Plagiarism and AI at SNHU: the AI policy the handbook links to does not exist yet

The short answer

SNHU’s Student Handbook tells you to follow “The SNHU AI policy” and then, in the published PDF, adds the words “(add link when available)”. The policy it points to is not there. What actually binds you today is your course syllabus, the handbook’s Guidelines for AI Use, and an Academic Integrity Policy that never says the word AI.

This is a short page, deliberately. There is not much published, and padding it out would mean inventing rules. What follows is what SNHU does say, what it does not say, and the questions worth putting in writing to your instructor before you submit.

The sentence with the missing link

The Student Handbook 2025-2026 opens its “Guidelines for AI Use” section (p.56) like this:

“The SNHU AI policy (add link when available)establishes principles in the adoption and use of AI tools in a university-related capacity…”

The unresolved placeholder is in the published document — the slip is in the original, not a transcription error of ours. An editorial note intended for whoever was assembling the handbook was published as part of the student-facing text.

It matters for a practical reason. The handbook is telling you that a university-level AI policy is the governing instrument, and the instrument is not available to read. So you cannot comply with it, you cannot cite it in your defence, and nobody can fairly hold you to it. What is left is the guidance in that same handbook section and whatever your individual course says.

If a question ever arises about your work, that gap is worth naming calmly and early: you followed the guidance that was published, because the policy it refers to had not been.

What the catalog policy actually says

The binding document is the Academic Integrity Policyin the SNHU Academic Catalog, under the category “Rights and Responsibilities”. It carries a start date of 3 January 2022 and no end date, and it is carried unchanged into the University Catalog for Fall 2026. No approving body is named in the policy text — unusual, and worth knowing if you are ever trying to work out who could amend it.

Its definition of plagiarism:

“Plagiarism:The use, whether by paraphrase or direct quotation, of the published or unpublished work of another without full and clear acknowledgment through proper citation.”

Note “whether by paraphrase or direct quotation”. Rewording a source does not remove the citation duty; it is named as plagiarism in the same breath as copying.

Its definition of cheating is where AI arrives, without being named:

“Cheating: The act of deceiving, which includes such acts as, but is not limited to: Using unauthorized notes, materials or other study aids during course work; Using unauthorized technology in completing course work; … Allowing another person to do one’s work and submitting it as one’s own; … Undertaking any activity intended to obtain an unfair advantage over other students; Or whatever else is deemed contrary to the rules of fairness, including special rules designated by the instructor/reviewer in the course/competency”

Two clauses do the work. “Using unauthorized technology” catches a generative tool your course did not authorise. And the closing clause hands the definition back to your instructor: “special rules designated by the instructor/reviewer”. Whatever the syllabus says becomes part of the integrity policy for you.

The contract-cheating definition reaches AI by one word:

“Contract Cheating: The obtaining of academic work from another person or entitythat is then submitted for academic credit as if the student had created the work themselves.”

“Or entity” is broad enough to cover a service rather than a person. It is not an AI clause, and it was not written as one, but it is the language available.

There is also a self-plagiarism rule that catches reuse of your own work: “work done for one course and submitted to another… to include repeated classes.” If you are recycling a section of an earlier paper, cite yourself or ask first.

A full-text scan of all 90 policies in the current SNHU catalog for “artificial intelligence”, “generative AI”, “ChatGPT” and “AI” returns zero hits. AI is named only in the handbook, in a separate section, as guidance.

The handbook’s guidelines for AI use

The framing is welcoming. SNHU “recognizes and embraces the possibilities artificial intelligence (AI) tools offer to reshape education… We also recognize the responsibilities that accompany its use.”

The operative sentence for online students is much firmer than the framing:

“Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools such as Grammarly, ChatGPT, and others can provide an opportunity to enhance your learning if used appropriately. … These tools should never be used to ‘do the work’ for you… You are expected to complete your assignments without substantive assistance from any tools, including GenAI.”

Read the list of tools carefully. Grammarly is namedin the same sentence as ChatGPT, as an example of a GenAI tool. If you use a grammar or rewriting assistant on your drafts, SNHU has put it in the category it is asking you to be careful with, and “without substantive assistance from any tools” is the standard being set. That is not a rule we benefit from repeating, and it is still the rule.

The DO list includes the disclosure duty:

“Acknowledge the use of GenAI tools— Transparency is an important ethical principle to uphold. Acknowledge when you have used a GenAI tool to generate ideas or clarify information through citing your usage of GenAI.”

