Is this academic misconduct reportable?

[injuryupdate]

I have a friend of a friend who was put in the following position. She wrote up an honours thesis and received a good mark for her work and discussed with her supervisor presenting the work at a conference. The supervisor thought it was a good idea and offered to submit an abstract for her, which the student wrote up and gave to the supervisor. This was done, except that when the supervisor submitted the abstract she didn't put the student down as the presenting author, but put herself down. The abstract was accepted and months later when the student called the supervisor to ask whether it had been successful, she was told that it had but that she as supervisor was presenting the paper and that the student couldn't do the presentation. When the student asked why not, the supervisor actually said, "...because the university will pay my travel expenses and accomodation and registration to the conference if I am presenting a paper, and I want to go and I don't have any other current work to present". Quite a nasty and tearful argument followed, although in the end (a few days later) the supervisor backed down and agreed to let the student present her own work at the conference (she had always been listed as first author but not as presenting author).

I know that compared to the old days when supervisors actually claimed first authorship on their students' papers, this may seem quite a mild offence. However, it is a pretty bad effort to decide to present a first author's paper (hence denying them any other opportunity to present it at a conference) without asking whether or not she intended to go and do it herself (which she actually did).

The dilemma now is whether the student (having already received her marks and having already presented the paper) should just move on, or whether she should make some sort of official protest about the way her supervisor behaved. These sort of decisions are always difficult. I suspect if it was a male supervisor and a case of sexual advances then everyone would say it should definitely be reported on so there was some castigation at the very least. Is this the sort of behaviour that is worthy of kicking up a fuss? I would say it was quite clearly the wrong thing to have done (and potentially was going to be an abuse of university funds, although it didn't work out that way), but is it a reportable offence? Has the supervisor eventually absolved herself by finally giving way in the argument and deciding not to take the junket?

[SPK]

That supervisor sounds like an arsehole.

If it were me, having already recieved my marks and made the presentation, I would probably let it go.

Sure she shouldn't get away with it, but why waste the time and effort on trying to nail someone like that when in all likelihood she'll probably get away with it or cop a slap on the wrist, particularly since she didn't actually do anything.

[hhh]

I would put the blame on organisations such as SMA who hold conferences at locations such as Fiji. Man, is that a junket waiting to happen or what? Doubt you'd see the same argument if the conference was held at Blacktown RSL or Adelaide for example.

[Gem]

I'd actually say it's BIG TIME academic misconduct, but it depends on the University's specific rules. Further to that, things like conference presentations etc all look really good for a supervisor's record, which makes the faculty more likely to give them a supervising position to another student at a later date. Bearing that in mind, what's to stop this person trying it again on the next student who spends so much time trusting their supervisor to help them get their research validated? It is something that should definitely be raised with a higher power for advice at the very least - e.g. head of school or faculty, because someone out there needs to know that this person is so willing to take on honours students to rort the system for their own gain, and at their students' expense.