A student who was booted off his degree course for plagiarism is to sue the university. He says tutors at the University of Kent should have spotted what he was doing and stopped him sooner.
Michael Gunn, a 21-year-old English student, freely admits using material downloaded from the Internet to complete his assignments. He told the Times: “I hold my hands up. I did plagiarise. I never dreamt it was a problem.”
His problem, then, is not that he was caught, but that he was caught too late. He argues that the university should have warned him of the consequences earlier.
I suspect the University of Kent has your typical student policies forbidding plagiarism. In which case I’m afraid Mr. Gunn is going to have a hard time making the case that his getting away with cheating for a while created a reasonable expectation that he could plagiarize and still receive a degree.
Why do people always look for someone else to blame? I hope this lawsuit is thrown out on its face and Mr. Gunn is forced to pay any court costs.