Legal Question in Education Law in Illinois

School

I am a student at schaumburg high school and i'm a senior. As a senior i have to take senior survey. In survey we were writing this letter to Dick Derbin about a social issue. We wrote the paper and now i find out that my paper and some other student's paper are the same. We have the same teacher but i have the teacher in 6th hour and he has the teacher in 8th hour. Now the administrator here looked at the files that we saved and according to him my files were saved after his files. Now they are blaming me of something i never did! what should i do?


Asked on 11/05/08, 2:33 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys

Motty Stone Law Offices of Motty Stone

Re: School

Depends on what the threatened consequences are.

You should not try to escalate the situation by arguing as that will not help your case. If you are simply being asked to redo the assignment or something in that vein, I think it would be less work to just bite the bullet and move on.

With that said. I think your best bet to be taken seriously is sit down and write a formal letter to the administrator explaining that you did not copy the paper and why. Ask a friend who is knowledgeable about computers to help you figure out about the save times being different. If a parent or someone else watched you write the paper then that is further help.

Once you have sent the letter, ask the administrator to speak with him privately. With a cool head and a respectful tone, tell the administrator that you want to prove to him that you did not cheat on this assignment and ask him what he wants you to do.

If you feel that the administrator will not give you the chance to be heard, or is otherwise treating you unfairly, then you can ask your parent to get involved or speak to the principal. You don't want to go straight to the principal because you will offend the administrator by going over his head.

Good luck to you.

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Answered on 11/05/08, 2:57 pm


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