Office of the Provost

This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education (http://chronicle.com)

From the issue dated July 13, 2001

By ELLEN LAIRD

When I first read Chip's essay last year, I was ecstatic. Chip (an alias) had clearly absorbed class lessons on specificity, readership, and organization in writing. In fact, he had gone further. He had shown that he could write a clever thesis and select examples perfectly suited to the topic. My enthusiasm darkened to suspicion upon a second reading, however. Chip was an A student in the course, but his essay seemed a bit too mature in content and focus, compared with his previous work. His rhetorical voice was deeper than what I had come to expect of his prose. /p>

A 60-second AltaVista search brought me to the full essay. A Dave Barry-like piece available at BigNerds.com, the text was filtered through life experience that Chip, at 18, would be lacking. I was crushed.

Like so many problems -- cheating spouses, I.R.S. audits, sun-induced cancers -- this was supposed to happen only to others.

Except for a small number of individuals over the years, my students don't intentionally plagiarize. After all, in both our actual and virtual English-composition class meetings, I am a witness to their writing process, not just a reader of their written products. I keep their rhetorical fingerprints -- their in-class writing samples -- in the front of my file cabinet. And I teach them what it means to be honest in college.

In an effort to be especially thorough last year, I reinforced my instruction with a repertoire of stories -- about dethroned and dishonored college presidents and six- and seven-figure damage awards -- to demonstrate the price paid, even by the high and mighty, for the theft of words and ideas. And after sculpting a lesson on academic honesty, based on an article by an English professor, Richard Fulkerson, in the journal The Writing Instructor, I pointed out my bold-faced statement of attribution on the handout. I explained to students, "Even in the relaxed setting of this class, I must tell you whose idea this lesson was originally. Fulkerson owns it; I borrowed it."

Yet, the day after the Fulkerson-based lesson, Chip submitted as his own an essay he had downloaded from the Internet. Not for a researched essay or an important course grade, but for a portfolio piece he could have chosen to leave ungraded.

Chip committed his academic felony in April 2000, but he and his essay remain for me in the present tense, still an interrogative sentence. Surely, with all my harping and haranguing, he knew better. His act had none of the fuzziness of what might be called unintentional plagiarism -- unattributed text too close to the spirit and structure of the original. His was a clear-cut point, click, and save theft.

I am struggling to understand what happened. Which of the usual explanations for academic dishonesty apply in this instance? Pressure to succeed? Not Chip, and not this assignment. Lack of clarity about plagiarism in our learning environment? Not in the English department at Hudson Valley Community College. Lack of a clear position on the instructor's part? Not with this fanatic teaching the course. An assumption that I lacked Web savvy? Not with a Web site, linked syllabus, online discussion of readings, and interactive lessons for the course. Lack of personal connection in a large institution? Chip and I had just seen each other at a local event over the weekend, and he had introduced his mother to me.

To save face with myself, I must assume that Chip understood that downloading an essay and submitting it as his own was an egregious act. Why, then, did he do it?

Chip explained that he had been "mentally perturbed" the weekend before the paper was due, and that the essay he had written failed to meet his high standards. But I sensed that Chip felt that he had made a choice akin to having a pizza delivered. He had procrastinated on an assignment due the next day, had no time left in which to prepare his work from scratch, and had to get on to those pressing matters that shape the world of an 18-year-old. He dialed his Internet service provider, ordered takeout, and had it delivered.

Twenty-some years of teaching in two-year colleges have taught me that cheating on research papers is fairly straightforward. Most of my plagiarists (a tiny pool to begin with), despite lessons like that mentioned above, borrow words and ideas too often, with too little attribution, from sources included in their lists of "Works Cited." The result is criminal; the intent clearly is not. A few omit citations or fail to indicate that quoted material is, in fact, quoted. The final 1 percent -- class felons all -- submit papers written by friends or professionals on unapproved topics switched 10 minutes before the deadline. Such theft most often is an act of desperation: "I won't be able to play football if I fail your course."

