CQR Plagiarism and Cheating

A n 9 1 n 0 9 iv th 2 er 3 sa -2 r 0 y 1 Res earc her 3 Published by CQ Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc. CQ www.cqresearcher.com Plagiarism and Cheating Are they becoming more acceptable in the Internet age?

heating scandals among some of the nation’s best students at Harvard University and New York City’s Stuyvesant High School have highlighted a problem C experts say is widespread. In surveys, a majority of college and high school students admit to cheating on a test or written assignment. Some experts blame the cheating culture on cutthroat competition for college admissions and jobs. The simplicity of copying from the Internet or cribbing from smartphones makes plagiarism and cheating easier, teachers say. However, in the case When Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan was accused of plagiarism in her novel How Opal Mehta of works of art and entertainment, some see a refreshing new Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life , she said the copying had been “unconscious.” But after passages ethic of sharing and “remixing” creative material in digital media. were found to have been copied from multiple authors, the publisher recalled the novel and Researchers find that cheating increases when educators “teach to canceled Viswanathan’s contract. the test” instead of emphasizing learning. But experts question I whether shifting to learning for learning’s sake is realistic when N THIS REPORT S public school funding now depends on standardized-test results THE ISSUES ...... 3 I and families think their children’s future depends on high grades. BACKGROUND ...... 12 D CHRONOLOGY ...... 13 E CURRENT SITUATION ...... 18 CQ Researcher • Jan. 4, 2013 • www.cqresearcher.com AT ISSUE ...... 19 Volume 23, Number 1 • Pages 1-28 OUTLOOK ...... 21 RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 25 EXCELLENCE N AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILVER GAVEL AWARD THE NEXT STEP ...... 26 PLAGIARISM AND CHEATING CQ Re search er

Jan. 4, 2013 THE ISSUES SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS Volume 23, Number 1 • Is plagiarism more ac - Fewer Students Admit to MANAGING EDITOR: Thomas J. Billitteri 3 ceptable in the Internet age? 4 Cheating [email protected] • Is an over-emphasis on Some experts attribute the ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR: Kathy Koch grades and test results drop to tougher anti-cheating [email protected] policies. contributing to the rise in SENIOR CONTRIBUTING EDITOR: plagiarism and cheating? Thomas J. Colin Cheating Scandals Rock [email protected] • Are colleges and 5 Top Universities schools doing enough to Some of the biggest scandals ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Kenneth Jost prevent plagiarism? occurred in the past decade. STAFF WRITER: Marcia Clemmitt BACKGROUND Term Paper Mills Skirt CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Sarah Glazer, 6 Peter Katel , Barbara Mantel, Tom Price, Plagiarism Rules Jennifer Weeks Famous Plagiarists Shadowy websites fulfill de - 12 Many great writers plagia - mand for ready-made papers. SENIOR PROJECT EDITOR: Olu B. Davis rized. ASSISTANT EDITOR: Darrell Dela Rosa 8 Many Students Crib from ‘Cult of Originality’ Term Paper Mills FACT CHECKER: Michelle Harris 12 About 20 percent of student The concept of originality copying comes from so-called emerged during the En - cheat sites. lightenment. Chronology Cheating Scandals 13 Key events since the first 15 West Point’s first scandal century A.D. An Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc. erupted in 1951. VICE PRESIDENT AND EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, Can Art Justify Plagiarism? HIGHER EDUCATION GROUP: 14 “I felt my words had become Michele Sordi part of some grander cause.” CURRENT SITUATION DIRECTOR, ONLINE PUBLISHING: Todd Baldwin Cheating Trends Students Copy From 18 Wikipedia and “Cheat” Sites Copyright © 2013 CQ Press, an Imprint of SAGE Pub - 18 High school cheating has Wikipedia is the top source lications, Inc. SAGE reserves all copyright and other declined in recent years. for high school and college rights herein, unless pre vi ous ly spec i fied in writing. students’ copying. No part of this publication may be reproduced Intransigence and 20 electronically or otherwise, without prior written Scandal 19 At Issue: permission. Un au tho rized re pro duc tion or trans mis- Teacher cheating is driven Is a new definition of sion of SAGE copy right ed material is a violation of in part by the No Child plagiarism needed? federal law car ry ing civil fines of up to $100,000. Left Behind law. CQ Press is a registered trademark of Congressional Quarterly Inc. Student vs. Machine FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 21 CQ Researcher (ISSN 1056-2036) is printed on acid- Students are outsmarting For More Information anti-plagiarism software. 24 free paper. Pub lished weekly, except: (March wk. 5) Organizations to contact. (May wk. 4) (July wk. 1) (Aug. wks. 3, 4) (Nov. wk. 4) and (Dec. wks. 3, 4). Published by SAGE Publica - Bibliography tions, Inc., 2455 Teller Rd., Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. OUTLOOK 25 Selected sources used. Annual full-service subscriptions start at $1,054. For Generational Divide The Next Step pricing, call 1-800-818-7243. To purchase a CQ Re - 21 Young teens believe they 26 Additional articles . searcher report in print or electronic format (PDF), must cheat to succeed. visit www.cqpress.com or call 866-427-7737. Single Citing CQ Researcher reports start at $15. Bulk purchase discounts and 27 Sample bibliography formats. electronic-rights licensing are also available. Periodicals postage paid at Thousand Oaks, California, and at additional mailing offices . POST MAST ER: Send ad dress chang es to CQ Re search er , 2300 N St., N.W., Suite 800, Wash ing ton, DC 20037. Cover: AP Photo/Chitose Suzuki

