Plagiarism is a terrible act that should be grounds for expulsion. The submission of someone else's work as your own is an act that requires premeditation and deceit.(1) It's unfair to the teacher, the fellow students and the person whom the item of work was taken from. Plagiarism and cheating are one in the same. Both allow an unfair advantage to a student and undermine everything honest in a school environment.(2) The expulsion of the student for plagiarism is not only for the school's own good, but also for the student's. The student must learn that acts like this do not go unoticed or unpunished in the real world. One key difference between plagiarism and say, drinking at a dance, is that drinking at a dance only hurts the student doing it where as plagiarism can hurt an entire class. I.e. A student turns in a paper he gets off the internet. This paper was written by a Harvard grad student and is far superior to anything a high school student could write. If the teacher were to grade on a curve, a paper like this could lower everyone's grade except he who turned in the false paper. And if other student's find out about this, it could set up a terribly destructive path of dishonesty. And this is the main reason plagiarism should be grounds for expulsion. It creates such a tension filled, untrustworthy, and harmful atmosphere for students.
1. Robert A. Harris, The Plagiarism Handbook
2. Indiana University, "A Statement on Plagiarism"
Virginia Studies of Plagiarism
