TEACHSOC: Fw: TEACHSOC: plagiarism

[Sarah Murray]

----- Original Message ----- From: Sarah Murray To: Marty Schwartz Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2005 6:42 PM Subject: Re: TEACHSOC: plagiarism I'd like to add something regarding both academic dishonesty and support from the administration.   I had a student last semester who presented as a mentally challenged individual -- not only in her extremely deficient academic work, but in the way she interacted with peers, the way she moved, her overall demeanor.  Her parents came to meet me once, the way I do with my 4th grader's teachers,  and also "spoke" to me through their daughter (my student); I had the strong impression they would do anything to get her a college degree, including doing her work for her.   The irony is that we have a support program for students with learning disabilities, but this girl WOULD NOT sign up for it at my suggestion (I'm sure succumbing to the advice of her parents who obviously felt she'd be stigmatized.)  Other students I knew who received special help were far less disadvantaged intellectually than this student.    Even in a non-competitive enrollment situation, I couldn't figure out how this girl had gotten to be a senior in college, but it turns out her father taught at a local community college, got her in there, and had her transfer to this state university.  When I say there was a gap between the work she performed in class and the work she "produced" at home (done, I'm sure, by her parents) that is the understatement of my lifetime.   I am only an adjunct but feel a duty to uphold academic standards, especially as I see them slip into oblivion, so I talked to the assistant chair of the soc. department and another colleague who didn't seem to know how to react to this situation, and then called the chair of the student's  department (she was a women's studies major).   I was told that this student had higher than a 3.0 average, so somehow she had "managed to do very well" up through her senior year!!  Right then I knew I was fighting an uphill battle.  In my view, if this girl and her parents (for she was treated like an 11 year old child) did not want to avail themselves of the services provided for students with obstacles, I think she should've gotten the grade her work warranted -- an F.  But in this market-driven environment, where the customer (I mean student) is always right, I knew there was no point in pursuing my inclination, and gave her a C. What good is this college degree when any job interview this girl goes on will end in disappointment, as her deficiencies are immediately obvious?  Wouldn't the student's time and the parent's money be better spent honing life skills (she could not drive, had no friends, had never worked outside the home at 22, and was cheerfully oblivious to all of it, and super confident in her "abilities")?  I believe this whole charade was a disservice to her, the other students in the class, and the university at large.  She came away being able to articulate absolutely nothing we covered in class -- and this was a "fun" Soc. of Family course.      What would anyone suggest I should've done instead?? Sarah Murray William Paterson U of NJ ----- Original Message ----- From: Marty Schwartz To: teachsoc Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2005 4:15 PM Subject: TEACHSOC: plagiarism A couple of quick comments: I think that Mikaila Arthur makes a number of very good points.  The issue is made more simple at my university, which has a rule that you can set up any policy that you wish on plagiarism, but that it can only be enforced if it is distributed in writing the first day of class. Personally, and this is more ideology than informed practice, I figure that by the time someone becomes an advanced student in a selective admission university they should know the basic rules of plagiarism.  I just tell them if they are not confident of what this means, to get on line or hike over to the reference librarian who has loads of suggestions.   2.  Nevertheless, as Del points out, some amazing things happen.  I once had a student copy an entire paper out of a book that our university library did not hold, but another university in town did.  As I happens, it was my field and I had read the book.  When I failed the student, she complained about me to the dean, who called me in to hear her complaints.  It turns out she claimed that she believed that this was the way to write papers and that she had always written them that way.  I must have greeted this with a sullen sneer or something, because she said she would be back in 20 minutes.  She returned with 9 term papers, each of which was obviously copied out of a book (bad enough when a semi-literate open admissions student sounds like Saul Bellow, but when she sounds like a Nobel prize winning chemist ......).  Each had no written comments except an A on the front page, and perhaps a "good job."   3.  Aside from graduate seminars, I have given up research papers.  When the university switched our sophomore classes from 35 to 100, and at least in criminology assigned me commonly 40 to 60 student upper division classes, I quit assigning loads of papers.  I can barely live through essay exams, as long as they also expect me to be nationally active, work heavily with students and former students, publish and get grants, etc.  Now that I am getting pretty old, I find that a 70 hour week is all that I can handle, but the university is still trying to balance the budget by accepting 2000 more students and cutting the adjunct and graduate assistant budget.   I have found it easiest to assign a large number of small papers, such as "find three research articles in peer reviewed journals published since the last time I taught this course, and write an essay that summarizes them, critiques them, and explains how they treat the subject as compared to our assigned readings."  Not likely to get that from the web, or to borrow it from their older brother. Besides, as others have pointed out, in 30 years of teaching in a variety of environments and six years of chairing a very large department, I have only seen a very occasional case where a student was accused of cheating and the dean/judicial board/grievance committee, etc. did not back the student.  I believe in taking extreme steps to create environments where cheating is not possible, since the chances of the university backing me up are so slim.  Anyway, I hate scenes! Marty Martin D. Schwartz Professor and Research Scholar Ohio University Visiting Fellow, National Institute of Justice Co-Editor, Criminal Justice: The International Journal of Policy and Practice