By Piper Pinnetti, Sunflower Opinion Editor
At Wichita State University, students are constantly reminded of the importance of academic honesty with stern warnings about plagiarism.
The words echo through classrooms and syllabi, creating an atmosphere of zero tolerance.
It seems WSU administration should have heeded their own advice, as evidence of WSU President Richard Muma plagiarizing sections of his doctoral dissertation has emerged.
Muma’s failure to properly attribute sources in his 2004 dissertation is troubling on multiple fronts.
Despite his claims in a letter sent to the student body that these mistakes were “technical oversights” and that less than “5%” of the text had attribution issues, the fact remains that any instance of plagiarism is inexcusable.
Because if we can’t expect a post-graduate professor to cite correctly, then certainly a student cannot be expected to.
This dissertation, which earned him a doctorate in higher education, set him on the path to power, influence and a 4% raise this July, which has him earning a half-a-million-dollar salary.
WSU’s own Code of Conduct Policy states that plagiarism is “representing the words, ideas, graphics, or any portion of another’s work, whether published or unpublished, as one’s own and/or without appropriate and/or accurate citation/attribution.”
The punishment for plagiarism ranges from warnings to expulsions. If university policy would harshly penalize a student for similar infractions, the president should be held to the same standard.
WSU’s Academic Integrity Policy is crystal clear: plagiarism is unacceptable.
What’s even more disturbing than this alleged plagiarism is the culture of silence being fostered around this issue. According to The Sunflower, university employees —specifically students — are being pressured not to speak for fear of retaliation.
This discourages open discussion and transparency. The plagiarism allegations are a red flag that demand more scrutiny and curiosity, not less.
Muma’s response to the allegations has been dismissive at best. He has described the matter as “deeply personal” and emphasized that the inquiry found
only “technical omissions” that did not rise to the level of academic misconduct. He has refused requests for comments from the Kansas Reflector and
The Sunflower.
But how can we, as a community, take this at face value when students are constantly drilled with the importance of proper attribution? If a student claimed “technical oversight” after being caught plagiarizing, it would not fly.
Out of 255 words on the first page of his dissertation, at least 150 were copied. The first sentence of the dissertation comes directly from the first page of a book, with not even the bare minimum effort to put the information in quotes.
The bare minimum would have been citing it correctly.
Even if only 5% of the dissertation had attribution errors, it’s no excuse. His dissertation is 88 pages long, meaning nearly five pages were improperly cited.
In any classroom, that would be enough to trigger serious consequences. For a student, such a mistake could mean failing a class, suspension or even expulsion.
But for the president of the university, it seems that the 20-plus authors he failed to attribute are not too big a deal. Nothing a PR statement blasted “From the President” via WSU Strategic Communications emails couldn’t fix.
The broader implications of this situation are alarming. WSU students deserve a leader who practices what he preaches, not someone who bends the rules to protect his position.
Integrity must come from the top down, and right now, the university’s moral compass appears to be spinning in all different directions.
We should all be asking: How can students be expected to respect the institution’s code of conduct when their own president does not?
Wichita State must take a hard look at its leadership and ask whether someone who has violated the very standards he enforces can truly continue to lead.
Piper Pinnetti is the opinion editor of The Sunflower and the Fall 2024 semester intern for the Wichita Journalism Collaborative.
This article was republished here with the permission of: The Sunflower