UC Riverside sophomore Brian Gray knew that passing his organic chemistry class hinged on his final assignment for the quarter.

It did not ease his anxiety when he learned that the professor dropped the assignment after somebody was found to be cheating.

"It made me worried. Losing those points could have dropped my grade," said Gray, who was then unsure what his final grade in the class would be. "I think it hurts the rest of us."

Gray, 20, a biomedical science major, passed the class and did so without cheating, he said. To prevent cheating on campus, UCR officials plan to revise the policy in coming months. In addition, the campus plans to step up awareness to ensure students understand the new policy and its consequences. The Academic Senate will need to approve a new policy. No date has been set for a draft of the policy to be ready.

The current policy calls for the student-conduct committee to review cases and determine punishment, which could include probation, suspension or dismissal. The policy does not define cheating or plagiarism, but officials believe that there has been an increasing number of students lifting blocks of texts from Internet sites for term papers.

Members of the Academic Senate's committee on educational policy have started reviewing the policy, mainly because it hasn't been updated since 1988, said Nancy Lane, director of student judicial affairs at UCR.

Though the incidence of cheating rose slightly from the 2001-02 and 2002-03 school years, UCR officials say the numbers likely don't give the true picture of the trend.

Fifty-five incidents of cheating were reported during the 2001-02 school year compared with 75 the following year, according to university officials. Plagiarism numbers, which are tracked separately, stayed about the same. "We don't know whether or not these numbers truly reflect what's going on out there," Lane said.

The emergence of the Internet has made plagiarism easier, officials said.

Donald McCabe, professor of management at Rutgers University, saw an increase in plagiarism among college students in a recent survey of 23 campuses in the United States and 11 in Canada.

About 38 percent of the students responding to the survey during the 2002-03 school year reported engaging in one or more instances of "cut and paste" plagiarism using the Internet, compared with 10 percent in 1999, the study found. Through the cut-and-past method, students lift blocks of text for papers.

Irwin Sherman, professor of zoology and chairman of the Academic Senate at UCR, said faculty face a challenge in creating a policy that addresses the problem.

To combat the prevalence of Internet cheating, many campuses are altering honor codes that involve students in the policy-making and encourage them to report violations, McCabe said.