Preparing for an Academic Integrity Review

If you need help preparing for your review, you have 2 options:

• Ask the Academic Integrity (AI) Office to assign you an AI student advisor who can help you with the process, reviewing the material, and preparing your statement. Read more about AI student advisors.
• Contact AS Advocacy for assistance at (858) 534-5905 or asadvocacy@ucsd.edu. Associated Students hires undergraduates to help you prepare for conduct hearings. An AS Advocate is the only person who can assist you at the review.

Once you have the allegation documentation and assistance (if you require it), prepare a statement disputing of the facts of the allegation.

• The statement should be focused and clear, and should communicate to the Academic Integrity Review Board (AIRB) your "side of the story."
• Stick to information that is relevant to the incident, rather than including your life story and past examples of your "character." Good people make bad decisions all the time, so your character is not in question. Rather, the question is whether you violated the Policy on Integrity of Scholarship.
• 7 hard copies of this statement (and any supporting documentation) is due to the Academic Integrity Office within 10 business days after the AI Office receives your review request. If you cannot meet this deadline, extensions are granted upon your request.
• Your documentation should be referred to in your statement as Exhibit 1, 2, 3, etc. and each copy of the document should be labelled as such.

• By the 5th business day before the scheduled review (you will be notified of the review date at least 10 business days in advance), the instructor's report and supporting documentation as submitted for the briefing packet will be e-mailed to you.

• Review this information carefully because there may be new material you haven't previously seen.

• The AIRB will receive both yours and the instructor's information in a full, complete briefing packet about 1/2-hour before the scheduled start time of your review.

• Your AI Advisor or AS Advocate will help you anticipate questions the review panel will ask. Be prepared to answer questions honestly and truthfully.
• Don't be adversarial, rude, confrontational, or insulting to the professor or the AIRB members. Such a stance is more likely to hurt than help you.
• Remember that the the review isn't a trial or a legal hearing but simply an opportunity for you to tell your side of the story and for the AIRB to determine, given the available information, if it is more likely than not that a violation of the Policy on Integrity of Scholarship occurred.
• The AIRB isn't bound by the same procedural and evidentiary rules as decision-makers in courts of law.
• Do not feel that you have to dress up. The members of the panel will be in their normal, everyday clothes, and they expect you to be in the same. Dressing up in a suit is unnecessary and will not change the outcome of the review.