2 CQ Researcher Plagiarism and Cheating BY SARAH GLAZER

cheating scandal erupted at THE ISSUES Stuyvesant High School, a pub - lic school for high achievers ast spring, a teaching and one of the most difficult assistant at Harvard Uni - schools to get into in New L versity noticed some - York City. More than 70 stu - thing strange while looking dents were caught sharing test over take-home final exams information by cell phone . 3 for an undergraduate course In fact, studies find that on Congress. cheating is prevalent among Several students had cited high-achieving students: Up the same obscure 1910 con - to 80 percent of top high gressional members’ revolt in school students have admit - answer to a question. On ted to cheating on a test. 4 further examination, around Denise Clark Pope, whose a dozen students had used 2003 book Doing School de - the same string of words on scribed cheating among some questions, exhibited the high-achieving students, says same misunderstanding of elite schools like Stuyvesant material and, most damningly, actually tend to have more repeated the same typo. The n cheating than average because e b teaching assistant alerted a the stakes are higher. M

Matthew B. Platt, the assis - y For both low- and high- o r

tant professor of government T achieving students, she says, / o who was teaching the course. t cheating is a response to ei - o h

In a letter reporting the in - P ther a “disengaged state of

P

cident to the university’s aca - A learning,” excessive pres - demic integrity board, Platt Nick d’Ambrosia, 17, holds up his iPod on April 13, sure to get good grades and implicated 13 students. 1 2007, at Mountain View High School in Meridian, test scores — or both. After By Aug. 30, when Harvard Idaho, where officials banned iPods and other digital- the scandal at Stuyvesant media players in testing areas after some students were publicly revealed the cheating thought to be downloading formulas and crib sheets broke, for instance, many scandal, the university was in - onto the players. Many high schools have banned students there said they vestigating 125 students — al - such devices and cell phones from testing venues but would cheat, especially by most half the class — for pla - critics say the rules often are only laxly enforced. copying another student’s giarism and illicit collaboration. homework, if they thought The scandal has intensified an “We have a cheating epidemic in the teacher was giving them mean - ongoing national discussion about America, and the people in charge of ingless, rote tasks. 5 cheating and plagiarism and elicit - our schools are not doing anything “The high achievers are not really ed surprise at how many American about it. And nobody’s making them engaged — they’re doing it for the students admit to engaging in these do anything about it — including our grade, and there are very high ex - illicit practices. More than two-thirds state legislatures and policy makers, pectations from parents and schools of college students admit to cheat - who appropriate tens of millions of about getting into college that can lead ing on a test or on written assign - dollars for our schools,” says David to behavior you know is wrong,” says ments — including plagiarizing from Callahan, co-founder of Demos, a lib - Pope, a lecturer at the Stanford Uni - published materials or getting some - eral New York City-based think tank, versity School of Education. “At the other one else to write their term paper and author of the 2004 book The Cheat - end of the spectrum,” she says, where — according to the International Cen - ing Culture: Why More Americans Are students are performing poorly in school, ter for Academic Integrity, a coali - Doing Wrong to Get Ahead. students say they cheat “ ‘because the tion of colleges and K-12 schools Yet, why would smart Harvard stu - teachers don’t care about me’ or ‘it’s def - based at Clemson University in South dents need to cheat? Similar questions initely boring so it doesn’t matter if I Carolina. 2 were raised this past June when a do it with integrity or not.’ ”

