Need Advice for a friend

[Gingersnapshard]

My friend just finished uni. She even got some award for excellence or something (I am not sure what exactly it is called). But she got a letter from the school accusing her of collusion and plagiarism and has been invited for an interview with the schools disciplinary committee.
She is going ballistic and crying her eyes out. It turns out a school mate asked her for help with a paper as she was done with that paper, he said he was having issues writing the paper, he begged and begged her for help, everybody refused to help him so she took pity on him and helped him. According to her, she showed him her paper in the process of teaching him. She also said that she showed him for like 5 mins but he must have ended up plagiarizing off her paper. She guesses he must have taken a photograph of her paper as he wasn't with it for long.

Anyway, she is so distraught and has been crying non stop since yesterday. Please can I get any advice on what she can do. She honestly didn't mean to collude or plagiarize with this low life school mate. Please help.

Tell her to seek advice from her Students' Union. They will be used to supporting students through academic misconduct hearings.

There will be a hearing, and she will have the opportunity to say what happened.

She didn’t do anything wilfully wrong, and it may be that the other person ‘stole’ or plagiarised from her. He’s unlikely to admit this, but she should just be clear about what happened.

She should be able to take someone with her for support. Students sometimes bring someone from the Student Union.

A similar thing happened to my DS1 he too was accused of plagiarism and collusion. He and his girlfriend lived together, did the same course and assignment, shared resources, talked over ideas read each other essays etc and 2 lines in 1 paragraph of a 3500 word essay were pretty similar although I felt this could possibly have been disputed. He contacted the Student Union, they advised him it was a not an overly serious breach and clearly an accident but they told him to hold his hands up and say it was a fair cop which is what he did. They passed but only with the pass mark. There have been no repercussions. Since then he has never done the same assignment as his girlfriend!

Thanks everyone. she has contacted students' union and they are going to advise her on what to do. i guess no good deed go unpunished

This is exactly why people shouldn't use their own work when helping someone else with theirs. I am a lecturer and warn students of this. My university wouldn't necessarily believe she was completely innocent, either. He was sneaky but she shouldn't have done what she did either.