Bologna Professor tells students it is ok to copy and cheat

According to an expatriate newspaper in Rome, The Local, Professor Luccio Piccio, a professor of economics and politics at the northern Italian university – the western world’s oldest – said he could no longer tolerate the exemption from punishment which has been happening with some of his fellow academics.

“I want to announce that I will not check whether you have copied, because in all conscience I can’t ask you to respect rules which (Bologna) allows its teaching staff to violate,” the Local says he wrote in an online message.

“In effect, a system is in place which guarantees teachers’ impunity (no punishment) in case of plagiarism,” he added on the website of the Alma Mater Studiorum university, founded in 1088.

In his message, Piccio refers to several proven cases of plagiarism implicating some of his colleagues who have gone unpunished due to what he says is an omertà, or vow of silence, at the university.

He noted a parallel between such cases and that of a female student recently suspended for three months after having been found with a smart phone and earphones during an exam.

One case he mentioned dates from January 2015, when an official from a major scientific institution “wrote to the head of our department pointing out that a professor had copied other authors,” Piccio wrote.

The university in that case said that it “allowed no form of plagiarism or intellectual dishonesty,” wrote Piccio, who said that despite the vow, the academic involved in cheating was recently appointed to head a “well-known Bologna research institute.”

Comment: If Italy’s prestigious university of Bologna continues to promote fraud, cheats and plagiarism, then they will be ready to open a new faculty on campus called Trump University.