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<p>I’ve taught intro English Composition classes – ones where the writing assignments are not subject related. There were five essays (Compare-Contrast, Persuasive, etc.) and a research paper due, and the students could write about anything they wanted.</p>
<p>So, for example, if a student were taking a history class, they could use the English comp research paper for their history research paper.</p>
<p>Bobby: For example (I am making this up about a discipline that is not my own, so it might not work perfectly), think of a student taking two political science courses, such as American Foreign Policy and The Politics of China. The student writes a paper about America’s foreign policy towards China . . .</p>
<p>Unless explicitly forbidden, I’m not sure I see the problem. I disagree that it’s “not doing the work.” “Not doing the work” is when you cheat off someone else, or have someone else do the work.</p>
<p>I cannot personally see doing this. Primarily because I cannot see two assignments being so similar that I couldn’t obtain some benefit by writing something specifically for each one. Plus, yes, I would have some moral unease about doing this, because I think the implication is there that one should do separate assignments for each class.</p>
<p>But not because I believe it even makes it to the bottom rung of the ladder of turpitude.</p>
<p>I did this in high school once, with no idea it was against any rule. I was taking a course studying short stories as literature, and another course in creative writing. Each teacher assigned the writing of a short story. I considered myself a “poet” at the time, had no idea how to write a short story. I managed one, and ended up handing in to both classes.</p>
<p>Many years later, I found out from the lit class teacher that they figured it out and decided not to bring it up with me, or penalize me, so I didn’t find out back then that I wasn’t supposed to do this. How did I end up talking to my teacher about this? Because she eventually became my mother-in-law!</p>
<p>In law the original contract was written somewhere around 1915. Since then most have been adaptations of that work. Same for most consulting work. They don’t call it boilerplate for nothing. 
You don’t really think lawyers or consultants sat down and wrote 100 original pages–do you??</p>
<p>I’m curious as to how this was found out?</p>
<p>Well, now I understand why S2 included explicit language re: sources and previous studies in his first policy paper for a course at Tufts! </p>
<p>He had written his IB Extended Essay and HL History Internal Assessment on a couple of specific topics that proved to be valuable background info for the paper he had to write for his Tufts class. Because he was drawing on materials outside the course readings, he clarified how he came by these other sources and stated that he had not used any part of the papers he wrote in HS in his Tufts paper. </p>
<p>Wonder if he had actually read the plagiarism policy! :)</p>
<p>I wrote two similar papers in college – one was for an international media course (had to focus on a specific country) and the other was a polisci policy paper (on a variety of issues to be covered in committee, not on the media) for that specific country to be used as my position paper for a National Model UN conference. Similar background research, some overlap in the papers, but I talked to the polisci prof in advance and he said as long as it was clear it wasn’t a rehash of the media in Coutnry X, that was fine by him. Got an A on one, B on the other.</p>
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<p>Yes, I think that most tranasctional lawyers are no longer good judges of plagarism. We all lift language from our own prior documents, those of colleagues, those on the other side of pior deals…it’s a good arrangement because at our hourly rates, it saves everyone money.</p>
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Probably because the teachers had a deal that they would assign the same essays each year, and then take turns grading the papers ;)</p>
<p>I’M JUST JOKING, OP.</p>
<p>Obviously the OP is being extremely fair, attempting to find a just solution for someone who broke an official rule.</p>
<p>This is how -</p>
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<p>I think it depends on the professor too. My English professor said that he considered submitting one paper for two classes to be plagarism. YMMV.</p>
<p>My initial take is to submit the same paper. After reading about the “Honor Code” junk my next idea is to avoid those colleges. I would be upset with a college that would have so much course content overlap a student could be taking two courses for credit that the same paper would suffice for both classes. Student is definitely not getting his/her money’s worth from the professors.</p>
