University of Iowa readmits Chinese student Yin Pengzhen, a serial cheater who admitted plagiarism, after court blunder
- The university failed to provide Yin Pengzhen’s written admissions of cheating to the court before it ruled his expulsion was unfair
- Yin, who had already been sanctioned twice for cheating, is now on track to graduate this spring
A University of Iowa student from China expelled for repeated academic misconduct has been readmitted after the school blundered by failing to use his written admissions of cheating against him in court, the school confirmed Tuesday.
A judge said that her order in the high-profile case, reinstating business student Yin Pengzhen, now appears unjust given that Yin acknowledged plagiarising the paper in question after he was sanctioned for cheating twice previously.
But she said the university failed to provide Yin’s incriminating emails during appeals of the expulsion and she wasn’t aware of them before ruling that Iowa lacked “substantial evidence” of Yin’s plagiarism.
In one email, Yin admitted to a school official that “I didn’t write the paper” that he had been expelled for plagiarising and asserted a friend paid someone else to compose it. In another, he said his serial cheating was the result of errors in judgment that deserved disciplinary action but not expulsion.
Yin, who was a few credits short of a business degree before the expulsion, has re-enrolled this semester following District Judge Karen Romano’s December ruling overturning his expulsion.
