I just finished up the fall semester of my senior year in college. One of the classes I took this semester was a comparative political science course, graded as 35% midterm, 35% final, 30% 10-15 page paper.
This paper was my baby this semester, so I’m more than a little biased.
I don’t know this guy’s name. I’m not sure I can remember his topic. (He told me, but I was too stunned to write it down.) I can provide a good physical description of him, but that won’t help, I don’t think. He told me he directly plagiarized half a page or so of his 10-page paper using the copy-paste method, possibly not in one block.
The professor requested the paper be submitted in hardcopy and emailed or handed in on disk as well, because he sends papers he suspects of plagiarism out to a service. This is little comfort, mainly because I’m afraid he won’t realize this guy padded with plagiarism.
If I emailed the prof, I’d be able to tell him that I knew a male student with a very distinct physical description plagiarized a few hundred words on his final paper. Is it worth it?
As an former college instructor, I depended on students doing the work assigned for a reason: To learn from that work and to produce a product that can stand by itself as a work of integrity.
If you have knowledge that that work is not that student’s work, I feel you should let your instructor know - if for no other reason than it devalues your own work when word gets out that all one has to do to pass the course is to rip off someone else’s work.
Without a doubt, it is worth it for you to let your professor know about this. You worked hard to produce your paper; why should some clown get to coast by while doing something both immoral and illegal?
There’s a really good chance that the prof will know; surely he’s seen his share of both good and bad papers, but you should still give him a heads-up, if only to ease your mind.
I’ve never understood this sort of thing. Haven’t these people ever heard of block quotes? They take up space, they look good, they make your point for you, AND you can’t get busted for using them. Sheesh.
E-mail the prof if it’ll make you feel better, but he’ll probably get busted either way. The best you can do is warn him that somebody plagiarized, and, hell, if this is anything other than a small seminar, that’s a given, anyway. (Sad, isn’t it?)
It’s not like you can’t tell when some sentences sound like they were written by a sub-literate college sophomore, and some sound like they were written by professional writer. Plagiarists aren’t the sharpest crayons in the box, after all.
Give your prof some credit. This loser’s ass is grass.
Service or no service, your chum’s scholastic career is likely history, depending on how merciful your prof is feeling and how much of his paper he lifted. Any halfwit can run search-engine searches on text chunks and see what bobs to the surface. If the prof knows how to do this, your friend is toast.
All you have to do is QUOTE, and the prof can’t touch you. But if you cut-and-paste and pass it as your own, every prof I know will have your butt for breakfast.
I really don’t understand why anyone would want to plagarize a paper. I’m just getting ready to do my works-cited page for my argumentation-research paper that is due tomorrow, and I enjoyed doing the research and writing the paper. To me, getting it back with my expected A is simply the expected reward for a job well done.
And to plagarize half a page out of a ten-page paper when block quotes will do the job is just freaking insane. A reasonably sharp professor would be able to spot the difference in writing style between the plagarizer’s own work and the plagarized portion of the paper.
Having said that, I personally would have no compunctions about selling my work to a student. If they want to be a lazy ass and cheat their way through college, that’s their problem. They can shell out for the privilege of doing so, and I’m really, really broke right now…
anyhoo, go ahead and rat him out.
If you’re going to plagarize, keep it to yourself. Telling a classmate you don’t know very well is asking to be turned in.
Yeah, I ended up emailing the prof. I told him that I was telling him so I’d feel better, since he can obviously tell the difference. He responded fairly quickly and said that if he had any trouble catching it he’d take me up on my offer of a physical description. It’s a small class, probably only 30 people, so it’s not as if he’ll be pressed for time on each paper.
And telling a classmate you don’t know at all is just stupid.
I’m just curious, though, where the “don’t be a snitch” ethic comes from. I talked to a bunch of net people (so as to avoid talking to people I go to school with, lest it filter down to the plagiarizer), and their opinion was almost overwhelmingly “don’t be a snitch, let the prof figure it out and if he doesn’t get caught then he deserves to get off.” I just don’t get it.
One girl said it was out of “respect,” but respect for what?
I find that in situations involving ethical decision-making, people are reluctant to violate the group’s “boundary” to give information to someone who is considered to be “outside the group”–in this case, the professor. People sometimes use words like “loyalty” or “respect” (or, conversely, articulate ideas such as “if the prof doesn’t figure it out then the prof is stupid and deserves it”) when it seems to me that they’re talking about how permeable the group boundary is. It also seems like this assertion of the group boundary inspires a feeling of solidarity, with us on the binside and them (e.g., professors) on the outside, and against us.
The mind boggles. Respect for cheating?
FWIW I think you did exactly the right thing. Maybe the prof would have caught it or maybe not. Either way, the jerk plain out submitted someone else’s work as his own. That’s just plain scummy.
I always considered snitching an us-against-them thing. I don’t see sides here. The plagarizing jerk stole someone else’s work so he could pretend he put as much thought and effort into the paper as honest students. IMO that isn’t snitching; it’s respecting the value of the work you did.
Good on you for reporting to the prof. Like you, I work hard on my papers and take pride in the results. If some dipwad doesn’t feel like putting in the time on a paper, that’s his/her own problem. But when it comes to plagiarism, it hurts a lot of people–the plagiarist most of all.
ONAN–ever notice how weird the word “plagiarize” looks after you’ve typed it a few times?
Good job, Ace. Here’s hoping he gets nailed. I’m sure that your prof appreciates that some students are honest.
The “Don’t be a snitch” thing is one of those crazy human psychology things, I guess. It defies all logic. A student who cheats is selfishly gaining an advantage and making the curve harder, yet letting him get away with it is somehow stickin’ it to the Man? Ain’t the Man he’s hurting, it’s his classmates! Maybe it’s some obscure evolutionary urge to prove that you can outcompete him despite his unfair advantage? :dubious: