Vindauga

I HATE when people plagiarize

I LOVE to catch people plagiarizing

I HATE having to deal with the people that I have caught plagiarizing.

Nothing makes me dislike my job more than the series of events surrounding plagiarism. I catch, on average 10% of the people in each class plagiarizing. Each time I am confronted with the same set of responses: Anger, Denial, Cajoling, Reluctant Acceptance. But in the process I am forced to confront time and again whether it is worth my mental anguish to try to stop a behavior that I find morally reprehensible. I am certain that one day I will either stop caring about punishing those who plagiarize or I will stop caring about the effect it has on people’s lives. I am not looking forward to either.

Before you start to question me about whether or not the plagiarism really is all that bad let me say that I only call it plagiarism when it is clearly an attempt to pass off writing or thought as your own that is actually written by someone else. I can recognize simple failures to cite and bad paraphrasing; they are surprisingly easy. The plagiarism I am referring to really is the attempt to deceive.

Before you start to question me about whether or not I make it clear to the students that they should not do this let me assure you that I do. In fact, I harp on this issue so much that my rule abiding students begin to think I sound like a broken record, repeating admonishments about something that people don’t do anyway. I repeat on several occasions that students should not, under any circumstances, plagiarize.

I begin on the first day with a simple statement of the facts: I bust 10% of the class each semester plagiarizing. I tell them to look around and realize that 5 of the people (class starts at 50 while in reality it is usually down to 35 by the final paper) in the room would fail this course because they plagiarized. I tell them what the punishment is: a FF, it goes down on your permanent record (the saying of which always makes me laugh as I imagine either a song by Van Halen or one by The Violent Femmes). I tell them that both the university and I find it unacceptable. I put it in no uncertain terms.

Then, later in the semester, I present a modified version of Pascal’s Wager. The best case in plagiarizing is not getting caught and passing the course, the worst is getting caught and getting an FF. The Best case scenario in not plagiarizing is passing the course and the worst case is failing the class. Clearly the best case of plagiarizing is outweighed by the worst case of plagiarizing and the worst case of not plagiarizing is better than the worst case in plagiarizing. The rational choice then is to not plagiarize. Too bad at least 10% of college students aren’t rational.

I tell them how much plagiarism ruins my day. How it makes me sad and upset. I tell them about the semester that 25% of my final papers were plagiarized and how I broke down and cried. How I never wanted to live my life as some kind of warden, constantly on guard against liars, thieves, and crooks. I tell them about how plagiarism makes me want to do something else and I love teaching.

I tell them how plagiarism defeats the purpose of my class. My entire goal is to get their brains working. They have been raised in an educational system that privileges rote learning and focuses on memory retention. Philosophy is not like this at all. I encourage them to begin to think about issues, challenging them to consider objections and replies. I tell them that particular positions are not my concern but rather demonstrating a capacity to truly engage the problem is. And the only way to achieve that is by doing; plagiarism is a backdoor to an answer that avoids any comprehension of the issue.

Then, when I assign the paper I tell them that I understand the psychological motivation that leads one to plagiarize. Here they are taking a philosophy course, its hard to understand, they are worried that they are doing poorly and they really need that A or that B because otherwise they’ll lose their scholarship or their parents will make them move home or whatever. So, freaked out by those possibilities, they think they’ll just look online for a little help, a little help understanding the material, and they find it. And what they find is so clear and easy to understand that they think a little paraphrase will be okay. And then the paraphrase turns into an whole sentence and then its late and they are tired and the paper needs to be turned in, so they take a little more. And then I read it and catch it and they have wasted a semester and there is no question that they will lose their scholarship and their parents will make them move home and they won’t get accepted to medical school.

Then, after they turn in the papers I offer them the chance to confess and receive only an F on the paper (or an F for the course depending on whether or not I have already found someone plagiarizing). But no one ever does. I know, you think it unfair of me to make them stand up in class and admit that they cheated. But I think admitting it in public is a fair trade for not receiving an FF. The students usually freak out at this point, the “honest” ones begin asking about citation and paraphrasing. I use scare-quotes because I tell them not to use external sources (because I’m trying to get them to think, not to get them to read some secondary source that is usually misguided or flat-out wrong) and those that freak out have ignored that rule and looked anyway and now they are afraid that I can tell. And, usually I can (because they refer to something that has never come up in class but is common in secondary literature) but, as I said, I can tell the difference between bad paraphrasing and the willful attempt to deceive. Maybe I am deluding myself, but I don’t think so.
So, yes, I make it abundantly clear that I am not a fan of plagiarism.

