I have just been informed that my faculty (Business School/ Social Sciences) has changed the policy of the use of Turnitin for UG 1st year and PG students. Now when using Turnitin we are not allowed to check for similarity as it has been disabled and this change was caused by the faculty revising their policy.

What is outrageous about this matter is that students were not informed about this change - I only found out about it after submitting a paper and realising the functionality was changed. When confronted, the lecturer said this change in policy was already done for the group of students mentioned above without us having any communication regarding it.

As a student, I feel betrayed that this decision was made behind our back and that it was not communicated to us at all. Throughout my three years here at the university I found Turnitin a life-saving tool when in doubt and taking it from us without consultation is unfair. Furthermore, one group of students benefits from it and we do not which furthers the unfairness of this whole process.

Therefore, I ask for your help and support to open the discussion with the university about this change as it creates issues for students such as anxiety, and in the whole process of forbidding us access to it, they forgot to mention that they were doing it leaving students with the surprise to find it out when submitting papers.