Plagiarism

Last week I had a couple incidents of plagiarism in my College Comp class. Both incidents were handled the same - parents and administrators were notified. Both papers were given zeros. However, the parents reacted differently. One emailed me immediately saying thanks for the notification and things would be dealt with that night at home. The other parents didn't send a thing. Until Friday, when they requested a meeting with me on Monday. I replied that this was fine with me.

Now I'm wondering what their attitude will be. Are they going to somehow try to blame me for their student's stupidity (more on that in a bit). Of course, it is impossible to judge tone in an email message, but it seemed quite short. If they try to offer excuses or pin this on me somehow, I'm going to get pissed and let them have it with both barrels.

I've already bent over backward for this student. It wasn't long ago they submitted a persuasive essay that I'm almost positive was written for another class. How do I know? It was not written in the form that I asked (a five paragraph thesis-support theme. One of their three supporting factors had to include an oppenent's argument that they then had to take and refute and use back against their opponent).

The paper that was turned in was hardly persuasive. It was more a half-assessed research paper on abortion. There was no thesis, not to mention an opponent's argument used. In fact, the entire second paragraph was a brief overview of abortion! So I suspect that for whomever the student wrote the paper had another form that the student had to meet. Only they weren't bright enough to alter it for my class. It earned an "F" and this point was raised. Not that they have plagiarized, I wish I would have followed up on this more.

But the bottom line is that both of these students who plagiarized should not even be in the class. Neither are taking it for college credit, so waht are they doing in a College Composition class you ask? I wish I knew?

Apparently they are enrolled in place of our senior English, which is where they really should be. Neither of these students have the work ethic to succeed yet in the class. So they resorted to cheating.

I need to think more on how to keep these types of students, who aren't serious about getting a college level education while still in high school, out of the class.

More on to come.

******

I ended up noticing the plagiarism as I was grading the first essay I realized that it just didn't sound like this student. So I Googled a sentence from their introduction. I got a hit - word for word from 'enotes.'

Then I took a sentence from a supporting paragraph and Googled it. Got another hit - again word for word from 'echeat.com.'

I immediately gave the paper a zero. Then I printed off copies of the text from enotes and echeat. I highlighted the plariarism in the paper. Then I highlighted the examples from enotes and echeat. Then I cut the sections out of the printouts and taped them to the paper.

I can't wait for the parent to explain how their student didn't mean to copy and that it was an accident. To which I'll reply, "I find it hard to believe it is an accident when you steal information from a site called 'echeat!'"

We'll see how that goes over.

I suppose the old argument to counter that would be, "they didn't know it was plagiarism." To which I'll reply, "I can't buy that either. I know they are instructed very well on the plagiarism via their tenth grade research project. I know I hammered them with the dangers of plagiarism during the first few weeks of class. So don't give me that."

It was intentional. It was most certainly a mistake. It was the wrong thing to do. The implications are done. Let's move on. -- that's how I'm going to handle it.