<p>^^^ Wow. The teacher should have given credit (either post the link, or gotten permission and then listed it as “used with permission”)…</p>
<p>I don’t think the Dartmouth student said that it wasn’t his fault. </p>
<p>I think he thought losing a year of his life and his investment banking job was overly harsh given the fact that the committee agreed that this wasn’t an issue about his integrity. I agree with him. This was a machine set into motion and nobody on the committee had the guts to step in and say this was an unjust result.</p>
<p>^^ Zetesis, totally agree, credit should have been given.</p>
<p>CRD, I remember posting the Dartmouth story as the young man in question was a friend of my daughters. (reposting from my previous post)</p>
<p>At Dartmouth the academic honor code works, because if you are found in violation of it, you are “Parked” for a minimum of 3 terms. My D says Dartmouth will not hesitate to suspend you for an academic violation of the honor code and know quite a few people who have been parked.</p>
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<p>This article is about one of my D’s friends who got parked. Excellent student, recruited athlete, leader on campus, got caught up in an academic violation and got parked senior year right before graduation…</p>
<p>From The Dartmouth</p>
<p>On trial: the committee on standards</p>
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<p>Sybbie, thanks for reposting that. I hope that young man has recovered and moved on. It was very moving and really opened my eyes to “academic justice”.</p>
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<p>It is bad because when a student writes her name on a paper and turns it in, she is pledging that it is her own work. If it is not her own work, then she has engaged in a kind of dishonesty, She has lied. Maybe she has not meant to lie, but she has lied nonetheless.</p>
<p>So Amesie, what do you think of the case that Sybbie cites?</p>
<p>I think a lot of people overestimate the importance of making citation mistakes and committing other errors that concern academic honesty in name only. The suggestion that intent is unimportant when plagiarism is all about taking credit for another person’s work is ludicrous. Of course intent matters.</p>
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<p>Lied? You can’t be dishonest unintentionally. You can say things that aren’t true, but dishonesty implies intent, or knowledge of the truth simultaneous with the presentation of the untruth. And at many schools, “plagiarizing unintentionally” (which sounds like an oxymoron to me) can get you expelled or suspended for a year, and prevent you from getting a job because these things go on your academic record. That is in many cases a harsher punishment than the one you would get for raping another student, if the sexual assault was handled by the school administration. (Which is sickening, but that’s a conversation for another time.)</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong, I think people should always cite properly. And I laugh at individuals who paste Wikipedia articles into their papers and then claim they didn’t know they were plagiarizing, or download plagiarism-detecting software that tells them whether their essays are safe to go. You’re basically setting out with the intention to plagiarize if you do things like that.</p>
<p>However, as in every other walk of life, unintentional mistakes in source citation are possible. And I don’t think they warrant the kind of devastation wreaked on students for them.</p>
<p>Sure you can look at this like, “oop, they forgot to put parentheses around that statement and cite the page number” and that trivializes it. But as a reader, what I see regarding that statement is that the student wrote this and it is their idea (and I based the grade they receive upon such assumptions). </p>
<p>Personally I care a whole lot about the degree of plagarism, as well as the intention. The odd uncited statement is quite apart from the purposeful wholesale inclusion of many statements or a paragraph. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, it is usually very difficult to separate out intention and actual knowledge of the student on a case by case basis. It is one thing for someone’s parent to believe the word of their offspring, quite another for those of us on the outside attempting to make objective distinctions between the ‘well’ and the ‘ill’ intentioned. In the name of fairness, it might work best to have a black and white dividing line and the onus is on students not to cross it. It is indeed unfortunate for those that fell over the line and were (in IMHO) unduly penalized, but the punishment isn’t just for them but everyone around them. It takes a strong message to counter the alternative pressures upon students.</p>
<p>In my twenty years, I’ve seen it all. I’ve had whole papers handed in (with slight word changes) by different students. I’ve seen the expulsion of a graduate student who cut and pasted much of her comprehensive exam from multiple sources without any credit given. I’ve been asked to review for a journal a paper that largely lifted my own published writing in another journal.</p>
<p>I can understand why those outside of academia might not appreciate the importance of avoiding plagarism. But you know we live in a time where it is both way too easy, and in an environment where too many students have somehow come to believe that it okay to cut corners to get ahead, as ‘everyone is doing it’. Look on CC at any discussion of ‘cheating’ and you’ll see what we are up against: young people thinking it’s perfectly okay to cheat if you can get away with it (and in fact that it would be immoral to report on someone who was found to cheat). It is incredibly depressing. </p>
<p>And at the same time, many students want to go onto graduate school…and despite many masters’ theses also never seeing the light of day…where do we draw the line? When do we point out the ethical issue of presenting someone else’s work as one’s own, and getting credit for it?</p>
<p>When a plagiarism issue arose in my kids’ hs, brought by a teacher many of us thought was a jerk to begin with, I was stunned, falling into the older way of thinking- that some mistakes are just mistakes, the plagiarism has to include strong intent. It led me to do some web research and I was stunned at the number of colleges that had posted clear statements regarding their expectations- a definite message that one is liable for mistakes. Even simple ones such as forgetting a citation.</p>
<p>The Dartmouth story is incredible.
