Episode IV: A New Blog

I would have to say that the most interesting part of this current crop of readings was the chpater concernign the early collegiate culutre of cheating. Especially when I think we all consider that "students today" find no problem with plagiarism. And I also think that there's a belief that plagiarism started with the Internet. I may be whistfully and naively spinning my wheels, here, but I DO think that most students do understand at least at a most basic level that cheating is wrong and do expect consequences for engaging in it. Knowing something's wrong and acting on the beleif that something is wrong are two different things.

I am referenceing Sue Carter Simmons chapter on "Competing notions of authorship" where she tells us that the cre'me de la cre'me during the time that education was really only for the priveliged, cheating was rampant. Simmons seems to indicate that one of the reasons that students at institutions like Harvard cheated so much, is because they beleived it was the fault of the instructors. The issue was reframed, says Simmons, "as a critique of indaquate teaching (p.46)." Student "themes" were on a small number of accepted topics and the ideas were largely recycled from year to year adn they were collected by disinterested teachers. Communal acts of plagiarism, such as fraternity files were an orchestrated act of rebellion,"plagiarism was one of many activities one might engage in out of responsibility to one's and duty to maintain one's position at college" (p.47). It also appears as though institutionally, plagiarism was not considered all that bad of a crime. Simmons says that plagiarism was adressed very little in texts that students used (p.49). And it seems that this act of rebellion was against the fact that they did not consider themselves authors of largely irrelevant themes, "Consequently even when students wrote thier own papers, they may have felt little ownership of the texts they produced"(p.50). I think many college educators today "plagiarism proof" their classes through such mechanisms as in-class work. They type of classes I like to teach are pretty-plagiarism-proof, you really can tell the difference between student and professional media production. I remember a friend of mine at SIUE was concerned that a student news story for a class was such a great leap forward that it couldn't have been written by the student. I read at and noticed many rookie-writing mistakes, like dangling modifiers. My assessment: It was okay, but NOT THAT good tyo consider it plagiarized.

My question for you all is: to what degree do you consider it your responsibility to plagiarize-proof your classes and what do you do (Pop quiz hotshot-what do you do?-since I'm no plagiarist, I'll credit the screen play for SPEED here).