After 24 triads of college students discussed hypothetical situations of serious and moderately serious acts of plagiarism by either high or low status individuals, they designated a punishment. The hypothesis was that the severity of the sanction would be a joint function of the severity of the act, the attribution of responsibility for the act, and the status of the actor/perpetrator. Although the seriousness and attribution variables affected sanctioning as expected, status failed to reveal a mediating influence in the judgmental process. Possible explanations for the lack of status effects are the hypothetical nature of the situations, the possibility that status is a nonlinear interactant with sanctions, and that loss of status as a result of the proscribed behavior may eliminate it as a factor. The data nevertheless permit a partial description of the judgmental process for determining sanctions. It appears that as the seriousness of a violation of accepted standards of behavior increases, so does the tendency to hold or view the violator as personally responsible. The greater the attribution of personal responsibility, the more severe the sanction. Seriousness alone can predict the severity of response, but it does not adequately account for how the judgments are made or their variation. (RL)