First, if I were to be of help to the kid, it wouldn’t be by proofreading. He doesn’t need help with typographical errors, spelling mistakes, etc.
Second, if I were to do it (which is doubtful) it would be for the enjoyable experience of doing the writing and research, and the challenge of writing an A paper on a topic that interests me, and for the nice sum of cash. Your plan gets me none of that.
Third, as I’ve written upthread, I’ve pretty much talked myself out of it, based in part on the remarks in this thread and in part on my certainty that writing the paper will have not have the effect intended: i.e., if I do all the work on the paper, the kid will certainly get busted on an exam.
That’s pretty much what I was going to say. You can still immerse yourself in the material that intrigues you, without going to the other side of the line. Tell the boss again that you’d be happy to tutor the kid and help him through it, but that you think that you writing it would not be in anyone’s best interests. Don’t say anything about the ‘high road’ or ‘I wouldn’t want to be a liar and a cheat’, just convince the boss[sup]2[/sup] that you don’t think your writing the paper is the answer.
Well, here’s the trouble. The boss is the kind of guy who doesn’t mind a bit of cheating.
So he aproaches you about this. But the problem is, if you refuse, the boss is gonna be a bit ticked off. And he clearly doesn’t mind making unfair decisions, since he’s willing to help his son cheat. So whether he’s a nice guy or not, he’ll take it out on you.
But suppose you accept? The problem there is that you’re now the guy who knows the boss is a bit of a jerk. Every time he looks at you, he’s looking at the guy who knows he’s a cheater. That’s a pretty uncomfortable feeling, right? And so he’ll probably want to get rid of you because you helped him cheat, and besides, you’re a cheater and he doesn’t want a cheater working for him, does he? Even cheaters don’t like cheaters.
So do whichever you like, just be prepared to practice your writing skills dusting off your resume.
I wrote an English paper many years ago for my then-boss’s daughter.
It was a good paper. I like to write papers and do the research that goes with them.
Apparently it was too “good”. The kid was called before the Honor Board at her school and disciplined. I honestly felt bad for the kid. Her mom was another matter.
I know that what I did was unethical, but I got a wonderful brand-new Coach bag of my choice out of the deal. I suppose most people have a price and mine is clearly handbags! Plus, the girl was allowed to remain at her school after doing some kind of penance; I’m not really sure what.
As far as to whether you should do it, it’s your choice. I certainly wouldn’t fault you for it.
Why would you feel bad for the daughter? She knew as well as her mother did that what she was doing was unethical. I was on the Honor Board at the college where I formerly taught and, pretty much without exception, plagiarists were a bunch of whiners with an entitlement complex, and most likely chips off the old block.
I’m really surprised at how many employers think it’s okay to ask their employees to do things like this. My husband’s boss, who by all accounts is a perfectly nice human being, wanted him to “help” her son, too. And she didn’t even have the decency to offer a nice bribe.
Actually, I think it’s the best point being made here: the real cheating is in the rationalizing. “I don’t need to know this particular junk–it’s merely an inconvenient waste of my valuable energy.” Okay, that’s cool, but it means since you do accept the degree that people get for knowing a little bit about several areas beyond their own narrow field, that you consider yourself more qualified than the people awarding those degrees. This sets a dangerous precedent, in which you never feel quite humble enough to recognize your own limits, especially if proves inconvenient for you to do so. “Okay, so I’m not actually an engineer in that specialized field, but the client will never know that I don’t actually have the training he thinks I have…” and people die.
I got plagiarized papers in a course I taught on ethics once, and the student who “wrote” them had the nerve to give that excuse: I had to work hard in my field (which was finance) so I paid someone to write about ethics for your stupid course–was that wrong?
First of all, as I’ve exposed him to some (harmless & pointless) criticism in the thread, I feel obliged to defend Jim. He’s not a bad guy, as I wrote above, and I find it difficult to imagine him engaging in unethical behavior at work. However, he has great powers of compartmentalization; his ethical meter doesn’t trip over this the way it would if someone suggested padding an invoice to increase our bottom line. He sees it as his son being obliged to take a pointless class involving material he’ll never use, and preventing the son from being unduly harmed by that. I don’t entirely agree with his attitude, but I understand it.
That said, the matter is now moot. The son sent me the class syllabus by email, and I’ve since emailed Jim to opine that the paper-by-proxy is likely to bite the kid in the gluteus for reasons given upthread. What we’ve agreed upon is that he’ll come home this weekend, and possibly the next, and I’ll help him through the paper.
The academic side has been argued thoroughly, so I’ll address the business side.
Skald, your second-level boss has asked you to commit a dishonest act. If you do this, HE will have YOU by the balls. Do you want to put yourself on the wrong side of a highly asymmetric relationship with your 2-up boss?
I suggest having an appropriate discussion with HR, that you were asked by a manager outside work to commit a dishonest act not related to the job, and as it’s a company manager are you required to report it.
