Friday, October 26, 2001

Plagiarizing papers from Internet is problem on campus
By Jordan Blum
Staff Reporter

James Riddlesperger, chair for political science, asked one of his classes last Thursday if they could believe students actually plagiarize from Web sites, while speaking about the availabilty of research papers on the Internet.

“Are you serious?” junior political science major Kenny Thompson said while smiling.
Riddlesperger responded by tossing an eraser at Thompson to the response of class laughter.

Riddlesperger said he jokingly threw the eraser to illustrate his point that all students are aware of the availability of papers on the Internet and that it is a legitimate problem on college campuses.

But Riddlesperger and other professors say plagiarizing papers from Web sites isn’t a joking matter and needs to be handled seriously.

David Vanderwerken, chair for the English department, said it is easier for students to plagiarize from the Internet than it is to do research in the library, and those students caught are strictly punished.

“It’s easy as pie for a student to get on the Internet and download, cut, paste and print and they’re done,” Vanderwerken said. “But those who cheat risk getting in hot water. Although, for every one (student) we bust there’s probably three or four who get away with it.”

He said four students have already received failing grades in English classes this semester for being caught copying entire papers from Web sites.

Tim Davis, a junior business major, said he has been forced to learn the repercussions of plagiarizing from Web sites the hard way.

Davis said he copied a paragraph from a group member’s notes and turned it in as a part of his essay. He said he did not know where the paragraph came from, but that when he and his group member ended up getting caught for having the same paragraph he discovered it had come from an Internet essay. Davis said he was given an F for the class because he made a poor decision about one paragraph.

“There’s a much higher chance of getting caught (for cheating) using the Internet because teachers check most of them,” Davis said. “But students copy (Internet essays) because we’ve got so many other things going on with class and work and it usually becomes a last resort when we run out of time. But some people are just lazy.

“I’m sure that at least 90 percent of students at TCU have plagiarized something, whether it be a sentence or a whole paper.”

A junior business major, who requested his name be kept confidential, said he had copied papers from the Internet on several occasions and plans to continue doing so until he gets caught.

“In my sophomore English class I got my whole paper off of SchoolSucks.com, and I even got an A on it,” he said. “I can be lazy sometimes, and then I end up getting stressed out when I’m running out of time.

“Writing doesn’t even have anything to do with my major, so I don’t see what the big deal is.”

Vanderwerken said the students are to blame, but the Web sites that sell papers to students are not innocent either.

“These services take a kid’s money and then have no problem turning students in to university faculties. They have no moral basis or ethics at all,” he said. “My little fantasy is for the (English) department to hire a hacker to send viruses to all these (Web) sites.”

However, Jim Kulk, the president of Research Assistance, a company that sells papers over the Internet and offers custom papers written to customers’ specifications, said his company sells knowledge from a database of information and shouldn’t be blamed for cheating.

“The potential for cheating is the same with us as with any other legitimate news site,” Kulk said. “We sell information from a database the same way WSJ.com (The Wall Street Journal) and Lexis-Nexis.com work. It’s unfair for my site to always be targeted when we’re the same as everyone else.”

Kulk also said there’s a disclaimer on the Web site that warns against plagiarism and said he has no idea if people use papers bought from the company to cheat.

Assistant English professor Bonnie Blackwell said students are often sloppy and it is easy to spot plagiarism, but when students just copy a few sentences from Web sites it usually goes by unnoticed.

Blackwell said the best way to stop students from copying off the Internet is to “plagiarize proof” paper assignments by narrowing the topic to focus on ideas only discussed in classes. However, she said papers from Web sites that offer custom papers are hard to catch.

“You don’t learn anything by cheating and you’re wasting the opportunity of having access to professors and being able to share ideas,” she said.

Jordan Blum
jdblum@student.tcu.edu