academic suicide

At the beginning of our American History class yesterday our prof gave us some disturbing news concerning the papers we submitted last week. The first two papers she read had been plagiarized! She was obviously quite upset by this and no one in the class had anything to say. When you hear something like this from a prof you really start to question yourself - at least I sure did. The wheels start turning, "I am sure that I gave proper credit to all the sources I used in my paper, but did I miss something..."

It is easier than ever to access the work of others and pass it off as your own, but at the same time professors today are very sharp when it comes to catching this kind of academic short-cutting. Issues surrounding intellectual property have become increasingly important in the information age and I am glad to see that the faculty at the university take the issue as seriously as they do. I just feel for the two people who were busted. There is no excuse for plagiarism, but at the same time a part of my can sympathize because I have been up late working on a paper on many occasions thinking about how much easier it would be if I could just "borrow" someone else's work on a particular topic. Not to mention that the consequences of plagiarism are severe. Not only will the guilty students receive a failing grade on that assignment, this transgression will become a part of their permanent transcript and it will follow them throughout their academic carrier.