University of Maryland, College Park.

What UMD’s own documents say about how cases proceed

Who may be present

“Responding Parties who chose to resolve a matter through a Formal Resolution Procedure may be assisted by an Advisor, if retained by the Responding Party, and an Advocate and accompanied by a Support Person.” The Code adds that the “Advisor may be an attorney,” that the “Advisor shall not be an active participant in resolution proceedings,” and that a “Support Person cannot be an active participant or witness in the resolution process.” Whether a meeting or hearing may be recorded is not stated in the sources reviewed: the Code sets no recording provision for any stage, and neither the Office of Student Conduct's process pages nor its referral pages address recording. — Code of Academic Integrity, Parts III and XII (approved by President August 1, 1991, amended May 25, 2023; retrieved Aug 27, 2026) · policies.umd.edu — Code of Academic Integrity

What follows on the record

“The grade ‘XF’ is recorded on the Student’s transcript with the notation ‘failure due to Academic Misconduct.’” Duration is stated separately: “The normal duration of the placement of the ‘XF’ is twelve (12) months,” abbreviated to six months on unusual and compelling mitigating factors, and “If serious Aggravating Factors are presented, the ‘XF’ may be designated as a permanent notation on the Student’s transcript for the course or academic exercise in question.” On retention, the Code states that disciplinary records “are maintained by the Office of Student Conduct for a period of three (3) years from the date of the matter being closed,” while records carrying a permanent XF notation, Suspension or Expulsion “will be retained permanently unless otherwise specified,” with a petition route to void a record early for good cause. Disclosure to graduate programs, employers or licensing boards is not addressed in the Code. — Code of Academic Integrity, Parts VI and XIV (retrieved Aug 27, 2026) · policies.umd.edu — Code of Academic Integrity

The two questions an adviser raises first, answered from this institution’s own published documents — or recorded as not stated in them.

The standard of proof is the most distinctive provision UMD publishes, and it is not the one most institutions on this site state. Part IX of the Code reads in full (retrieved Aug 27, 2026):

The same standard is restated at each decision point — for the Director of Student Conduct, the Disciplinary Conference Board, and the Honor Board, each of which “may” find responsibility only where “supported by clear and convincing evidence,” and each of which the Code directs to dismiss the charge where that evidence is not found. Source: Code of Academic Integrity, Parts IX, XI and XII.

On the earlier stages, the Code states (retrieved Aug 27, 2026):

The Code lists among a Responding Party's protections at a Disciplinary Conference “Reasonable access to the case file prior to and during the Disciplinary Conference” and “An opportunity to respond to the evidence against them and to call appropriate witnesses on their behalf,” and states that a Responding Party “may waive any of these protections by providing notification to the Director of Student Conduct.”

On appeals, the Code states that “An appeal must be submitted in writing within five (5) Days from the date of the letter providing the Responding Party notice of the final determination and sanction,” defining “Days” as “business weekdays when the University is not closed,” and states that “Grounds for an Appeal are limited to” four, which it titles Substantial Procedural Error, Disproportionate Sanctioning, Arbitrary and Capricious Decision, and New Evidence. It also states plainly who may not appeal: “The Reporting Party and the Instructor cannot appeal a final determination.” Appeals from Disciplinary Conference outcomes are available only where the sanction is a permanent “XF,” Suspension, Expulsion, or Degree Revocation.

The Office of Student Conduct's own process pages restate the sanction expectation and add the AI-specific example the Code itself does not carry: among conduct that “may include, but is not limited to” cheating, the office lists “Using ChatGPT or other generative AI when an instructor has expressly prohibited it's use,” and among plagiarism, “Not properly attributing ChatGPT (when expressly permitted by instructors).” Source: Academic Misconduct Process — Office of Student Conduct (no on-page date displayed; retrieved Aug 27, 2026). The office's referral page describes the resolution sequence, including that “Honor Council members or designees will review all written referrals to determine that a report of academic dishonesty is supported by reasonable cause,” and that an Honor Board “will normally consist of three students, two faculty members, and a non-voting student Presiding Officer.” Source: Academic Integrity Referral — Office of Student Conduct — instructor-facing, quoted because it describes the process a student experiences.

What any of this means for a particular case is for the institution and its process to determine.

