SIU president committed 'inadvertant plagiarism,' will stay on job

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Southern Illinois University President Glenn Poshard committed “inadvertent plagiarism’’ in his doctoral thesis, which should be corrected, but he will remain on the job and face no further repercussions, university officials announced today.

Poshard’s paper, written when he was a student at SIU in 1984, “contains several instances of mistakes, which Dr. Poshard acknowledges as mistakes,’’ a committee of faculty leaders appointed to review the situation said in a report released today. But “there was no student conduct code or definition of plagiarism’’ in the graduate student handbook at that time, and no formal hearing into the allegations is necessary at this time, the faculty concluded.

Therefore, Poshard’s thesis on gifted children’s education should be removed from the university library and be replaced by a corrected copy, the committee said. Poshard should also write a “formal statement that expands upon his extant acknowledgment of the possibility of ‘errors’ and ‘mistakes,’ ’’ the committee wrote.

They sure have high standards at SIU!