Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

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Officials name senior vice president, chief of staff
By Fiona Riley, Assistant News Editor • March 26, 2024

Inside our pages: Confronting plagiarism at The Hatchet

During the editing process late last week, one of the campus news editors discovered that a reporter copied a sentence directly from an Inside Higher Ed article without quotes or attribution. Thankfully, we caught this error before it was published in the paper or online.

But, after auditing every story Julie Douglas wrote for The Hatchet, we discovered an article from 2009 with three instances of plagiarism. In that case, she had copied three separate sentences directly from the Global Networks website. That story has been rewritten with proper attribution and an editors note attached explaining the error. We will make the original article available to anyone who would like to compare the published report to the source.

Plagiarism, even if it is unintentional as Douglas, a junior, claims, is unacceptable and is cause for immediate dismissal from The Hatchet.

Each article published in the paper is seen by no fewer than three editors during six editing cycles, so it is surprising that sentences directly copied from another source passed through – but this knowledge will help the paper learn how to better stop plagiarism and poor attribution in the future.

The Hatchet constantly strives to be a transparent organization for our readers, and I believe it is your right to know of instances of plagiarism, however rarely they may happen.

We hope to put this embarrassing situation behind us, but want your feedback as we strive to best serve the GW community.

Lauren French, a senior, is the editor in chief of The GW Hatchet.

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