The number of disciplinary referrals for the 2001-2002 academic year totaled 767, 144 fewer than the 2000-2001 academic year.

The number of students involved in the referrals decreased from 717 in 2000-2001 to 616 in 2001-2002.

“Enroolment numbers were down and that could have contributed to the decrease,” said Keith Kohanzo, judicial officer for the university.

Of the 767 referral cases, 491 of the cases involved freshman, 131 involved sophomores, 87 involved juniors, 54 involved seniors, and four involved graduate students.

The number of alcohol policy violations and/or alcohol related referrals dropped by about 13 percent to 429 referrals which was previously 491 for 2000-2001.

Kohanzo also feels that the number of referrals may have been affected by the fact that the university started to contact parents for the second alcohol related offense.

The biggest drop in alcohol policy violations came in the area of possession of alcohol in a public area. The number of those violations dropped from 178 in 2000-2001 to 20 in 2001-2002.

All of the numbers decreased from the 2000-2001 year with the exception of graduate students which remained at four.

Included in the number of disciplinary referrals is the number of academic misconducts.

The overall number of cases for academic conduct increased by 160% from 30 cases during the 2000-2001 academic year to 78 cases for the past academic year.

Of the 78 cases, 43 of the cases involved plagiarism. Most of the plagiarism cases dealt with students who had plagiarized papers from the internet.

Seventeen cases of reported plagiarism occurred within the English department.

One tool that some of the English professors have been using is turnitin.com.

With this Web site, teachers can do a search to help them better know whether a paper has been plagiarized.

The search is very close to a simple search that students can used to get information. From the search, teachers may be able to find websites that information may have been copied from.

“A number of the faculty use it,” said Bonnie Erwin, acting chair of the English department. “It certainly helps and gives us one more resource to check.”

Faculty are encouraged to report cases of academic conduct to Judicial Affairs, but not all do.

Faculty is also encouraged to draw attention to Eastern’s academic integrity policy and stress that students strongly follow it.