` (as the printed source is available on line by subscription, I quote the relevant section: ``Corrupt Conduct  Newcastle's woes began in December 2002 when a lecturer awarded a score of zero to 15 students who were then enrolled in Wira's M.B.A. program. The lecturer, Ian Firns, failed the students after discovering that large amounts of their work on an organizational-effectiveness examination had been lifted without attribution from the Internet.  ``They have treated us as though we are fools,`` Mr. Firns wrote to the university in an e-mail message explaining his decision to flunk ``the worst group of students I have encountered in any class.`` The lecturer had been ``personally insulted`` by the students' actions, he wrote.  Rather than failing the students, however, the university responded to his discovery by reassigning the disputed papers to another lecturer, who passed the students, in a number of cases with some of the highest grades in the class. All of the students went on to receive degrees. What's more, it was later revealed that some of Mr. Firns's earlier critical markings on the papers had been whited out, prompting a public spat between Newcastle officials and the lecturer, an educational consultant.  Describing Mr. Firns's response as a ``gross overreaction,`` the university later fired him.  In June 2004, Mr. Firns took the matter to the Independent Commission Against Corruption, an official body in the state of New South Wales, which has since issued a report that vindicated him and severely criticized the university's role in covering up the students' misconduct.  The inquiry found that at least two educators with whom Mr. Firns worked had ``engaged in corrupt conduct`` by ordering the students' essays to be marked again without any reference to his earlier concerns. Its report detailed ways the university's plagiarism policies could be improved.  Although Newcastle initially fought the report's findings, it has now accepted them, administrators there say, and welcomes the closure it now hopes they will bring.  ``This has gone on for years now, rumbling on and on, both locally and internationally,`` sighs the university's president, Nicholas Saunders, an outsider appointed to the position at the 23,000-student institution last October.... (Officials at Wira declined to be interviewed for this article.)```