By Sandra Chalmers

Think your essays and past class notes are worth more than just a letter grade? Think not. Selling class notes, past tests, or even essays breaks the student code of conduct that can lead to expulsion from the university and the entire CSU system.

A recent press release from Bridget Blanshan, the Dean of students here at CSUSM, discussed that CSU students had participated in selling class notes to a third party site for money.  According to the press release, this is prohibited under student code of conduct section 41301 of title 5 of the California Code of Regulations. The penalty includes expulsion.  “Unauthorized recording, dissemination, or publication of academic presentations (including handwritten notes) for a commercial purpose.”

Students may think selling lecture notes seems to be a practical way of getting some extra cash for academic efforts, but if caught, the penalty can cost them their entire education.

“If a student took time to study and is willing to sell their class notes, it is their prerogative. It becomes an issue on personal integrity and it shouldn’t be the school’s responsibility to intervene,” said Kristen Collins, a senior majoring in Biology and Political Science.

Expulsion is a permanent separation of the student from CSU student status from the California State University system, as stated by Chancellor Reed in his 2009 Memorandum of student conduct procedures.

Countless businesses try to entice students to give up their academic integrity by advertising to sell course material on a share system of helping other students through stresses of college.

“I can see how it becomes a controversial issue, if a student is responsible and goes to class everyday and takes his/her own notes versus a slacker that can just buys the notes from someone else, its not fair,” continued Collins.

Sharenotes.com states on their website that their environment allows students to share, download, or buy notes, study guides, written reports and other course material for all subjects from over 100 colleges.

“Working at the bookstore, I notice all the new textbooks and how much each semester the class materials change. It must be hard to sell class notes that keep up with the changes,” said Collins.

The student conduct case generated by the Associate Vice President and the Dean of Students for 2008-09 indicates that there were 113 incidents reports of academic misconduct referred by faculty.  Though the nature of all these incidents are not explicitly detailed, three resulted in suspension and 51 resulted in academic probation.  These incidents show a 79 percent increase from 2006-07 to 2008-09.