Revision history of this page

2026-08-27 — Page created. All quotations retrieved this date from the umd.edu pages linked beside them and captured first-party as plain text; nothing on this page is paraphrase-pending. Source page dates as displayed by the institution: Code of Academic Integrity approved by President August 1, 1991 with amendments through May 25, 2023; Guidelines for Use approved and effective 01/15/2025 with a page modification date of Aug 17, 2026; TLTC AI page footer “Page last updated March 2024”; Contact the Ombuds page modified Aug 23, 2025; Ombuds Services page modified Sep 12, 2025. The DIT integrated-technologies page and both Office of Student Conduct process pages display no date of their own, which is stated beside each quotation rather than filled in.

2026-08-27 — Detection sweep, recorded so a later reviewer can tell a thorough negative from an unasked question. Searched on umd.edu for Turnitin (including its AI writing indicator, SimCheck and Originality product names), Copyleaks, iThenticate, GPTZero, Originality.ai, Winston AI, Crossplag, ZeroGPT, Packback, Grammarly Authorship, Honorlock, Proctorio, Respondus and Examity; and by category across the ELMS-Canvas integrated-technologies pages, the DIT service catalogue and IT support articles, the TLTC teaching and academic-integrity pages, the AI @ UMD approved-services list, and the Graduate School's thesis and dissertation filing pipeline. Found: the Turnitin originality checker, documented as plagiarism detection in ELMS-Canvas and activated per assignment; and Respondus LockDown Browser, documented as an exam-environment tool with no AI-writing claim. Came back empty: every other named vendor, and any UMD statement enabling, disabling, purchasing or declining to purchase Turnitin's AI writing indicator. The Graduate School's thesis pipeline names ProQuest for publication and no detector.

2026-08-27 — Step-2 note for the reviewer, who may reach a different conclusion on the same quotations. This is the closest disqualification call on the site to date. UMD's AI-detection inventory came back empty of any tool it deploys, and the Division of Academic Affairs “advises against incorporating GenAI detection tools into course policies” — which on its own resembles the pattern that put other institutions in the excluded column. It was not treated as a step-2 disqualification here for one reason, stated in UMD's own sentence: the same paragraph contemplates an instructor using such a tool, and contemplates the output “included in referrals to the Office of Student Conduct,” with corroboration required rather than the referral barred. The advice is against writing detectors into course policy; it is not a statement that UMD has disabled a tool or that detector output cannot reach a case.

2026-08-27 — Substantive finding worth the reviewer's attention: UMD's standard of proof is “clear and convincing,” defined in the Code itself, and the words “preponderance” and “more likely than not” appear nowhere in the document. That is a higher standard than the preponderance nearly every other institution published here states, and it is restated at each of the three decision points. Second finding, an absence: the Code contains no provision addressing whether any meeting or hearing may be recorded, by the university or by the student, at any stage — searched in the full Code text and on the Office of Student Conduct's process and referral pages.

2026-08-27 — Deliberate omissions. UMD faculty research on the reliability of AI detectors (Department of Computer Science, TRAILS institute, CMNS news) was located and is not used: it is scholarship by UMD researchers, not a statement of institutional practice, and quoting it would misrepresent a research finding as a policy. A Student Conduct-hosted study PDF surfaced in search was likewise not used, having no stated institutional-position status. The IT Service Desk knowledge-base articles on Turnitin return no readable body text to a plain fetch and are listed by title and link with nothing quoted or characterized from them. Reviewer: Carrie Schluter (review confirmed 2026-08-27). Internet Archive captures: to be added.

2026-08-29 — Sources re-fetched and compared this date; an automated source re-verification, not a human editorial review. Every first-party source linked here was fetched again and compared against the page: the Code of Academic Integrity (still Amended May 25, 2023), the ai.umd.edu Guidelines for Use (still modified 2026-08-17), the DIT integrated-technologies and TLTC AI and academic-integrity pages (TLTC still last updated March 2024), the Student Conduct academic-misconduct and referral pages, and the President's Contact the Ombuds (2025-08-23), Ombuds Services (2025-09-12) and Undergraduate Studies Ombuds pages. All quotations still verbatim and all stated dates intact; the two ServiceNow LockDown/Turnitin knowledge-base pages remain JavaScript portals returning no readable body, exactly as the page discloses. Detection sweep re-run: no net-new detector and no status change — Turnitin originality checking in ELMS-Canvas and Respondus LockDown Browser remain the only documented tools with no AI-writing claim, and Academic Affairs still advises against GenAI detectors while TLTC favors integration. Student Conduct and both ombuds contacts confirmed unchanged. Internet Archive captures were requested this date but the Save Page Now endpoint was unavailable from this environment; captures remain to be added. Automated research pass.

Spot an error or an outdated quotation? hello@gatheredwork.com — corrections are made on the record, in this log.