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Mary LaFrance
09/2512001 07:54 PM
Chrlstme Smith/UNLV@UNlV

cc
Subject: Honor Code Matter

Dear Christine:
I have become aware of a possible honor code violation that warrants investigation. Here are the
facts as I understand them:
Mark Trat05 has reported to me that Zacharias Coughlin, a student in Professor Tratos's Cyberlaw
class this summer, failed to turn in a reqUired paper. Professor Tratos required his students to
submit their papers both in hard copy and in electronic form, and apparently received neither
from Mr. Coughlin In a series of email exchangeswithProfessorTrat05.Mr. Coughlin admitted
not turning in an electronic version of the paper, but asserted that he did submit a hard copy.
Professor Tratos gave Mr. Coughlin a grade of "Incomplete" for the class, and asked him to turn in
another copy of the paper to be graded. Mr. Coughlin said that he did not have another hard
copy, and that his computer's motherboard had failed, making it impossible to recover the
electronic version. However, when Professor Tratos offered to pay for the recovery of the
document from Mr. Coughlin's hard drive, Mr. Coughlin asserted that he might not have saved it
on the hard drive after all, and that he had privacy concerns about allowing someone to access
that drive. He then submitted an abbreViated paper which falls short of the course requirements.
I believe there is a strong possibility that Mr. Coughlin has been lying to Professor Tratos
throughout this exchange, that he never submitted his paper in hard copy in the first place, and
that the only paper he wrote for this class was the abbreviated one which he finaly submitted at
the end of this exchange. Therefore, I believe there should be an investigation into whether Mr.
Coughlin made false statements to Professor Tratos.
Please let me know if I can be of assistance.
Regards.
Mary LaFrance
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs