thought that this particular draft was not submitted for the purposes of the pleasures of the plagiarism will sell says all work submitted must be clean of plagiarism nobody would have reasonably thought this article was ready to be vetted for plagiarism particularly a third year lost the last two who for the last two years had herself been checking other people's papers because she was a state check for the judge to say simply very good to the court herself the district determination about whether or not this was a reasonable expectation of the student reading the particular who which is the place rule was we submit not proper that should have been a jury question in massachusetts we're bound by its law it has the following  court is going to say gee i think you should gotten the plus that you gave be minus professor that's not what we're talking about we're talking about a handbook that the school unilaterally draft gives to the student when the student rises is this is the rule for you when you try to work this is the rule where you have beer in your room whatever and massachusetts says and i quote we the courts employ the standard of reasonable expectation interpret what meaning the party making the rules the university should reasonably expect the other party the student to get we think therefore review such factual allegations to determine whether shater the student has asserted facts which established that brandeis failed to take into account his reasonable expectation let's let's assume here is getting it with a district court judge that she had just taken an article written by someone else copied it verbatim every comma word everything just changed her name the author's name to her name and then submitted it to turn along technology for but handed it to them for editing wouldn't that is to any way to view that other than as palming off someone else's work as your own in other words platers it's plagiarism money instances was so great that there's no way to reasonably view this as other than giving someone something representing that it's one's own when it is well that's that's the key difference between your hypothetical you are and what happened here because obviously you turn something over and this is your work and it's ready for plagiarism then not only are you money monument in her ruling that this was submitted we're not talking about whether she will places everybody thought it was plagiarism were final because there were so many missed no matter if you should the judge said there's no way a third year harvard law student to them other than to be making a representation that this is my work and you can now go forward and do your work with respect to that that's a very good question i would i would tell the jury the following answer in my grief at pages thirteen through nineteen all the emails that she sent that say it's not done i need to do more work i'm working on it still she went to an editor that she found in the computer reconstruction place where she went to try to her computer fixed and that editor of wilson she listed and that are volunteer ok i'll help you catch up i'll help you put it back together she said all the same they bear on jack the reasonable assessment because she didn't give it to them and say this is my she gave it to me said it still needs work i still have to put it together i'm still working on all that i'm still working on and when when you look at large segments in this that have no quote marks around them have no citation at all and there's no evidence that it ever had the full marks around them how do how does the person who receives that article understand it as being anything other than this is my work it might have a bunch of mistakes in it that so the editing is going to be rough your honor i come back simply the same answer the question of the massachusetts state law is whether a student who says i'm still working on it is doing these work if that you give your honor the judge should have addressed those if this was decided by the court she didn't she just ignored them and said nobody and it wasn't nobody there were a lot of you waiting circumstances here the driving question of reasonable decision of the university used to still do with respect to gray's but the cases cited by harvard for deference are where there is no contract provision is no handbook for vision to which the court looks if there is process which is fairly elaborate we're not we're not on this if you're criticizing the process but what we're saying is if there's a mis definition it's like a badge or instruction doesn't matter ever how well the rest of the trial went it's a badge or instruction this if you really is a first year or just a reasonable person and i mean i think his job so well did you have to look at the facts acacias the third year she wasn't a puppy who had just come in that's a fact but there are other facts none of which were taken into account and they should have been i because at that draft she didn't have those citations around either why wasn't she doing for plagiarism then because it was a work in progress that it would have been unfair didn't respect patient hey wait a minute this is my last this is my last wrap this is my second last in the two individual defendants in this case for us are one read the question presented for the court in this case is whether harvard's decision to discipline a student for plagiarism should be overturned where the plagiarism rule plainly in an ambiguous lee applies to all work the students of meds without any exception for incompleteness or drafts or readiness for publication and even without any exception for a student plagiarizes inadvertently i thought the issue was whether there was a breach of contract it is your honor the courts in the circuit massachusetts and my brother is correct  course massachusetts law applies here courts reviewing cases like this in which a student challenges the imposition of discipline by a private university you the analysis as one that is contractual but with a bit of a twist the university student relationship deemed to be contractual in nature but in reviewing what that contract is and what it means according to reports that contract using the standard of reasonable expectation that has been settled law in the circuit for four years the reason you don't disagree that is the reasonable expectation of both parties do i agree that the standard that is settled law in the circuit has an element in which the students expectations are considered but at the end of the day the standard is what should the university reasonably expect a student to understand i mean the students sometimes effects potations with the students objective patient the students objective leave reasonable expectations but there's a reason why the standard isn't just framed in those words just you know that this court for forty years could have been saying we look at these cases by determining what the student reasonably could expect the court could easily write its decisions that way if it wanted to but it hasn't for forty years it said you look at these cases by considering what the university reasonably should expect the student to understand that brings into the equation the second fundamental principle that these cases need to be decided in light of and that is the principle that courts do not interfere with the academic judgments of private universities whether we're talking about academic conduct or other types of student misconduct the law in the circuit in massachusetts is well settled that the court does not interfere with those judgments as long as the student got a court has said over and over again not only this court but also the massachusetts courts is that as long as the student got a fundamentally fair process and there was some reasonable basis for the university's decision we're not going to interfere with it and here cases you rather it's clear and we make this point in our brief that the deferential standard applies whether there's a hearing or not the the law in massachusetts as elsewhere is that a university can handle student discipline either with or without a formal hearing it has that right where it has a hearing process the court needs to look at the question of whether that hearing was conducted substantially in compliance with the rules that the university set out for such hearing but there's no question that the deference to university decision making applies whether that decision was arrived at with a formal hearing or by the decision of a dean acting unilaterally or however the university reaches that decision he said those cases in our i would also make the point that going back to the standard a reasonable expectation what we think is walker has misstated what that standard is and tries to admit the element of deference doesn't matter what the standard is however the court wants to parse that reasonable expectation standard judd's of bell's decision should be upheld and the reason for that is because the fact which attribution in this article existed at every step along the way let me ask you to suppose when she handed in the article she said look i'm really running behind this is going to have large segments in it that are of word for word from someone else's and it's not my working and i haven't got the box or the sites and yet but i'm given to see you get a sense of the genius would that be plagiarism under this it would be i would say two things number one it would absolutely be within herbert's right to deem that to be pleasure even though the person is not representing it's own their own work under harvard's strict rule i think harvard would have the right to interpret it in that way here we don't need to reach that particular question because there is no evidence in the record to support the claim that she told any editor that attributions were missing well were questions to whatever her then turned her conversation with i believe it but yes didn't she tell him that there's a problem with the potations in the citations specifically and she was working on she said and i think your honor drilled right down with my brother on this conversation this issue what she said was that what my counsel just said was that more work was need more work needed to be done i'm still working on it it still needs work all of those things are very different from saying there are attributions here that are missing and you need to understand that there are citations here that need to be provided that aren't here yet what about when she said i was talking about fixing quotations comma fixing citation you with that it's completely different from saying citations are missing let's remember the context here she's providing this final draft to go into the text that process the very purpose of which the whole purpose of which that is a completely different thing from revealing and there's no evidence that you know there are said haitians actually missing you can't check citations that there at all and so this is a very different case at the time that she said she was the working on the the editors told her the deadline has come and gone for you to submit your final draft you're not being fair to the editors if you don't get yours in like everybody else has gotten then you need to submit your draft she says here it is but i still need to work on it i still want to work on it that in no way shape or form is a revelation that this document is a collage of plagiarism completely la quotation marks and attributions from the many works that she get from wholesale it's a politically different set of facts that this record simply doesn't support and the know this line doesn't that go to the jury she her testimony is that that is what she intended my to comment the question it doesn't go to the jury because the question is could harbor reasonably paint this to be an act of plagiarism in light of the wording of that plagiarism rule which is strict and on the big us and has no room for lack of completeness or drafts or anything of the like and it doesn't go to the jury where every one of these issues what she regardless of how one views the reasonable explanation standard she could not reasonably expect the plagiarism rule did not apply to this final draft and harvard's rejection of her arguments you what did she mean by this which she said not complete does that mean citations was that just a subset of what she was talking about those are good questions and those are for a jury you cannot simply abstract the word submit any just take it you the judges one take your dictionary defines it as and say that's what it means nobody to interpret it differently abstracted from the facts it just doesn't work that way when the test is reasonable how challenge value and as i understand your argument we should give no deference to our grid we should just treat this as a normal beach of contract action clean in part th cases are clear on that where there is ample vision the deference doesn't apply so you say the whole administrative you type proceeding that your brother wants us to adopt goes out the window if there is a hand him i want to help because i patiently when she said over that draft two days later say she she had two five days where she had to take over all of the sources that she had reproved him and she took them  material she gave them or self she gave them the tools to find her guilty if she had recently expected in those circumstances that she was worried that it replaces my she was still working on negligence every day in courtroom common sense our point is that should not be made into a judgement by a very very smart judge removed from the circumstances where she doesn't the judge doesn't even discuss the facts involved like y'all have been doing what about this what about that none of that was discussed we would like this reversed with a jury trial and if mr black is correct and yes but if he is about all these things then he'll win under the proper standard