Talk about a punishment not fitting the crime. Absolutely ridiculous.</p>
<p>Before being too quick to pass judgment, remember that what was posted here is one side of the story.</p>
<p>In my experience, freshmen & sophomores generally get one pass, receiving an F on the paper, but not an F in the class. Faculty I respect most will call them to the office & scare them, I mean educate them, so that they won’t do it again. The case is often, though not always, reported, so that the student knows they cannot be this sloppy again. There’s a transition from HS to college that most understand, and plagiarism is usually a case of a freshman feeling suddenly up against a deadline and terrified that they are unprepared. For upperclassmen, who it is generally felt ought to know better, there is still the one-time warning generally, though they may be more likely to fail the class. This feels fair to me, and the Dartmouth example seems harsh from the outside, but we can’t know for sure.</p>
<p>I recently reported a case of plagiarism in a freshman comp paper. A whole paragraph was cut and pasted, but then the student obviously used the synonym button to change a word or two in each sentence, which he then claimed made it not plagiarism, and of course made googling it tougher for me, but still doable. he was outraged that i would call that plagiarism. At this particular school, the first reported instance is held on file, the student is duly warned ,and if no more instances happen, it disappears. This encourages profs to report, because otherwise, handling it quietly in class has resulted in one student having multiple instances in the past. This system also means that if a student felt it was “unintentional” (even though we all go through the rules and reiterate over and over the necessity of paying attention and being careful), he/she gets the warning and will hopefully be more careful.</p>
<p>In the case of my outraged student, it turned out he’d already been accused once before (presumably he thought if he changed a few words, he wouldn 't be caught this time.) i have little sympathy for him–and he’s lucky he’s not at Dartmouth; our school’s punishments are not as strict as theirs.</p>
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Sort of a “kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out” kind of approach. I agree that it may be hard to determine intent, but I don’t see why lazy enforcement should be any more acceptable than lazy citation.</p>
<p>I can only imagine how difficult it is to figure out who is actually guilty of intentional plagiarism vs. those who lack intent. I imagine virtually all accused are going to claim it was unintentional.</p>
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<p>…and give them an F for THAT paper, and put a real fear into them. Also, having it officially recorded/reported would be good, as a strike, but an immediate suspension—harsh. Sometimes these outcomes are so much harder on students than faculty and administrators who may do {similar} things. Why can’t we scare/educate the student instead of ruining them?</p>
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<p>Well said. In the Dartmouth case, it sounded like nobody even argued that it was intentional. It was pretty clear cut that it was a 3am oversight. In this case I would have emailed the student back and said “Did you intend to include the references?”, and then accepted them when he submitted them. Honor goes both ways in my opinion. Basic human decency requires some degree of being reasonable. I don’t think that the people who handed down this overly harsh “sentence” acted honorably at all. I also don’t think the other side of the story is misrepresented either. I just think Darmouth’s position is indefensible.</p>
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<p>And since you’ve heard that side of the story, from the people involved, you’re qualified to make that judgment.</p>