Buying a Paper via IM

Submitted by mre on March 30, 2005 - 03:18.

As someone whose presentation at CCCC dealt with plagiarism issues, and who's read Jenny Edbauer's thoughts on plagiarism and works for hire with considerable interest, I thought the comment-storm tempest at MetaFilter and elsewhere over the college student who solicited a stranger via IM to write a paper on Hinduism for her might be worth pointing out. (Follow-up links here, here, and here; according to BoingBoing, it's a hoax, but the arguments offered as to why it's a hoax aren't entirely convincing, and April Fool's Day ain't until Friday.)

Mike

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Laura K. Krishna

Submitted by Clancy on March 30, 2005 - 09:02.

[Edited to change last name, in accordance with Laura and Nate Kushner's agreement.]

I was hoping someone would blog that here. It will be interesting to see if it really is a hoax or not, and if not, if it gets written up in The Chronicle or Inside Higher Ed.




CultureCat

Keep an eye out

Submitted by illtron on March 30, 2005 - 15:02.

I have word from Nate that he has been interviewed, and will be interviewed again soon on all this. Check back sometime in the near future to the A Week of Kindness blog for details. He'll probably post them sooner or later.

Teaching Moment?

Submitted by mre on March 30, 2005 - 15:42.

Nate Kushner offers one more post with some contextualizing information. He never really turned the plagiarist in; the student got back in contact with him and was deeply apologetic; her mom got in contact with him -- but the student never talked to the dean about it, which both indicates to Kushner that she might not have been as sorry as she seemed, and also causes Kushner to worry that when the Dean does find out about it, the student will likely be in more trouble than she'd be if she'd been up-front about the matter. So does this move things beyond "Gotcha!", to use Margaret Price's thoughtful formulation? I think so. Is this a teaching moment, like the one John thoughtfully describes?

I'm not so sure.

Perhaps in its quality as a sort of failed teaching moment, and those are ones that both students and teachers (would-be or otherwise) can often learn from. I'd be curious to hear what other people think.
--
Mike
http://www.vitia.org/