And then look for a job where you won’t be working for a boss who attempts to get you to commit blackmailable acts. I was looking for a more polite term, but heck, that’s the word here. You’d be giving the 2-up boss material for him to ream you with.
How hard is it to write a paper on the evolution of fantasy fiction anyways?
Lewis Carroll
George MacDonald
E. E. Nesbit
Robert Howard
Edgar Rice Burroughs
J. R. R. Tolkien
C. S. Lewis
Tolkien again
Mervyn Peake
Tolkien imitators
Ursula Le Guin
More Tolkien imitators
J. K. fucking Rowling
Philip Pullman
Tolkien imitator imitators
J. K. fucking Rowling imitators
Tolkien imitator imitator imitators
Just out of idle curiosity, how do you figure he could blackmail me? He didn’t ask me to commit a CRIMINAL act. What’s he going to do–get me thrown out of the next poetry reading I attend? Persuade the local universities to ban me from any academic functions that are open to the public? "
Or maybe he could yell to all his peers, “Don’t trust that Rhymer dude! He committed ACADEMIC DISHONESTY! How do I know? Well, my son, who goes to college in an entirely different city from which Skald & I work, got him to write a paper on the Mating Song of the Volga Boatmen! I, of couse, was not involved.”
That isn’t the real topic. Being the paranoid type
I had a double major in literature & history, with minors in business & religion; I leave it to you to guess which of those disciplines the kid’s paper is on.
First, I think it’s wrong ethically for reasons others have stated. The kid would be turning in work that wasn’t his and you’re enabling him to do that. True, they might be able to find someone else but that’s on the next person, not on you.
Second, I think it’s creepy that he asked you out for coffee. He didn’t want to ask you AT work because legally, that might be different (on company premises, on company time) and there’s a chance co-workers would witness something accidentally. He was covering his ass, no doubt.
Third, I wouldn’t count on it never being found out. Maybe the dumb kid would decide one day to brag about how he beat the system, for instance.
Or, if the kid has to hand in other writing samples the professor may catch the inconsistency with yours. On essay test #1, the kid misuses words, can’t spell, has no clue about punctuation…along comes the term paper and suddenly he’s polished and erudite?
I always think, ‘With my luck, this will be the kid who designed the bridge that failed. They’ll start investigating his past, and unbeknownst to me, it will turn out that he was paying classmates to take his tests etc. There will be a big investigation on 60 minutes, yadda. Next thing you know, nuns are protesting outside my front door.’
I wouldn’t get all high and mighty with the boss…no sense courting trouble. I’d just politely decline and hope it doesn’t create a problem. I might tell a trusted colleague or two, just in case you need a witness later. Or perhaps you could write it all in a letter and mail it to yourself, leave it unopened; the envelope will have a postmark on it.
So what would the justification have been when you turned said paper in for being plagiarized. “Dean, Johnny didn’t write this paper, he hired me to write it for him!”?
Sooo sorry for not picking the right word. And just to be pedantic right back:
bribe
–noun
money or any other valuable consideration given or promised with a view to corrupting the behavior of a person, esp. in that person’s performance as an athlete, public official, etc.: The motorist offered the arresting officer a bribe to let him go.
anything given or serving to persuade or induce: The children were given candy as a bribe to be good.
Just so you understand my bias and some of my reasoning:
I used to teach computer science, so I’m biased against cheaters. I flunked one kid out of my course because he turned in someone else’s work. After knowing these few dozen students for a few months, I was able to recognize the programming style and could tell it wasn’t his (I got hard cold verification before reporting him to the Dean and Student Services, though). If the boss’ kid has anyone halfway qualified grading the papers, they’ll know it’s someone else’s work anyway.
I was asked to do this once. An engineering student contacted me about some technology I’d written extensively about and asked me to design him a circuit for a big class project. He was willing to pay a lot of money for it (thousands of dollars). It would have taken me three or four days, tops. I turned him down flat. My ethics are worth more than a few grand.
I did poorly in some of my off-major college classes despite having the opportunity to pay others to do my work. I’d rather earn my damned C than pay someone else for an A.
As a business owner, a former CEO, and someone who has voted Republican in the past, I am aghast. It’s offensive, blatantly wrong, and out-of-line in this thread. There’s simply no response to this that doesn’t belong in the Pit.
Speaking of the Pit, let me put my Mod hat on for this one:
Don’t call people liars in IMHO. If you don’t comprehend our level of commitment to our ethics, and you think we’re lying about it, then open a Pit thread.
This one isn’t an official Warning, but the next one will be.
I would never knowingly have written a paper for a student in one of my classes. But, as I said, a lot of my work came anonymously, from a staff member from the athletic department. So if I’d encountered one, I’d have to have given it an F and said why: “I am 100% positive this student did not write this paper.” No problem.
InvisibleWombat, maybe, as a complaint, this next should go in the Pit, but it’s so minor I hesitate to open a thread. You’re seriously going to warn **trmatthe ** for opining that various other posters, but no **specific **poster, is disingenuous? That doesn’t really seem like calling someone a liar–there’s no specific “someone” there.