And still they do it.

Its strange really that I actually like the students who cop to it and accept their punishment. I am more inclined to be lenient to those who, when confronted, admit that they did it. The majority don’t however. Most claim that they did not plagiarize and get offended that I would even suggest they would do such a thing. Their umbrage dissipates pretty quickly when I show them the evidence (I am constantly surprised that they think I would accuse them without having proof). Still, some try to deny the evidence. I once had a student who lifted and entire 5 page paper from the web; he did not change a single word. When I showed him the paper from the web he suggested first that it was a coincidence, statistics revealed the absurdity of that claim, and next suggested that they stole it from him. I told him he was failing and to have a good day.

A student’s next tactic is to claim that what they have done isn’t so obviously wrong. ‘Taking a definition here or there isn’t a big deal’ they say, until I point out to them that they have done far more than that. Then they try to claim that “in the real world” no one cares about this stuff. This is a really bad thing to say to me but I will save my diatribe about this mythical “real world” for another time. I remind them about my claims about the point and worth of philosophy and how plagiarism subverts all of that. I remind them that in the “real world” stealing is a crime, a crime that one goes to jail for, and plagiarism is intellectual theft. Still some continue to deny it. I was once in a class with a graduate student who plagiarized, he tried each of the above tactics until the professor finally told him to leave. He isn’t a graduate student anymore.

The next move by the student is to tell me about how difficult his or her life is. They tell me about how hard they have worked, what good grades they get, and how this is going to make all of that pointless. Oddly, I don’t entirely agree here. Certainly it will mess up the trajectory in which you thought you were headed (and in my more cynical moments I think “that person was deluded to think they were heading on that trajectory”) but really I don’t think this ruins your life. Okay, so it messed up Biden’s last run for president (how is he getting around it this time?) but I don’t think one mistake tells the whole story of a person’s life. Lord knows I’ve made enough (do you know how many universities I have been to?) Its not the mistake but what we do with it. Still, I hear the sob stories and I am not a heartless bastard. I may sound like one when you talk to me in the moments after I catch a plagiarizer; I talk about stringing them out, making them walk the plank, keel-hauling them. Truthfully though I almost never give an FF with malice in my heart. Usually it is with regret.

And it is only then, after I have spent way too much time, that the student finally accepts responsibility for what they have done. I am not sure how many actually repent and realize the error of their ways and how many simply realize that I will not be swayed. Regardless, they cease pestering me. By this point I am mentally and physically exhausted and I vow to be even more clear about the wrong of plagiarizing than I was in the previous semester.

(There is a strange little minority who appear at this stage in the process. These are the people who suddenly admit that they didn’t write the paper at all, that they got a friend to do it. Usually they claim that they were just too freaked out and/or busy. Its weird to hear someone admit to a far worse crime in an effort to get off on a lesser charge. Admittedly, most students don’t realize that getting someone to do your work for you is academic dishonesty and can get you thrown out of school on even on the first offense but even still. Do people really think I am going to cut them slack because they didn’t write the paper that they claimed to have written? Whatever, I think your friend deserves an ass whooping for this one. I wouldn’t ask you to write a paper for me but if I did and you plagiarized, causing me to fail a course, we would not be friends much longer. Also, it seems like a breach of contract if it is from someplace like termpapers.com; the intent behind the site is to provide someone with a paper that will help that person pass a class. Providing said person with a paper full of plagiarized material clearly cannot achieve that end and actually will work counter to it. I want someone to sue because they failed. Seriously.)
Last semester, after I spent 5 hours over 3 separate occasions explaining to a student why he would indeed be receiving an FF, I decided I wasn’t going to try that hard this summer. The outlay of work in telling them not to do it didn’t pay off in a significant drop in the number of plagiarists; it just wasn’t worth it. But, I did. I gave the same set of speeches I usually do. Only this time I added a new one. I made the class a promise, I promised them that when I caught a plagiarist that I would give them an FF. I created a contract between me and the students. Its not really binding but it gives me one more way to make clear the reason why punishment is deserved. John Brocato once told me how problem students respond better to definite cause and effect relationships than they do to probabilities of being caught (interestingly, this currently coincides with my argument for the utter failure of the death penalty to function as a deterrent) so I always make certain to discuss the punishment for plagiarism as a definite effect of the action. I do not allow them to think they they can get away with it.

