This is a presentation I gave as part of a panel I was part of at the English Articulation Conference, University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign in 2008 (ish).
The very first time I taught English composition, I unintentionally caught a plagiarist. I was grading papers, and as I read one student’s introduction, I noticed a generic reference that I felt needed to be more specific. Before committing my comment permanently to the margins of the student’s paper, I checked my facts with a quick Google search. I clicked on the first search result, and I read my student’s introduction all over again.
I’d caught a plagiarist and like the dog that chases cars, now that I had caught one, I didn’t know what to do. My undergraduate degree is in journalism, and I fell back on my journalism training. I began interviewing people and gathering information including a copy of Richard Harris’ The Plagiarism Handbook from the college library.
When confronted with proof of the plagiarized paper, my student’s reaction was a textbook response – the student blamed me. I was the teacher, and it was my fault that my student hadn’t learned to avoid plagiarism. It was a text book reaction, but I couldn’t stop wondering – what if my student was right?
Colleges and instructors expect students to understand plagiarism, presenting plagiarism as an academic policy in student handbooks and syllabuses as if the issue was clear-cut. But we know better. Richard Harris notes, “plagiarism is a complex issue ” (vi), Rebecca Moore Howard calls plagiarism “inherently indefinable” (“Sexuality” 473) and Elaine E. Whitaker recognizes “plagiarism means different things to different people” (509).
It isn’t just students who don’t understand the definition of plagiarism. Just last week, I went with two other people to explain to the college president why the word “ideas” needed to be included in a proposed definition of plagiarism that will be brought before the college’s board of trustees. In January of this year, CNN reported Jerry Seinfeld and his wife, Jessica, are being sued for plagiarism (it was copyright infringement not plagiarism). More recently, an honors code at the University of Texas has been flagged as being plagiarized.
How can colleges and instructors expect students to understand the definition of something that we, as teachers, hotly debate in our scholarly journals? We’ve punished students, we’ve debated terms and definitions, but when do we teach students about not just plagiarism but other issues that closely resemble plagiarism? It is almost as if we expect students to arrive to our institutions and classrooms inherently knowing what plagiarism is and how to avoid it.
To start, we need to change how students view citation. Citation is not a way to prevent being charged with plagiarism. Citation provides a map of the research we conducted about a topic and what influenced our thinking as we developed our own ideas and thoughts on the matter. It also helps others reading our research decide if we used credible sources or left out any important information from our research.
Before we can punish students for plagiarism, we need to educate students not only about how to cite sources in an academic setting, but to understand how citation happens in other settings and genres beyond academics as well as discussing intentional versus unintentional plagiarism in academic settings.
As I have worked the last two years to educate myself about plagiarism and invoke some changes at the college where I work, I have encountered a number of barriers including:
1) difficulty in developing a definition of plagiarism that everyone agrees with
2) teachers being unwilling to give up the ability to be flexible in how to handle student plagiarism;
3) programs with ethical issues/requirements such as nursing and law enforcement where plagiarism can mean being expelled from the program permanently;
4) navigating beyond the “gotcha” mentality, identified by Margaret Price, that is inherent in most plagiarism policies;
5) failing to recognize citation standards can differ across genres;
6) failing to address professionally accepted behaviors (ghostwriting, boilerplating, etc.) that can closely resemble plagiarism; and
7) as the discussion and awareness of plagiarism grows at the institution, you can expect accusations of plagiarism aimed at the college and/or faculty members, which is why it is important to discuss acceptable practices that can seem like plagiarism.
Works Cited
A Plagiarized Honor Code? Oops. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 31 Mar. 2008.
Seinfeld, wife sued for plagiarism, defamation. CNN.com. 8 Jan. 2008
Harris, Robert A. The Plagiarism Handbook. Los Angeles: Pyrczak Publishing, 2001.
Howard, Rebecca Moore. “Sexuality, Textuality: The Cultural Work of Plagiarism.” College English. 62.4 (Mar. 2000): 473-491.
Whitaker, Elaine E. “A Pedagogy to Address Plagiarism.” College Composition and Communication. 44.4 (Dec. 1993): 509-514.
