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TMCNet: Lawsuit Is Latest Chapter In Accusation Of Cheating At CCSU

[November 19, 2008]

Lawsuit Is Latest Chapter In Accusation Of Cheating At CCSU

Nov 19, 2008 (The Hartford Courant - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
For more than two years, Matthew Coster has insisted that another student copied his college term paper on the Holocaust, not the other way around.

But Coster's Western civilization professor and officials at Central Connecticut State University found that he had cheated and expelled him in 2006. Coster has had to continue his education at a community college. He says he has trouble sleeping and worries constantly about how the stain on his reputation will affect his future.

"I have been wrongly accused, and this is going to follow me wherever I go," Coster said.
In an ongoing quest to clear his name, Coster, now 21, and his family have sued Cristina Duquette, the student whose paper Coster was accused of stealing.

The civil trial began Tuesday in Superior Court in Waterbury. The family seeks Judge Jane Scholl's determination that Coster did not cheat and unspecified monetary damages to cover their costs of litigation.

Coster and Duquette both took the stand Tuesday. Mark Grzelak, an independent technology consultant and engineer hired by the family to analyze computer files, also testified.

Attorneys on both sides focused on e-mails sent by each student to CCSU Western civilization Professor Ronald Moss. Both e-mails were sent at the request of Moss, who said he had not received either of their term papers by an assigned deadline. The students responded by e-mail and attached their respective papers, which were described Tuesday as nearly identical, except for spelling and grammar errors in Coster's paper.

Grzelak's analysis of the properties of each e-mail determined that the attached document on Coster's was created on May 14, 2006, and that the document attached to Duquette's was created on May 23. Coster's attorney, Brennen Maki, said that proved Duquette, not Coster, did the copying. Maki also pressed Duquette about quotes in her paper that were identical to those in Coster's -- quotes sent to Coster by members of his study group, a practice that Moss allowed.

Duquette, who was not a member of that study group, testified that she found the three quotes in a book assigned by Moss.

"Word for word?" Maki asked. "I understand things were quoted out of a book, but we're talking word for word and you never ... were part of this group."

Coster contends that he turned in a paper before Moss' deadline. He testified, and evidence presented by Grzelak showed, that he made final edits to his paper on May 15. Coster said he then drove to campus and put the paper in Moss' mailbox in DiLoreto Hall before Moss' deadline of 5 p.m. on May 15.

The suit claims that "at some subsequent" time, Duquette removed Coster's paper from the unsecured mailbox, copied it, corrected the grammar and spelling and turned it in as her own.

Duquette denied that, and said that she also put a term paper in Moss' mailbox before the deadline. One of her attorneys suggested that the later date stamp on the file she e-mailed to Moss was an inadvertent change that occurred when she was trying to save the file.

She testified Tuesday that she tried unsuccessfully to send the term paper as an e-mail attachment from the CCSU computer lab, then sent it later by personal laptop from her Watertown home.

At a deposition in July, Duquette told Maki twice that she did not save the file on her laptop, but on Tuesday she said she could not recall. The computer subsequently crashed, Duquette testified, and she gave it away.

Duquette's attorneys pecked away at Coster's case, trying to undermine his credibility, noting his mediocre grade point average at CCSU and even his nervousness on the stand. One of the attorneys, Robert Scott, also got Grzelak to admit it's possible to alter date stamps on computer documents. Under cross examination by Maki, Grzelak defended the reliability of the method he used to determine the authenticity of the date stamps.

Coster maintains that Moss and other CCSU officials acted as if he was guilty from the outset.
"From the minute I sat down with [Moss], it seemed like he was accusing me," Coster testified.
Duquette graduated in May and is now a substitute teacher in Waterbury. Coster, a New Milford native, attends Naugatuck Community College and still shares an apartment in New Britain with high school friends who attended CCSU with him. After leaving CCSU, he applied to, but was not accepted at, the University of Connecticut. He believes the expulsion was the reason.

His parents, Kevin and Judy Coster, have stood by their son, spending $25,000 for the computer analysis and legal fees. Their son's exoneration, the Costers said, has been their primary goal.

The trial is expected to wrap up by the end of the week. Moss and a staff member from CCSU's information technology department are scheduled to testify today.

To see more of The Hartford Courant, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.courant.com/. Copyright (c) 2008, The Hartford Courant, Conn.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email
tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax
to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave.,
Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

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