Chip's cheating feels different. The assignment, specific to the class and based on an essay in our reading materials, did not require the rigor of a typical freshman research paper. Students should have been able to complete it comfortably within a relatively short time, with careful thought but without research or hand-wringing. Likedelivered pizza, Chip's download, I truly think, was an act of expediency, not desperation. And here, of course, the metaphor fails. Ordering takeout prose is not an acceptable alternative to composing, but I wonder if Chip even flinched.

My sense is that Internet plagiarism is becoming more dangerous than we realize. In the comfort of a student's home or dorm room, questions of ethics may be coming to seem academic only. From his own bedroom, Chip has access to an unprecedented wealth of resources. He is not sitting in a library, which might, like a church, prompt behavior worthy of the setting.

Might Chip's download be related to a certain slipperiness, only partly Internet fueled, that characterizes our culture? I think of runners, myself included, arriving mid-pack at the finish line of a recent 5K Race for a Cause. A table is laden with water, juice, fruit, and all the energy bars a person could want. Race etiquette, if not regulation, instructs us to take only what we will consume on the spot. But most of us squirrel away rations for family on the sidelines, next week's school lunches, or next month's ski trip. Such bounty, free for the taking, seduces us to step over the line of self-regulation.

Students have now reached the food table. They are taking what is there, without regard for whether they can handle it, whether they need it, whether they even know what it is. They are copying, pasting, wallpapering, and MP3-ing their academic existences. Such activity used to seem wrong, but now I wonder whether we all have become inured to the concept of ownership, as we enhance our PowerPoint notes or Web sites.

The allure of and easy access to abundance, and the absence of the cues that physical settings provide, work in concert with another factor. In most cases, Internet cheating, while surprisingly easy to trace, is dishearteningly tricky to spot. The majority of papers plagiarized from the Internet are devoid of the professional gloss -- an instant tip-off -- characteristic of the products of research-paper mills. Writing of all kinds is taken from student and class Web sites, where text has been shared and "published" for laudable purposes. In other words, text that students download from the Web is written by students just like them, so it appears student written -- exactly what we instructors want it to be.

In addition, the limits of a library's physical collection no longer signal possible problems. Seemingly limitless sources for the researched writing published online are collected in electronic databases available to most students who have a college I.D. card. Thus, the appearance of those sources on a Works Cited page raises no red flags, making the plagiarism even more convincing. And the sheer volume of online material and the sophistication of search tools mean that the casual plagiarist can finish his or her "work" in a matter of seconds.

A chance meeting with my friend Jane, a high-school English teacher, in Aisle 4 of the local supermarket confirmed my sense that teaching and learning are being profoundly altered, and that Internet plagiarism may be gathering sufficient force to become an academic hurricane.

Jane's frown lines matched her sharp tone as she explained that she now has to conduct an Internet search before she selects required reading of any sort. She then ticked off a list of works she will no longer assign to her Advanced Placement English class, because of the ease with which students can -- and do -- download chat content, journal entries, chapter notes, and essays. Sylvia Plath's "Mirror" and David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars were the latest cross-outs on her list. Students must complete assignments on classic texts for the course, likeThe Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath, in front of Jane, in class, in longhand.

Like Jane, I found myself hesitating over an essay or two on my reading list while preparing my last batch of syllabuses. I fear that academic takeout will soon begin to drive course content. I worry that these new student practices will shape our reading lists right down to the individual poems we select. In years past, plagiarists suffered loss in learning, if not in grades. After entering his guilty plea, Chip received an F where his A might have been and forfeited his stature in the class. To his credit, he tried to mend our academic friendship. But the consequences of cheating like Chip's ripple far beyond a transcript or a conscience. This new taking, which costs student-thieves neither time nor money, will cost us all.

Ellen Laird is an instructor of English at Hudson Valley Community College.