www.cqresearcher.com Jan. 4, 2013 3 PLAGIARISM AND CHEATING

That suggests an economic rationale may also lie behind academic cheating, Callahan says. “The reality is, things are very competitive,” he observes. “It’s a tough economy, and it’s harder to get into the middle class than it used to be. Credentials do matter.” Under the NCLB law, high scores mean more federal money for public schools and bonuses for teachers and principals, so school administrators and teachers feel intense pressure for stu - dents to perform well on tests. Some appear to be cutting corners to ac - complish that. Teachers and adminis - trators in Atlanta, Philadelphia and El Paso, Texas, are being investigated for allegedly changing students’ answers on standardized tests or doctoring test results in other ways. 9 (See “Current Situation,” p. 18. ) The former El Paso school superintendent was sentenced in October to three and a half years in prison for manipulating test scores and defrauding the district of bonus cash, his reward for purportedly boost - ing the districts’ test scores. Some educators say the federal No pointing to the larger culture, he says: The teacher scandals point to a Child Left Behind (NCLB) law, which ‘There’s a lot of cheating in the larger cynical climate in schools over high- requires all students to achieve profi - world, so why should I be a saint?’ ” stakes tests, according to ethicist Michael ciency in basic skills by 2014 by pass - Other experts say problems with Josephson, founder and president of ing high-stakes standardized tests, has cheating predate the Reagan era. Psy - the Josephson Institute. He often hears led educators increasingly to try to chologist Howard Gardner — a pro - rationalizations from teachers that echo raise exam scores by “teaching to the fessor at the Harvard School of Edu - those of students: “They say, ‘This is test” and encouraged some teachers to cation who says he was “shocked but a rigged system; we have to lie and illicitly change students’ answers to not surprised” by the Harvard cheat - cheat to get the resources our stu - boost scores. 6 ing scandal — traces the problem to dents need.’ ” Drawing on research that finds a “thinning of the ethical muscle” in Paradoxically, while a majority of cheating decreases when teachers American society over the last four high school students admit to cheat - stress learning the material instead of decades. In a 2005 study of students ing on a test, the rate has declined “teaching to the test,” Pope has co- and young professionals launching their somewhat in the past two years — from founded a program, Challenge Suc - careers, “Young people told us [they] 59 percent in 2010 to 51 percent today, cess, which has trained about 100 admired ethics, but [said], ‘We want to according to the Josephson Institute’s schools to shift to learning for learn - be successful. We feel our peers are most recent survey. 10 The drop could ing’s sake. cutting corners, and we’ll be damned indicate that students and teachers are Callahan blames a cult of individu - if we let them get the trophies.’ ” 7 taking cheating more seriously. alism and self-interest that he says began According to an ethics survey of However, at the same time, the share during the Reagan administration for 23,000 high school students by the Los of kids who admit to lying on the sur - fostering a “cheating culture,” as evi - Angeles-based Josephson Institute, vey jumped 4 percentage points. “Are denced by the 2007-2008 Wall Street one-third of high school students say they getting more savvy and not ad - subprime mortgage scandal. “A lot of lying and cheating is necessary to get mitting it, or is [cheating] really going young people justify their cheating by ahead in life. 8 down?” Josephson asks.

