Putting the fear of God into those who plagiarize…

March 31st, 2005 Stewart Posted in Uncategorized |

This will take a little explanation. A comedian who was online got IMed by a student who asked him to write her paper. She thought he was some sort of expert in Hinduism. He agreed to write her paper for 75 bucks and decided to teach her a lesson by turning her in:

Laura K. Krishna is a Plagiarist

Then the Internet sort of exploded all over his blog. Then the girl got scared. Then he revealed that he didn’t turn her in after all:

Laura K. Krishna is Just a Dumb Kid With a Nice Mom

It’s a very unusual, morally ambiguous tale that could only happen in the Era of the Blog. That said, I’m not sure it wouldn’t make a good classroom example of what can happen to ordinary students who plagiarize. A colleague and I have adapted some material for plagiarism instruction here at UB, and we try to impart to the students the potentially dire consequences of plagiarism, along with “real world” definitions and examples of what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid it by citing your resources.

It’s one thing to tell them about what has happened to professors who plagiarize — Students give you semi-polite attention and think, “Yeah, so? I’m not gonna be a professor.” But if students see how another student got busted, humiliated on the web, and was maybe even kicked out of school, then that might have some real impact on their future behaviors.