Spanish teacher Glenda Hurtado often comes across plagiarism through the use of Google Translate from her students. As a consequence, she gives no credit for assignments that she deems unoriginal. 

“Google Translate is an application that gives you a word-by-word translation, so there’s no cohesiveness in the sentences,” Hurtado said. “It’s a lot of work because now I’m proofreading everything. In class, we have workbooks that have the same answer to each question but then we also have free writings, which allow me to see the baseline for each student. If I know what you’re capable of writing and you bring me a very sophisticated paragraph, I know it wasn’t written by you.”

Due to the growing use of the internet and artificial intelligence (AI) among teens in everyday life, a new plagiarism policy will be implemented and enforced starting in the 2024-2025 school year. It is still a work in progress and no official standards have been announced to the students.

“We want to make sure that students are producing original work because that’s what will be expected of them when they move on to college,” Principal Armen Petrossian said. “We want to make sure that we are giving our students everything they need to be able to produce original work and to be able to meaningfully produce work for college and their careers in the future.”

Although plagiarism and any form of cheating are already warned against by teachers, this policy will take a stricter approach against those who fail to follow the guidelines.

“It’s important and needed to encourage students to engage in original work,” Librarian Alain Cruz said. “It also encourages students to engage in the assignments that use the skills that they’re learning in their classrooms. This way, they can practice those skills and receive proper and accurate feedback from their teachers.”

With AI systems’ ability to respond to whatever given prompt, some students find themselves tempted to use AI systems, such as ChatGPT, to complete their assignments for them, putting in no effort to do it themselves. 

“It’s definitely necessary since people continue to use AI systems to do their work for them,” senior Ashly Zuniga said. “This new policy will help hold those people accountable and punish them accordingly.”

For those who decide to violate the policy, the majority of the decision regarding the punishment will be determined by the teacher. Depending on the gravity of the situation, teachers will take stricter and more appropriate measures to hold students accountable for plagiarism. 

“One of the most common ones is not receiving credit for the assignment,” Petrossian said.“The form of consequence falls back on the teacher depending on what they deem appropriate for the situation.”