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Meanwhile, Duncan was enquiring of various news media
nationwide as to their interest in reporting the challenges of his
experience. Only Khrono responded, formally, but chose not to
pursue, while another media outlet told him, off the record, that,
in Duncan’s words: ‘news publications have ran stories similar to
my own in the past, and unfortunately the lack of reception by
administrative officials at universities and in public offices has
negated interest in continuing the publication of such stories.’
Your reporter was first informed of this story in early October
last year, at which point the Joint Complaints Board, as seated by
the Norwegian Ministry of Education, was expected to reach its
conclusion on individual cases by the end of November. Since their
ultimate judgment would determine, officially, whether Duncan
had plagiarised with malicious intent, his case file and research
made available to Unikum, totalling 98 pages across 16 documents,
were read in their entirety in anticipation of this deadline.
While it was hoped that the outcome, good or otherwise, would
delineate some sort of closure for Duncan, no such verdict was
delivered. According to the Advokathus in mid-January this year,
the Joint Complaints Board is still working out how to process the
cases that hadn’t been considered prior to its suspension and have
only committed to meeting more regularly to rule on specific cases
in Spring this year, a delay of at least four months.
Jason Duncan undertook a study abroad semester
to UiA during his bachelor‘s degree at Oregon State
University in the United States
Further to the ‘Written Explanation to the Appeals Committee’
document, an ‘Additional Comments for the Appeals Committee’
paper was prepared by Duncan due to a file entitled ‘Case
Documents’ that was delivered to him by Arneson from the
Secretariat at UiA mid-May. It was in this file that Duncan first
learned of his two-semester exclusion and annulment of the
original test result, accusing him of plagiarism with ‘willful
action or gross negligence’ and having attended UiA on a study
abroad semester almost seven years prior, he, therefore, ‘must be
considered an experienced student’, concluding, ‘[t]he Secretariat
cannot identify any mitigating circumstances in the case.’ His
advisor Arneson not knowing the student ombudsperson for
Kristiansand was replaced by Stavanger, preventing Duncan
from sourcing such support for almost two months, not deemed
‘mitigating’.
Upon receipt of the Appeals Committee’s decision (available in
Norwegian only) to uphold the Secretariat’s position of annulment
and exclusion for one academic year, Duncan filed a complaint. At
the end of May, Veland was organising the appropriate paperwork
for such a procedure on which the Joint Complaints Board, a
national appellate body of last resort at the legislative level,
would ultimately decide. By late August, this was due to be heard
sometime in November, with Duncan notified of the outcome
within four weeks of their meeting.
Speaking to Andersen in early December, due to the human
resources required to offer all UiA communication in Norwegian
and English, if limited manpower dictates that the information can
only be written in one language, English is now used as default by
STA. A link to kildekompasset should always be visible, in the form
of an icon, on the student dashboard of Canvas, however, at the
time of our meeting, a temporary notification regarding artificial
intelligence had replaced it. Again, in Norwegian, on the desktop
English version of Canvas, noted by Anderson to rectify later.
When asked how long this digital notice board had removed the
icon link to kildekompasset for, and when it would be reinstated,
Greta Hilding, Director of Academic Affairs, wrote:
‘After investigations by the system administrator in
Canvas, we cannot see that the link to Kildekompasset
has been disabled. From 29 November to 22 December
2023, a message was posted regarding rules for the use
of artificial intelligence (AI). This message does not affect
whether the link to Kildekompasset is available or not.’
Despite this, neither Andersen nor I could locate the link while
the message itself was, according to Hilding, never updated to
include an English language version. Helene Braathen, Chief
Human Resources and Organisation Officer, informed us that
since the UiA student ombudsperson needed parent leave, the UiS
equivalent was contracted to take over from 1 January to 30 June
2023. While this covered the entire semester of Duncan’s appeals
process while resident in Norway, he told us the contact details for
the UiA ombudsperson website were never updated.
Another Duncan discovery: Anderson found the information she
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