarism.
But the decision may be biased.
The fact that the report was put together by SIU professors certainly puts the committee’s actions in question. What else was expected of a committee of senior professors whose careers have been built at SIU?
The committee said that Poshard was following the loose citation methods of the time and recommended that he keep his degrees and position. The committee also suggested that Poshard bring his thesis up to today’s standards for citation.
The committee’s decision sends the wrong message to students that plagiarism is okay as long as you are someone of importance. The credibility of SIU has been tarnished not just by the allegations of academic dishonesty against Poshard, but also by the schools decision to claim that he is free of any guilt. The school lost all credibility by releasing this report authored by a party with ties to the university.
Southern Illinois University President Glenn Poshard should resign now before he permanently damages the university.
Whether the allegations over the plagiarism of his dissertation paper are true or not the speculation of his lying is already on the publics mind and is not going to go away.
As a higher education administrator, he should realize that his and the school’s credibility and respectability are on the line and on the verge of diminishing.
As a former Democratic gubernatorial nominee, he should uphold the values that the public expects of him and not sacrifice the image of a whole institution- just to prove that he’s right. Honesty is by far the core value that is expected of a public official and Mr. Poshard is not upholding it. Should Poshard sacrifice the school’s reputation and credibility in order to save his own image?
The school has already been harmed and it could not have come at a worse time. One of the university’s goals is to become one of the top 75 universities in the country by 2019- its 150th birthday. Because of this scandal, the school’s goal may never flourish.
A college president should represent the schools reputation and should be the foremost example of integrity to the whole student body and the overall university community. When something like this scandal comes up it puts the whole college community under the radar and gives the school a bad reputation.
This is not to mention the thousands of alumni who hold degrees from SIU. Their degrees and reputations could be questioned by these dishonesty allegations. Poshard himself was a student of SIU at the time that he wrote the paper in question.
Poshard should take responsibility for his actions and realize that there is something larger than his reputation at stake here- the future of a whole higher-education institution. There is faculty, administration, and thousands of students and alumni whose whole careers and future rely on the credibility of this school and Poshard is ruining every one of them.
