At the end of Fall semester I gave my usual extra credit assignment to my overachieving State University Students - to write an Op-Ed for the school newspaper, which they would actually have to submit in order to get the extra credit. Now, because 1. This is for a measly 10 points of extra credit which can affect their grades by maybe 1%, and 2. They were asked to base the Op-Ed off of their own final argument paper. and 3. They actually have to share this work with the editors of the school newspaper and possibly risk publication, you’d think this was exactly the sort of assignment a student just couldn’t plagiarize.
Well, you’d be wrong.
Exhausted after grading stacks and stacks of final papers and presentations for 64 students, I finally got around to glancing over the extra credit to give those last-minute desperation points before I submitted the final grades. Since I wasn’t handing them back, I just skimmed them to see that they actually did something like what I asked them to do. Even in my half-conscious, glazed-eye state, I had to do a double-take at Oscar’s paper, so named because his plagiarism and subsequent denial should win an Oscar.
It smacked of Wikipedia-isms, with very specific dates, names, and facts with no attribution, so I ran it through Turnitin.com. I was thinking the whole time - nah, this has got to be just bad paraphrase - the student was solid A- material, not super-engaged, but he did all the work, and showed some critical thinking skills.
The Turnitin report came back with 70% plagiarism, and, even better, he had plagiarized the UNIVERSITY’S OWN WEBSITE.
The Op-Ed basically consisted of a 2-sentence introduction that was his own, something like…“Did you know it’s the 50th anniversary of my yadda yadda team? Let me tell you a bit about how awesome State University sports team is." Then 5 paragraphs of cut-and-paste from the University sports team website, about the history of the team, and a closing that was also straight from the website, something like, "If you want to support the team, come on out to this and such event.”
So, it being late, and me being tired, I just sent the student a short email:
Oscar,
I can’t believe you plagiarized an extra credit assignment.
Send me electronic copies of all of your other work for this class so I can see how extensive this problem is.
-Professor ____
The student wrote back immediately with all of his previous work attached and a funny excuse: ‘I just forgot to attach my Work Cited sheet - here it is.’
I explained in the next email that a Works Cited entry wouldn’t cover the fact that basically his whole paper was completely unchanged, without quotation marks from the online source.
He pleaded ignorance in the next email, saying that, well, this was just a BLOCK QUOTE and he didn’t know how to indent the right way.
Ha!
Again, I explained why this was inappropriate, and improbable, to have more than half of a paper as a quotation from a single source, and that there was no take-backs. In fact, this student had already submitted this to the school newspaper for publication! Additionally, as I explained, this was not an appropriate assignment to have any quotations in, as it was an Editorial, a piece of pure personal opinion.
Just to see how extensive this was, I tested the rest of his old papers, but found no other instances of plagiarism, not even a little bit, which was unusual. This case then, hinged on this weird extra credit assignment.
The student’s next excuse was that his coach had given him “permission” to use the website for his paper, and he could prove it by having the coach write to me.
I said, sure, have the coach write to me.
Surprisingly, he did. The coach wrote me a little note about how good of a kid Oscar was and how hard he works, and how Oscar had approached him and he suggested getting information from the website.
I emailed the coach a copy of Oscar’s paper with the plagiarized 70% highlighted, and explanation of the assignment.
The coach’s tone changed in the next email and he said he would have “a talk” with Oscar.
Oscar wrote me back finally saying that he understood what he did was wrong and that he was sorry. Oddly, he kept referring to plagiarism as illegal, which was probably something his coach told him.
So, I was on the edge about what to do for this case. On one hand it’s “just” an extra credit assignment, on the other hand, it’s plagiarism, he submitted it FOR PUBLICATION, which could have had dire consequences for the school newspaper at least in terms of reputation, and he tried his darnedest to sneak out of it.
It being an extra credit assignment also posed a particular problem. If I wanted to just give him the slap of the wrist option, a zero for the assignment, there was no real punishment. Oh wow, a zero for my extra credit, I’m sooooo sorry I tried to get away with academic dishonesty. The slap on the wrist becomes sort of non-consequential.
I’ve been chumming up to the Office of Student Conduct so I sent them an email asking what other instructors have done in this circumstance. They gave me some good options - just give a zero, dock all the extra credit for the semester, subtract the amount the extra credit was worth from the total amount of points for the semester, or dock participation points or some combination of these. I could also, of course, file a report with the Office of Student Conduct, either an informal “watch this guy” report, or a more official all-the bells-and-whistles judicial hearing report.
I just went with the “watch this guy” report, docked all the extra credit for the semester, and told him that he had to write an apology and essay withdrawal to the school newspaper editors as well as a new Op-Ed without any plagiarism.
He wined in the next email, but I threatened him with the other options I had on the table, and he emailed me his new Op-Ed the next day.
All in all, it went ok, but I can’t help feeling I was way too lenient. I hope his coach gave him extra laps or something.
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