# Don't even try to tell us it's not plagiarized!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-even-try-to-tell-us-its-not-plagiarized/531903>\
**Category:** The BBQ Pit\
**Created:** [March 9, 2010, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-even-try-to-tell-us-its-not-plagiarized/531903 "2010-03-09T21:01:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 215

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**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\
**Post date:** [April 19, 2010, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-even-try-to-tell-us-its-not-plagiarized/531903/215 "2010-04-19T16:37:50Z")

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> [@Frylock](#):
>
> There’s nothing legally wrong with it, but if the professor can substantiate the accusation, then every Academic Dishonesty bulletin I’ve ever seen would count this as an instance of such, and the student could be disciplined.

It’s an interesting issue.

If the seller of the paper is a student at University A, and the buyer is a student at University B, i wonder if University A’s academic dishonesty policy would apply? I don’t think i’ve ever seen an AD policy that dealt specifically with this type of situation.

If, on the other hand, both the seller and the buyer were students at University A, then it seems clear to me that both of them would (or should) be in the shit, even if the sale took place through an intermediary like a website.

Of course, even in the first case, i think the university could make a reasonable case for discipline, based on academic dishonesty. If you sell your paper to a term paper website, it’s pretty clear that it’s going to be used for the purposes of cheating. While arguing that you have no way of knowing what the buyer was going to do with it might be sufficient to convince a jury, university ethics committees are not constrained by the same evidence requirements as a court of law.

We actually have one member of the Dope who, if he/she is to be believed, actually supported him/herself through grad school by writing papers for undergraduates. Here’s the rather jawdropping rationalizations offered by this cheat:

> [@My boss wants me to help his kid cheat. Should I?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-boss-wants-me-to-help-his-kid-cheat-should-i/465167/41):
>
> You know, I supported myself through graduate school doing this very thing. The way I looked at it, I was being paid for my research skills and writing abilities–that was a good thing–and I was also developing them. You can look at it as work for hire, nothing more.
> 
> On the other hand, the people I was doing it for were most definitely cheating. If, as a (very underpaid) graduate assistant, I had run into a paper that I knew not to have been written by the student, I would have had to turn it in. And, had I run into one of the papers I’d written, I would have done just that.
> 
> Fortunately, I didn’t.
> 
> I also thought a lot less of them for doing it (although my most profitable client was a secretive contact from the athletic department, and I guess I couldn’t really fault a hard-working OU linebacker for hiring somebody to do his research paper on Queen Victoria during the playoff season).
> 
> I don’t even feel bad about it.

So, this shitheap actually sold papers to undergrads at the same university; the university where, as a grad student, he/she was charged with overseeing undergraduates and ensuring that they conform to the requirements of the academic ethics policies.

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