Usually, when you tell of these woes to some advanced academic they being to tell you about how you have to ask questions that are very targeted and that aren’t likely to be available on the internet. This response has always bugged me. First, I don’t like the idea that I have to come up with increasingly obscure questions in order to dissuade people from cheating. It doesn’t really do anything but make it difficult (which isn’t a deterrent so much as a kind of shell game; they still want to cheat). This is akin to telling someone who got robbed that they should have hid their stuff better or telling a woman who got raped that she shouldn’t have encouraged it. But it also bugs me because it seems to clearly underestimate the internet. Have you ever tried to ask a question that no one has ever addressed on the internet? A question about something that an intro level class might have read? Its hard, hard to the point of being fruitless. I keep vowing to ask a question that I know is on the internet, that is obvious and easy to find, just to make it easier for me to bust the plagiarists. Once, I even entertained the idea of asking a question, writing my own version of the answer and then either selling it to some site like termpapers.com or posting on something like Sparknotes, just so that I could bust someone using something that I wrote (my friends have alternately thought that idea was hilarious or borderline entrapment).

So, here I am, another semester over, with two more plagiarists trying everything they can get me to not give them the grade they so richly deserve, which is really ironic (I think I am using it correctly). Did I mention that I teach ethics? I’ve spent 6 weeks drilling into their heads that right action is not merely a matter of opinion, that it is a position, that it requires argument, that it takes thought and consideration. I have told them time and again that ethics is hard, not just because the topic is obtuse and unfamiliar to them (as anything other than “i like X I dislike Y”) but because behaving ethically is difficult. If behaving ethically were easy, if it was simple, we wouldn’t really need the field, people would simply do it. There are several quotes which are fun here, my favorite is from A League of Their Own; “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.” I’m not saying that the right thing is the hard thing, which I am hearing more often recently. I’m saying that it is hard to do the right thing (I can expand on the difference later if you like).

One of my two plagiarists responded to my email informing her that she would be failing by cussing me out. Then she responded again telling me that she only took a quote or two. Then she responded again denying that she had done more than take a quote or two. And finally she told me her life story and asked me to look into my heart about what is right.

My other plagiarist had actually plagiarized on her first written assignment; she had taken a definition straight from Webster without giving credit. I pulled her aside and told her that this was unacceptable and told her that she absolutely had to make herself aware of what plagiarism was because she would fail this course if she did it again. She did, she plagiarized again. She did not get angry but she did get scared. She also denied that taking a definition or two was that big a deal. Only when I pointed out that she took far more than a definition she apparently went to her sponsor (she is a foreign national, which is what initially led me to be lenient in the first case: I didn’t fail her for that paper, merely marked her off). Her sponsor has now written to me telling me the hardships of this student’s life and how hard she worked and how she had these great plans.

There is some part of me that thinks we really ought to function on an ethics of care, that my main concern should be the pain and stress of other human beings. This focus would seem to indicate that letting these folks slide, just giving them an F or letting them rewrite the paper, would teach them enough. But my experience teaches me otherwise. I know it is in some sense unfair to treat particular people as if they were merely some part of an aggregate whole. But I find it hard to believe that my class is the first time these people have ever been faced with a decision like this. And, I can’t determine my grades based on how sympathetic I am to people. I will not apply a double standard; grading those who I like on a lenient scale and those who I dislike on an objective scale. I know that I can never achieve a view from nowhere but I can hold all of my students responsible for their actions. I have dispatched my duty in attempting to convince them not to plagiarize. I have presented them with a semester’s worth of material that all points towards a considered and thought-out ideal of right behavior. I have discussed at length concepts and ideas that should, if followed, lead one to realize that plagiarism is bad not because it is theft from another but because of what it denies to the self (a crime that is much worse). Ethics is concerned with how we treat others but it is about how we treat ourselves and we can be held accountable for how we treat ourself.

But, really, what it comes down to is that I cannot justify giving a student that has committed a serious breach of the codes of conduct and opportunity that I am not affording to those who have only broken the format guidelines of the paper. I demand certain margins for their papers. I demand that they not use contractions. I demand that their name be in the upper right hand corner of the paper. These are stupid and pointless. The have no more moral worth than driving on the right-hand side of the road. But they are rules. And failing to follow simply rules indicates a lack of attention to the material. A single proofreading will find each of these flaws. I tell my students all of this. They have these mistakes highlighted on their response papers over the course of the semester. And still, students fail to follow the format guidelines on the final paper, a thing worth 30% of their grade (you would think they would pay more attention). I do not allow those students the opportunity to rewrite their paper, and none ever ask, so there is no good justification for allowing students who have done something far worse that opportunity.

I have long thought that I could handle a Sisyphisian struggle but I do not think I will be able to endure pushing this rock up the hill, not without the effort changing me.