# FILED
July 29, 1998 Cecil W. Crowson Appellate Cou rt Clerk IN THE COURT OF A

PPEALS OF TENN ESSEE AT NASHVILLE

KRISTEN TATUM and JULIE DURR, ) ) Petitioners/Appellants, ) Davidson Chan cery No. 95-3910-I II ) VS. ) Appeal No . 01A01-9707-CH- 00326 ) THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE, ) ) Respondent/Appellee. )
APPEAL FROM

THE CHANCE RY COURT O F DAVIDSON COUNTY AT NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE THE HONORABLE ELLEN HOBBS LY LE, CHANCELLOR

JOHN D. AGEE COOLEY, COOLEY & AGEE Kingston, Tennessee Attorney for Appellant

BEAU CHAMP E. B ROG AN GENERAL COU NSEL THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE Knoxville, Tennessee Attorney for Appellee

AFFIRMED

ALAN E. HIGHERS, J.2

CONCUR: DAVID R. FA

RMER, J. HOLLY KIRBY LI LLARD, J. The University of Tennessee at Knoxville (“ University”) found the appellants, Kristen Tatum (“Tatum”) and Julie Durr (“Durr” ) (col lectively “appell ants ”), guilty of “academic cheating or plagiarism” in the completion of a take-home examinati on in violation of University

of Tennessee rule 1720-4-3.03(1)(a). As punishment, the Univer sity placed appellants on indefinite disciplinary suspension. The Chancery C ourt of Davidson County affirmed the University’ s action. On appeal, appellants assert that

the finding of guilt was not supported by substantial and material ev idence. For reaso ns stated hereinaf ter, we affirm the trial court’s order.

At all times pertinent to this cas e, appellants were gr aduate students at the University

of Tennesse e at Knoxville. During t he fa ll semester of 1994, appellants were enrolled in a graduate sta tistics course taught

by Dr. Mary Sue Younger (“Dr. Younger”). Students enrolled in the course w ere issued individual

computer accounts which c ould be accessed only by usi ng a student’s name and confidential password.

On December 8, Dr. Younger distributed to appellants, as well as to other st udents in the class, a take-home exami nation (“exam”) with instructions to retu rn the answers to the exam by 5: 00 p.m. on Tuesd ay, Decembe r 13. The ex am contained fo ur problems wh ich required the use of a computer and a printer. The students w ere al lowed to us e certain materials in the completion of the exam, including class manuals, notes, and pri or homework. Students were also all owed to consult with the class teaching assistant Yuriko Taketani and Dr. Younger herse lf. Collaboration on the exam, however, was not permitted. A statementconveying this thought was conspicuousl y displayed on the cov

er of each copy of the exam: ”I understand that i t is considered cheating to give or receiv

e any unauthorized assistance on this exam.” Appellants sig ned this statement, acknowl edging their comprehension of this proh ibition.
Appellants submitted their exams to D r. Younger by the designated deadline. Data3

sets were not required

to be turned in with the exams. Appell ant Tatum, however, turned in copies of her data sets. In the course o f grading the first exam problem for all the students, Dr. Younger discov ered that one of the pape rs had data entry errors for the problem which resulted in incorrect answers. As s he conti nued to grade papers, Dr. Younger happened upon another paper with the

identical wrong answers. These papers belong to appellants. Dr. Young er further testified that no other student had made similar
errors. Based up

on a comparison of t he two test papers, Dr. Y ounger determined that appellants’ answers to problem one were wrong in exactly the same way. She concl uded that the two students had to have made the same data entry error s in order to achieve the same incorrect answers

.

There after, Dr. Younger left telephone messag es with each of the appellants , asking each to con tact he r. Appellant Tatum was out of town, but appellant Durr met with Dr. Younger in her office on December 14, 1994. At th e meeting, Dr. Younger sought and received Durr’s computer user name and her confidential password for her class account. Dr. Younger made a printout of Dur r’s data sets and compared it to T atum’ s data sets. Durr’s data set s contain ed data e ntry lines which were id entical i n every way to the data sheet included by Tatum with he r exam. Specifically , the data sets compiled by Tatum and Durr omitted three numbers, and the omissions occurred in the exact sequence in the set of ninety nu mbers. Du rr offer ed no expl anation to Dr. Youn ger as to ho w t h e data replications occurred.
Followingher

meeting with Durr, Dr. Younger continued to compar e the two exam papers. She found that problem two of the exam also contained identical incorrect results. Tatum had erroneously repeated a series of three numbers which resulted in an incorrect total of forty-eight data sets r ather than forty-five. Durr also entered forty -eight data sets rather than forty-five. Dr. Y

ounger’s testimony w

as that the computer-generated output for problem two was identical for both Tatum’s and Durr’s ex ams. At trial, it wa

s undisputed that identical incorrect data had to have been entered in both e xams for this to ha

v e occurred.4

Other common errors, format congru encies, and common peculiariti es were also put into evidence at the hearing. A majority of the incorrect or peculiar entries differed only in termsor abbreviations that were used to designat e the same set , category , or item. Both Tatum and Durr plotted a graph erroneously by swapping the X and Y axis. On the same graph, Tatum and Durr used letters rather than numbers to plot points. One other st udent plotted a bac kw ard graph, but used numbers instead of letters to plot the points. Appellants arranged their data sets for problem one in alphabetical order rather than the order in which the data appeared wi th the explanation at the heari ng that at some point during the course of the class, they were told that alphabetic al ordering was appr

opriate to use with the SAS program. However, Dr. Y ounger pointed out in her tes timony that neither Tatum nor Durr followed an al phabetic designation for the d ata in pro blem two. Furth erinst ances of simi larities c an be found in t he record w hich render

the exams submitted by appellants to be strikingly cong ruent.
Appellants testified on their own behalf. Each deni ed collaborating with the other
on the exam. Tatum contends that she could have entered her data into the computer, made a print request, inadv ertently picked up another student’s data pr intout a nd then reentered the data as her own. Both Tatum and Durr suggested that the simil arities could be attributed to computer/printer “gl itches.” Appellants further testified that they had the habit of transposing the X a nd Y axis on their g raphs.

