Editor’s note: The authors of this guest column were members of the seven-person committee recently charged with reviewing allegations of plagiarism within SIU President Glenn Poshard’s 1984 dissertation. Their words have not been altered in any way other than to correct grammar and style.

We are writing in response to the “Our Word” editorial (including the cartoons) in Friday’s DE, and Monday’s “The P Word” editorial (including the cartoon), both which have occasioned a good deal of negative response on campus and in the wider community. We hope that you will explain what’s puzzling about those editorials, as an initial contribution toward developing a reasoned and positive educational experience from what now is a sadly contentious episode in our university’s life.

What needs explaining is this: In Friday’s paper, under the headline of “Exactly what the doctor ordered,” you say: “The committee has failed us. The Board of Trustees has failed us. Our university is a joke. And the Daily Egyptian is at a loss for words.”

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The initial question we ask is: What committee has failed you, and how? The first editorial appeared on the day that the review committee, charged last month by Chancellor Fernando Trevi’ntilde;o, delivered its report to the chancellor, who in turn delivered it to the Board of Trustees. Yet the cartoons that follow those four sentences show a caricature labeled “blue ribbon committee” – an entity formed by SIU President Glenn Poshard, more than a year ago, which delivered its report last month. Both editorials confuse these very different committees.

These are different committees, chosen in radically different ways, and with completely different charges. We cannot speak for the “blue ribbon committee,” and we certainly do not speak for the Board (any more than the Board speaks for us). Nor can we speak for President Poshard – or he, for us. However, we can speak as members of the review committee to what we have determined.

We ask that you, and all concerned persons in our community, listen to the press conference and hear, for yourselves, that the chair of the Board of Trustees, in response to a specific question, said that “the Board does not feel that he committed plagiarism.”

The chair of the review committee, however, responded to the same question by saying that the review committee concluded that “inadvertent or unintentional plagiarism” was the result of student Poshard’s citation practices. (The Southern Illinoisan provides the audio: See their Web site under “Archives,” Oct. 11.)

The report submitted by the review committee on the day that you published the first editorial does not consider plagiarism to be a joke. And the report submitted by the review committee on the day that you published that editorial does determine that plagiarism, understood within a particular definition of the many that exist, is present in the dissertation that student Poshard’s committee approved. One item in the review committee’s charge was to determine the “severity” of instances of incorrect citation.

Just as there is a spectrum of severity in a messy room, a case of poison ivy, a broken bone, or a misleading newspaper article, there is a spectrum of severity in plagiarism. Correlatively, the law recognizes shades of severity in both civil and criminal cases – from negligence to intentional wrong doing; from manslaughter to first degree murder. People commonly accept that there are differences in the character of acts that make for differences in what decision is warranted. We determined that the category of “inadvertent plagiarism” was the most warranted in this case.

Lastly, although we regret that the Board feels otherwise, that difference should suggest, at the very least, that we have acted independently in investigating the allegations and reaching our conclusions and recommendations. Our report, listed as “Faculty Review Committee Report,” along with the Board’s statement and other statements and reports, is available for all to read at http://news.siu.edu.

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The DE editorial board, as well as various commentators and letter writers, feel that because the review committee was composed of SIU faculty, it could not have remained objective because we were evaluating our boss. We believe that you should reconsider this presumption.

First, President Poshard is not our boss. We do not report to him directly or indirectly. We are all tenured faculty.

Second, had the chancellor or we decided to convene an outside panel to review the allegations, this panel could not have been blind to the subject of the review (as is usually required in external, peer review).

Third, had that committee come to the same conclusion that we did, we’re sure that the DE editorial board would have found many ways to discredit them, such as accusing us or the chancellor of cherry-picking panel members. To avoid any appearance of cherry-picking, the chancellor named this committee on the basis of our already being in elected positions of leadership in the Faculty Association, Faculty Senate and Graduate Council.

Fourth, we knew from the beginning that our findings would be highly scrutinized by both President Poshard’s distracters and his supporters. Moreover, we have our academic colleagues around the world looking over our shoulders. These concerns kept us in check, and kept us honest in our attempts to reach a fair conclusion.

Finally, as teachers and researchers, we suggest that reading our report and listening to the press conference might alleviate your sense of being at a loss for words. In the light of reading and listening to the relevant evidence, we, as members of the review committee, ask that you reconsider the belief that you have been failed, in light of reading and listening to the relevant sources of information and considering the following:

Had the review committee not followed due process, as set out in established university policies (specifically, in the Student Conduct Code) for investigating allegations of academic misconduct, we would have failed you.

Had the review committee not applied thought, deliberation, and analysis, and instead relied solely on plagiarism software technology to reach our conclusion, we would have failed you.

Had the review committee not gone further in our analysis than is indicated in recent media reports – which, in some cases, are misleading or inaccurate – we would have failed you.

Had the review committee not fully investigated the context and circumstances in which the alleged plagiarized text was prepared, we would have failed you.

Had the review committee not concluded that the attribution style and other errors resulted in inadvertent plagiarism, we would have failed you.

Would you want any current, former or future SIU student accused of academic dishonesty to not be treated with due process, as we have treated this former student?

Langsdorf is a tenured professor teaching speech communication.

Stocksdale is a tenured professor teaching psychology.