How Do You Handle Cheating and Plagiarism?
In my first year teaching, I discovered that a student had copied part of an
essay from something he found online. I went over the passages with the student
and discussed with him why it had violated school policy on academic integrity, and
what he could do to make up the assignment. Reluctantly, I called his parents to tell
them what had happened. What I hadn't expected was the father's oral shrug:“ Well,
the president doesn't write his own speeches." Embarrassed, all I could think to say was,
"We both know that's a different situation." This week, I was reminded of that story -
and all the other situations when I found that a student had copied material from another
source - when I read about the 17-year-old German genius whose best-selling novel
turned out to include passages lifted from another book. The story has caused controversy
in Germany not only because of the plagiarism charge and because the writer, Helene
Hegemann, has defended herself, but also because the book is a finalist for major book
prize - and the selection committee knew about the plagiarism before choosing the novel
as a finalist:"Obviously, it isn't completely clean, but, for me, it doesn't change my
assessment of the text," said Volker Weidermann, the jury member and a book critic for
the Sunday edition of the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine, a strong supporter. "I
believe it's part of the concept of the book." Although Ms. Hegemann has apologized for
not being more open about her sources, she has also defended herself as the
representative of a different generation, on the freely mixes and matches from the flood
of information across new and old media, to create something new. "There's no such thing
as originality anyway, just authenticity," said Ms. Hegemann in a statement released by
her publisher after the scandal broke. Meanwhile, on the academic front, the Freakonomics
blog reported last week on a study of college plagiarism. The authors found that "the
decision to plagiarize reflects both a poor understanding of academic integrity and the
perception that the chances of detection and severe punishment are low."