Academic Integrity Committee

Faculty of Business & Law

Deakin University
221 Burwood Hwy, Burwood VIC 3125
18/08/2021

Dear Academic Integrity Committee members,

Re: Response to allegation of a breach of academic integrity

I, Aarish Hasan, am a third-year student at Deakin University Burwood Campus,

studying Bachelors of Property & Real Estate. In the AT1 worth 25% of unit marks
for MMP311, I received an allegation of a breach of academic integrity which I would
like to disagree with as up until I received the allegations I have never heard or
visited the websites which are ran by Absas Solutions.

The allegations have deeply affected my mental health and I had to seek help from a
psychiatrist. I still can’t believe that I am being questioned in my final year. It is
probably the worst timing as I want to be studying my hardest and doing good this
semester, but all I think about are the allegations on me.

The unit mentioned above was in my second year. It is very hard to remember
exactly what happened and how things unfolded during those months.

I was staying with Talha Taufiq at 4/39 Kennedy St, Glenroy 3046 during 2018 &
2019. It was only my first year in university, passing out from Deakin College. As I
had previously used one of the templates from my housemate’s laptop, I thought it
would be a good idea to use another assignment template as a guide, so I used it.
I did all my work on the file and put it together in a presentable manner.

My housemate at the time, Talha Taufiq, who was a student at La Trobe University.
He used to lend me his laptop as my laptop would occasionally get black screen. He
had multiple templates of assignments available in his laptop that he used to
occasionally use for his assignments. The file names were saved in his laptop as the
same file numbers in the allegation.

I think I used one of those templates to put in all my work that I had previously done
onto another file. I uploaded the file on to Turnitin to check if there was any
plagiarism. I then made the assignment look professional and submitted it.

If as per the allegation I bought the assignment online, it would be the dumbest thing
to not change the file name and project myself as the author. As I was not doing
anything wrong, I didn’t worry about the file name I was working on but rather put in
all my efforts into the content of the assignment.

I have contacted Talha to get hold of those files but unfortunately, he doesn’t have
that laptop anymore.
I apologise for my lack of knowledge at the time and if I had known where the files
my housemate was getting from. I would have never used those files as a guide to
do my assignment. I request that the committee give my response due
consideration.

Attached is an affidavit from Talha Taufiq. I am happy to give my response on a

statutory declaration if needed.

Yours sincerely,

Student Name: Aarish Hasan

Student ID: 217367131
Mailing Address:
Telephone: 0420 493 024
Email: hasanaa@deakin.edu.au
Attachments