The DON’T list adds three limits worth knowing:

• “Copy/paste the outputs from these sources if not explicitly allowed— It is never appropriate to copy another’s work to pass it off as your own, as this would be a significant violation of SNHU’s Academic Integrity Policy.”
• “Submit SNHU course materials to a GenAI tool— This includes course materials such as discussion prompts, discussion posts from peers, assignment sheets, or readings.”
• “Reference GenAI tools as scholarly sources— While the use of GenAI tools should be cited, they are not scholarly sources.”

The middle one is easy to break by accident. Pasting a discussion prompt or a classmate’s post into a chatbot to help you understand it is named as something you may not do. A separate section, “Prohibited Uses of AI”, extends that to your own submissions: students “may not enter any sensitive, restricted, or otherwise protected data into any generative AI tool or service not approved by the university”, and the list of protected data explicitly includes “Work produced by students to satisfy course requirements”.

Read plainly, that reaches any third-party tool you would paste your own assignment into that SNHU has not approved. We sell a checking tool, so let us be direct about it: SNHU publishes no list of approved tools that we could find, and the safe course is to ask your instructor before uploading your coursework anywhere — including to us.

Campus students get a much shorter rule, quoted here in full because it is the whole thing:

“Students are to follow AI course policy as stated within the course syllabus or risk violating SNHU’s Academic Integrity Policy resulting in academic sanctions. Any questions regarding the use of AI to fulfill course requirements should be directed to the course instructor.”

On the form your acknowledgement should take, the handbook delegates: “Citing Work Generated from AI Tools — Please refer to Shapiro Library’s FAQs to obtain the most current formatting for citation styles.” So disclosure is required in principle and unspecified in form. If you need a starting shape for one, our AI disclosure statement guide covers what a good one contains — but the format your course accepts is the one that counts.

What SNHU does not publish

This section is the reason the page is short. These are absences in documents we could read in full — the catalog and the handbook PDF were both retrievable — so they are documented gaps rather than pages we were blocked from.

• No detection or similarity product is named anywhere. Not in the Academic Integrity Policy, not in the Student Handbook 2025-2026, and not on the Shapiro Library’s Academic Integrity guide. A full-text search of the handbook PDF for “Turnitin”, “SafeAssign”, “plagiarism detection” and “similarity” returns nothing.
• No position on AI-writing detection. No SNHU office publishes a view for or against AI detectors, or says whether any AI indicator is switched on. The Guidelines for AI Use govern your conduct and say nothing about detecting it.
• No student self-check route. The library guide sends students to the Academic Support Center, the Online STEM Center, tutors and citation help — human support, no tool.
• No comparison-repository or retention statement, and therefore no opt-out. SNHU does not say whether submitted work is stored for future comparison.
• No transcript-notation rulefor academic-integrity findings, and no retention period for them. The handbook does say a conduct record may be disclosed “should an outside agency inquire about a student’s conduct record”.
• No published case data — no annual count of allegations or findings.

Say what this does and does not mean. It does not mean no tool is in use; a course could run one inside its own learning platform without any of these documents mentioning it. It means you cannot find out from SNHU’s published policy, so the honest answer to “does SNHU use Turnitin” is that SNHU does not say. If the answer matters to you, ask.

The process, the standard and the appeal

The procedural half lives in the Student Handbook 2025-2026, and it differs by where you study.

Online courses(p.53): the instructor emails you and files a “Student Conduct & Academic Integrity Concern Form” with the Office of Community Standards. Then: “The Community Standards Manager assigned to the case will investigate the allegation. Based on the evidence, the manager will determine whether the allegations were founded or unfounded and, if necessary, will impose the appropriate sanctions.”

Campus courses (pp.54-55): the faculty member must contact you within three business days, consult the Associate Dean or Dean, and then choose an informal route (first-time, less egregious — a meeting, a reduced grade, and a report still filed) or a formal route (serious or repeat — investigation and an administrative hearing).

The two kinds of penalty are separated, which is worth understanding because it means two decisions can land on you from two directions:

“The faculty member determines any and all academic penalties, such as grade reduction, giving a grade of zero, and/or disallowing resubmission of the assignment in question. The administration determines all non-academic penalties, such as issuing a warning, reprimand, probation, suspension, or dismissal, as outlined in the code of conduct.”

The conduct scale runs warning, reprimand, probation, suspension, dismissal, in increasing severity. Suspension is “dismissed from the University for a period of time, with an opportunity for re-admission”; dismissal is “permanently… without opportunity for re-admission”. Both “may only be imposed by a disciplinary board” (dismissal also, in egregious cases, as an emergency measure by senior leadership). The handbook adds that “violations may be cumulative” and that prior history and the time between violations are considered.

