GMU Honor Code

In every learning institution, the management upholds the need to maintain academic integrity at all times. It is through academic integrity that the responsibility of every student is developed. All students are required to ensure they honor the academic integrity code for them to successfully complete their courses. Due to the development of technology in the 21st century, there are many online websites that are dedicated to providing assistance to students. The websites are designed to guide students in improving their grades. Most of the websites honor the code of academic integrity and provide assistance to students based on it. The George Mason University Honor Code requires all students within the institution to ensure they are responsible for their assignments and course requirements. Instances of cheating, plagiarism, and stealing within the institution in relation to any course go against the Honor Code. Usually, the students are required to ensure that all work that is submitted to the faculty is original and does not violate the Honor Code. Websites such as 123helpme.com, among others, provide assistance to students by having their papers written. However, there are terms of service where the cop-any management ensures that the students only use the paper as a sample to complete their own authentic work. This paper analyzes the services offered by such websites in relation to the Mason Honor Code for academic integrity.

How Do the Statements on the Term Paper Sites Compare to the Honor Code?

The Honor Code of George Mason University stipulates that every student must ensure they provide authentic work that is free of plagiarism. This happens by ensuring that proper references and citations are included in any piece of work that they write. Also, the students are not allowed to steal any academic material within the university for their benefit. There are regulations that stipulate how academic materials should be handled. For instance, going out of the examination room with exam materials is considered a violation of the Honor Code. Therefore, it is important for any student to ensure they understand what is required of them before paying a professional to write their papers. Most of the paper writing websites outline their dedication to providing plagiarism-free work. Although the services are paid for, the websites observe the need to ensure that each work, turned to the student seeking the services, is plagiarism-free. This is an indication that they observe the Mason Honor Code. The professionals working within the websites ensure they provide proper citations for all authors that are referenced. Additionally, the terms of service of the websites dictate that the papers submitted to the student can only be used as a sample and not submitted to the school as one’s personal writing. The professionals only provide the materials as examples of what the students are required to do. The students should then follow the example and write a similar paper, following the given outline and structure.

What Are the Similarities?

The websites specializing in paper writing services adhere to the Mason Honor Code in different ways. Most of them are designed to help students understand what is required of them in writing their papers. There is no plagiarism tolerance for the professionals working on the websites. The George Mason Honor Code does not tolerate any form of plagiarism. Students that submit plagiarized content are punished by the institution's committee, dedicated to such issues. On the websites, the management does not allow the professional, writing the sample papers to plagiarize content. The samples are used by the students as examples of what they should do to achieve the maximum marks for the subjects.
The websites do not encourage the students to submit the content to their institutions as their own. They ensure understanding by the students of the need to submit only their personal content to their tutors. Usually, the websites do not take any responsibility for the students, submitting content that has been created by the professionals writing the papers. The Mason Honor Code only allows submitting of their personal content. Therefore, submitting work that has been done by another person as one’s own is a violation of the Code. This is a primary similarity that was observed on the websites in relation to the Mason Honor Code.

How Do They Differ?

Most of the websites that provide paper writing services allow the students to download content that is available on the site. Providing content that belongs to another person is a violation of the Mason Honor Code. Mostly, website management has regulations and rules regarding the use of the content available on websites. A website such as UK essays. com has thousands of papers that are already written. They are made available for downloading to the students, and they can use them as samples to write their own content. This is a violation by the website owners as they encourage irresponsibility among the students. Students should not have access to such content since they are required to demonstrate responsibility by conducting personal research on topics assigned to them in the classroom.

Sharing of personal information to a third party is discouraged by the Mason Honor Code. When a student shares information with third parties, they expose themselves to the risk of phishing, among other cyber-related issues. Therefore, there is a high possibility that when the students share information with the professionals involved in writing the papers, they violate the Code of Honor for academic integrity. This is a major difference between the Honor Code and the websites that offer paper writing services. The websites should not allow the students to share personal information with the professionals working on the websites.

What Conclusions Can Be Drawn?

Paper writing websites have been on the rise in the past 5 years. The owners of these websites are dedicated to providing sample written papers to the students so that they can improve their grades in the classroom. However, they do not make a follow up of whether the students submit the paper as their own to the school. Most students submit the sample papers to their instructors as their own. This is a violation of the Honor Code which should be punishable by a suspension or expulsion of the student from the institution. In addition to this, paper writing websites should not allow students to share personal information to maintain their privacy. For instance, allowing students to share their school login information can expose them to high risks of their information being wrongly used. It is, therefore, important to ensure that the students have a high level of integrity and responsibility in the long run.