By Chanel Nardone
While her friends were getting ready to go out partying one Thursday night during her sophomore year, Crystal, who requested her last name not be published, decided to give in to temptation.
The sociology paper she and a friend were trying to complete was due the next day, but their friends were going out that night. The two “Googled” the information they needed, copied and pasted paragraphs from a Web site to their Word document and got ready to go out.
“I wanted to save time; we just wanted to get it done so we could go out,” said Crystal, now a middler marketing major, who got an “A” on the paper.
Crystal and her friend are not the only students using shortcuts. According to the Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution (OSCCR), the number of academic dishonesty cases has remained somewhat consistent. During the 2002-03 academic year, 40 cases of academic dishonesty were reported, as compared to the 34 cases that were reported during the last academic year.
“It’s a problem in every school,” said journalism Professor Chuck Fountain. “There’s not enough plagiarism to say there is no hope for the future, but enough to trouble me.”
While students like Crystal take the easy way out once in college, other students pirate material to get accepted to school in the first place.
“I used part of my cousin’s college essay as part of my application to get into Northeastern,” said Jen, a middler accounting major, who also requested her last name not be published.
Jen said she does not plagiarize anymore for her own integrity reasons, but she did copy material for some assignments once she got into college.
Although Crystal was able to get away with plagiarizing, William Miles, a political science professor, said instructors often develop a “sixth sense” to differentiate between student and published work, and Crystal’s Web-based method is known among educators.
“A big change I’ve found over the last couple years is what I call ‘cut and paste plagiarism.’ Materials are so easily obtainable over the Internet that students don’t necessarily plagiarize the whole paper, but highlight key phrases or sentences and paste it into their own,” Miles said.
Miles admits checking the accuracy of a student’s work is labor intensive, but has become easier in recent years due to the Internet.
“I don’t feel right if my suspicion is aroused to just ignore it,” he said.
However, other professors said they have been wrong in the past when a portion of a student’s work has been deemed suspicious.
“Sometimes I’ve been wrong, because the paper was better crafted,” said Susan Setta, associate professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion. “I thought it was plagiarized, but I looked, and the student just did a really good job, better than the work the student has done before. It feels good when you discover it’s their work.”
Fountain said he thinks many students feel no shame for this kind of dishonesty. He said he tries to gear assignments toward topics that are not easily plagiarized and warns his students, “If you found it, I’ll find it” to dissuade them from copying published writing.
Some students, however, said they feel plagiarizing provides no advantage in the long run and see no point to copying material.
“You come to NU to get an education, which you’re not getting by plagiarizing,” said junior marketing major Mike Searles. “Though it’s a quick fix for the time being, in the long run it’s just wasting your time and money.”
Miles said he has recommended a policy be put in place where professors are notified of students caught plagiarizing in the past. At the very least, he said, professors in the student’s major should be made aware.
OSCCR handles all issues involving violations of academic honesty. Whether a student cheats on an exam or plagiarizes published literature, it falls under this category, said interim OSCCR Director Wendy Olson.
“We want to deter that behavior from happening and educate them so they don’t make that mistake again,” Olson said.
The first offense for any type of academic dishonesty is a one semester deferred suspension. The student remains in school and is allowed to go to class. If the student is found responsible for another violation, he or she is then suspended.
An academic integrity seminar is also mandatory to teach time management skills, ways to deal with stress and general ethics, she said.
Following a second violation the student is expelled from the university. However, Olson said the majority of students have realized the risk involved and getting caught a second time is not worth it.
“When a student is found to have committed plagiarism, it raises questions as to whether it was the first time or only the first time the student was caught. It casts a shadow over all previous work,” Miles said.