The standard of proof, verbatim:

“The burden of proof is on the University to show that the student is responsible for the violation or a pattern of misconduct. The rules of evidence applicable to civil and criminal cases do not apply. The decision will be made based upon a preponderance of the information presented – whether a violation of University policy more likely than notoccurred.”

“More likely than not” is a low bar compared with a criminal one, and the burden does sit with the University rather than with you. Degree and credit revocation is the exception: the newer “Academic Record and Degree Revocation” policy (start date 6 June 2026) requires clear and convincing evidence, defined as “a higher standard of proof than proof ‘by a preponderance of the evidence’ but a lower standard than required for proof ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’”. That authority rests with the president and is delegated to the University Provost.

The appealis reviewed by the Associate Dean or Dean with the Office of Community Standards within 10 business days, and it is limited to three grounds: new information not known at the time of the hearing; a procedural error, where “the hearing was not conducted in accordance with procedures prescribed by the hearing process”; or that “the severity of the sanction is not appropriate for the violation(s) committed”.

Notice what is not a ground: simply disagreeing with the finding. An appeal that says “I did not do it” and adds nothing new fits none of the three. Evidence of how you wrote the piece — drafts, version history, notes, sources — is what turns a disagreement into “information not known at the time”. Collect it before you need it; see how to prove you wrote it yourself and, if a concern has already been raised, what to do when you are accused.

If a detector score is what started this, our guide to an AI detector flagging your thesis sets out what that number does and does not establish on its own.

Two more sentences from p.53 that catch people out. The policy “covers all academic conduct, including submitted drafts; final coursework; research; comprehensive examinations; and the preparation of theses or dissertations” — drafts and thesis preparation are inside it. And you remain responsible even after a final grade is issued, with “ignorance of these standards” expressly not a defence.

What to ask, and who to ask

Because the published record is thin, the useful move is to make your own record. Email your instructor — email, so there is a written answer — and ask:

• What is the AI policy for this course? Is any use permitted, and for which stages of the work?
• If use is permitted, how do you want it acknowledged, and in what format?
• Do grammar and editing assistants count as GenAI here? The handbook names Grammarly as an example, so this is a fair question rather than a pedantic one.
• Is any similarity or AI-detection tool run on submissions in this course, and will I see the result?
• Is my submitted work stored for comparison against future submissions?

A written answer to the first two is worth more to you than anything on this page. It converts a national-scale policy vacuum into a specific instruction you can show you followed. For questions the instructor cannot answer, the Office of Community Standards owns the process side and the Shapiro Library owns the citation side.

Before you submit

• Treat the syllabus as the policy.The catalog definition ends by absorbing “special rules designated by the instructor/reviewer”, so your course rule is the integrity rule.
• Treat silence as no.The handbook’s baseline is that you complete assignments “without substantive assistance from any tools, including GenAI”.
• Acknowledge any use you were allowed. Disclosure is required in principle even though no form is prescribed; ask for the format.
• Do not paste course materials into a chatbot— prompts, readings, assignment sheets or classmates’ posts are named on the DON’T list.
• Ask before uploading your own coursework to any tool SNHU has not approved. The Prohibited Uses section covers “work produced by students to satisfy course requirements”.
• Keep your drafts and version history. Only new information, a procedural error or a disproportionate sanction can carry an appeal.

If you want a read on your own writing before you hand it in, our AI checkis free up to 1,500 words, with no account and no name — and our published error rates are measured on English and German corpora, so no detector, ours included, produces proof. Check your course’s position on third-party tools first; see also how accurate AI detectors really are.

Sources

• SNHU Academic Catalog, “Academic Integrity Policy” (category: Rights and Responsibilities), start date 3 January 2022, no end date, carried into the University Catalog for Fall 2026 (effective 30 June 2026 to 3 January 2027). No approving body named in the policy text. snhu.edu/admission/academic-catalogs → Policies → Academic Integrity Policy.
• SNHU Academic Catalog, “Academic Record and Degree Revocation”, start date 6 June 2026 — the clear-and-convincing standard and the Provost’s delegated authority. Same catalog.
• SNHU Student Handbook 2025-2026 (PDF) — “Conduct Standing and Sanctions” p.16, “Academic Integrity Process” pp.53-55, “Guidelines for AI Use” pp.56-58, including the “(add link when available)” placeholder on p.56.
• SNHU Shapiro Library, Academic Integrity guide — the route to the handbook, and the source of the citation-format referral. Names no detection tool and offers no self-check.

This page is orientation, not legal advice. What binds you is the SNHU Academic Integrity Policy in the current catalog, the Student Handbook 2025-2026, and the AI rule written in your own course syllabus.