<p>I know you can’t double submit at the school I am attending now, at my old school you theoretically could but you had to get permission. I got permission to once because I had to give a presentation from a list of topics, and I had done an extensive research paper on one of the topics the semester before and I wanted to add to that research to do the presentation, just because I thought it would be interesting. I got permission with the understanding that I would be graded more strictly and I had to add significantly more material to the original, because I had in effect gotten an entire extra semester to do the work–because I was granted permission to use a semester’s worth of research I had already done, I essentially got a huge head start-- which is probably why it’s usually against the rules to double submit. A student who starts an assignment on day 1 is at a disadvantage compared to a student that already has a finished product and just has to revise on day 1.</p>
<p>But, in that case, the overlap made sense because I chose the topics in both cases, it wasn’t any fault of the school that I was in a position to write two very similar projects.</p>
<p>“Don’t colleges even encourage double-dipping by allowing one to repeat a class and take the lower grade off the transcript?”</p>
<h1>1 this depends on the college. At my school you can only do this once ever. And #2 you aren’t allowed to use any of the work you produced the first time around. Which the professors are very clear about.</h1>
<p>“What about the kid from Spain who also speaks French and takes French 101 aces it with no work?”</p>
<p>This is also obviously cheating. Of course, it’s a type of cheating that’s harder to catch. At my school the policy for language classes is that you are to take the one that is appropriate to your level…101 classes are expressly forbidden to be taken by native speakers, even if they are rough on grammar/spelling/writing/etc. </p>
<p>“Or the well read kid who has read most of the works included in an English class in his high school AP class and has the old class notes on them-and a paper he can just touch-up and submit.”</p>
<p>I think touching up and resubmitting falls under the “submitting the same paper twice” rule. </p>
<p>“Tough line to draw.”</p>
<p>It’s not really a tough line to draw at all. </p>
<p>While I disagree with some of the honor code rules (well, namely this one), anyone going to college nowadays is beaten over the head a million times with what plagiarism is and what you’re not supposed to do (which includes submitting the same paper twice). </p>
<p>You’d honestly have to be really stupid not to know what counts as plagiarism and what doesn’t…and when in doubt…you ask the professor. Plain and simple. I am POSITIVE this kid a lot of doubt when he reused that same paper twice…but he went forward with it anyway. Oh well. </p>
<p>Honor Council will decide the appropriate punishment…if he truly wasn’t aware…just a rewrite…if he had some doubts…probs best to order a rewrite and dock some points.</p>
<p>I actually didn’t know that you couldn’t submit the same paper twice until the end of my sophomore year of college when that professor told us we needed permission to do it. Nobody had ever mentioned that one before and it just hadn’t occurred to me that when I wrote it would matter as long as I had written it myself. In hindsight it sure makes sense, but I didn’t know before then. I was beaten over the head about plagiarism just like anybody else, but nobody ever mentioned that constituted plagiarism.</p>
<p>How many people actually have read the entire student code for their school–raise your hands. Bueller-----anyone??</p>
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<p>OP said this was a hs senior. Most high schools (and many colleges) now require students to submit papers electronically. Teachers then run the papers through online subscription companies such as turnitin.com. They’re then given a report of what percentage of the paper is not original. Naturally, there will always be a small percentage due to common themes, facts, etc. However, when papers come back with a high percentage of inauthentic material, teachers can then cross-reference and see the origin(s). (There is a massive database of stored material. This includes published works as well as student works from all over the world. Each and every paper that’s submitted is then stored.) My children’s prep school utilizes turnitin.com as well as the other privates in our area. Some of the publics use it as well. I’m not sure if this is how the student in question was discovered; however, I do know it is most certainly a deterrent for plagiarism.</p>
<p>In software engineering, we are strongly encouraged to reuse code.</p>
<p>It isn’t a bad idea to consider generalizing code that it can be used for multiple purposes when it is written or to handle a variety of parameters. The idea is that code is expensive to produce and test and that reuse is a smart use of previous work.</p>
<p>Darn I was siding with the “it’s OK” crowd thinking what a smart kid to figure out how to get the work done more efficieincy. Guess it’s my “operations and production” mind at work. </p>
<p>Note to self, remind kids to read college honor code. Right-o.</p>
<p>Actually, self-plagiarism is considered unethical in academia, although it can be difficult to work around when writing introductions for several articles on the same topic, even if the experiments themselves substantially are different (not just “CV bloating,” in other words). But, you still have to play by the rules, regardless.</p>