The trial court noted that “no testimony was offered to suppor t appellants’ claim that
a computer/printer error could have occurred such that computer entries made by th e two students could have

become com mingled on the same printed document or that such commingling did in fact occ ur.” The record evinces that o ne witness testified that the printer in the computer laboratory coul d have printer misfeeding problems. But the witness testimony

evinced that these misfeeding problems onl y resulted in paper being printed out of order. This witness testified that the quality of the printouts would not be affected nor would the printouts result in a combination of words or misprints. The trial court properly noted that of the eight affidavits submitt e d by the appellants in suppor t of the “printer5

pro blem” theory, only one pers on claimed personal knowl edge of the printer in question having combined print on one page sent from two different peopl e or monitors.
The sole issue before this Court on appeal is as follows: Whethe r the decision of the Univer sity of Tennessee a

t Knoxville, affir me d by the trial court, was supported by substantial and material ev idence?
Both this Court and the Chancery Court revie w decision s under th e Admini strative Procedures Act pursuant to Tennessee Code Anno tated § 4-5-322(h), which provides:

The court may affirm the decision of the agency or remand the case for further

proceedings. The cour t may re verse o r modify the decision if therights of the petit ioner have been prejudiced because the administra tive findings , inferences, c onclusions or decisions are: (1) In violation of constitutional or statutory provisions; (2) In exce ss of the statuto ry authori ty of the a gency; (3) Made upon unlawful proc edure; (4) Arbitrary or

capricious

or characterized by

abuse of discretion or clearly unwarra nted exercise of discreti on; or (5) Unsupported by eviden ce which is both substantial and materi al in the light of the entire r ecord. In determining the substantial ity of evidence, the court shall take into account whatever in the record fairly detract s from its weight, but the court shall not substitute its judgment for that of the agency as to the w eight of the evidence on que stions of fact. Tenn. Code Ann. § 4-5-322(h) (Supp. 1997).
Further, Tenn. Code Ann. § 4-5-322(I) requires: No agency decision purs uant to a hearing in a contested case shall be reversed, remanded or modified by the reviewing court unless for errors whi ch affect the merits of such decision. Tenn. Code Ann. § 4-5-322(I) (S upp. 1997).

In addition, such review is li mited to the record of the case. Tenn. Code Ann. § 4-5-322(g). Findings of fact made by the ag ency may not be reviewed de novo

by the trial
or appellate courts, and courts should not substitute their judgment for that of th e agency as to the weight of the evi dence on factual issues. Southern Ry. Co. v. Tennessee Bd. of Equalization , 682 S.W.2d 196, 199 (Tenn. 1984); CF Indus. v. Te nnessee Pub. Serv.6

Comm'n , 599 S.W.2d 536 (Tenn. 1980); National Council on Com pensation

Ins. v. Gaddis , 786 S.W.2d 240, 242 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1989). Factu al iss ues must be reviewed upon a s tandard of substantial and material ev idence. Humana of Tennessee v. Tenn esse e Health Facilities Comm

ission , 551 S.W.2d 665 (Tenn. 197 7). Substantial and material evidence is such relevant ev iden ce as a reasonable mind might accept to support a rational conclusion and such as to furnish a reasonably sound basis for the actionunder consideration. Clay Co unty Manor, Inc. v. State, 849 S.W.2d 755 (Tenn. 1993). The "substantial and material evidence stand ard" in Tenn. CodeAnn. § 4-5-322(h)(5) req uires
a searching and careful inq uiry that subjects the a gency's de cision to close scru tiny. Wayne County v. Solid Waste

Disposal Control Bd. , 756 S.W.2d 274, 280 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1988).
Appellants allege that the hearing officer’ s decision was not suppor ted by substantial and material evidence in the record. Tenn. Code. Ann. § 4-5- 322(h). We disagree. In her Initial Order, the hearing officer s ta ted that the exams papers submit ted by Tatum and Durr were “rife with identical errors and nearlyidentical entries.” A fterperusing the record, the trial cour t found extensive evidence to support the Un iversity’s char ges of collaboration. Specifically,t he trial court found the follow ing to be indicative of collaboration:

** the omission of the same three numbers in the exac t same sequence in a 90-number data set in Question #1 (res ulting in identical incorrect answers); ** the addi tion of t he same t hree num bers in co nsecutive sequence in a 45-number data set in Question #2 (resulting in identical incorrect answers); ** rows of data in rever se order in Question #1, but n ormal order in Question #2; * * the use of letters for values in Question #3, but no t in th e other three questions; ** the u ses of n umbers “1" an d “2" instea d of the letter

s “m” and “f” to designate male and female; * * the us es of numbers instead of names to represe nt television shows i n Question #1; ** the omission of the same key term in the printedformula for Question #1, even thoug h it was included in both students’ calculations; ** graphs charted backwar ds on Question #3.

Even taking into

account all matters in the evidence which detract from the w eight7

of the evidence, T enn. Code A nn. § 4-5-322(h), the finding s of the Administrative Law Judge and the trial court are supported by substanti al and material evidence.

A ccordingl y, the judgment of the trial court is affirmed. Costs of this a ppeal ar e taxed to a ppellan ts, for whi ch execut ion may iss ue if nec essary.

HIGHERS, J.

CONCUR:

FARMER, J.

LILLARD, J.