4 CQ Researcher Among college students, the share of students admitting to having cheat - Cheating Scandals Rock Top Universities ed has dropped even more dramati - At Harvard University more than 100 students were suspected of cally over the past decade, according collaborating on a take-home exam last spring. Other top institutions to surveys by Donald L. McCabe, a pro - — from high schools to graduate programs — have been associated fessor of management and global busi - ness at Rutgers University. 11 That could with large-scale cheating scandals, many of them occurring during be because students today are less like - the past decade. ly to consider plagiarism cheating, es - Notable High School and University Cheating Scandals pecially if the plagiarized information comes from the Internet, McCabe sug - Harvard University (2012) — 125 students suspected of gests, based on his interviews and post- collaborating on a take-home exam for an introductory government survey comments from high school and course. college students. Only one in four un - Great Neck, Long Island, New York (2011) — 20 people dergraduates considers cut-and-paste arrested for paying others to take the SAT on their behalf or for providing plagiarism to be serious cheating. 12 the service. To plagiarize, according to the Merriam -Webster dictionary is “to steal Indiana University School of Dentistry (2007) — or pass off (the ideas or words) of an - 24 students suspended for hacking into computers to obtain exam other as one’s own; use without cred - answers. iting the source.” But the definition comes in for debate depending on the Duke University Fuqua School of Business (2007) — circumstances, as Judge Richard A. Pos - 34 first-year MBA students expelled, suspended or given failing grades ner writes in A Little Book of Plagia - for collaborating on a take-home exam. rism , which struggles to define the University of Virginia (2001) — 45 out of 158 students term in 109 pages. “The reader has expelled after being suspected of turning in physics papers written by to care about being deceived about other students during the previous five semesters. authorial identity in order for the de - ceit to cross the line to fraud and thus Stuyvesant High School, New York City (2012) — constitute plagiarism,” he writes, not - 71 students suspended for from 5 to 10 days, accused of exchanging ing that people generally don’t care, answers via cell phone for a statewide Regents exam. for example, that judges typically put U.S. Naval Academy (1994) — 24 midshipmen expelled and their name on opinions written by 62 are disciplined for receiving answers to an engineering exam ahead their law clerks . 13 of time. A common justification made by writers accused of plagiarism is that U.S. Military Academy (1951) — 90 cadets expelled for the copying was unintentional, and receiving answers to an exam ahead of time. sometimes this defense is accepted. But U.S. Military Academy (1976) — More than 150 cadets resign some institutions, such as Harvard, say or are expelled for cheating on an electrical engineering take-home lack of intention is no excuse: “If you exam. The academy reinstated 98 the following year. copy bits and pieces from a source (or several sources), changing a few words Sources: Meredith Galante, “The 10 Biggest College Cheating Scandals,” Business here and there without either adequately Insider , August 2012, www.businessinsider.com/the-10-biggest-cheating-scandals - paraphrasing or quoting directly, the to-rock-college-campuses-2012-8?op=1; individual news reports result is mosaic plagiarism. Even if you don’t intend to copy the source, you Experts are divided over whether book, says Urs Gasser, executive direc - may end up committing this type of young people today are less morally sen - tor of Harvard’s Berkman Center for In - plagiarism as a result of careless note- sitive to plagiarism in an age when they ternet & Society. “It’s no longer so clear taking and confusion over where your constantly remix, copy-and-paste and re- — not only for youth but, honestly, also source’s ideas end and your own ideas tweet others’ creations online. “Sharing for adults — what is plagiarism.” begin,” the “Harvard Guide to Using is in the DNA of the Internet,” especial - As copying gets easier on the In - Sources” admonishes. 14 ly on social media like Twitter and Face - ternet and the line between plagiarism

www.cqresearcher.com Jan. 4, 2013 5 PLAGIARISM AND CHEATING

Term Paper Mills Skirt Plagiarism Rules Shadowy websites fulfill big demand for ready-made homework assignments. “Hello! I need you big help!” to recruit students with virtually no academic credentials. But “Add conjunctions to make the essay smoothy.” 1 a surprising number were graduate students, and some came “The paper he sent me is nothing, I can’t show it to my teacher. from Ivy League colleges. My deadline is tomorrow until 1l pm. I hope you will fix it. Or “It’s alarming that some of these deficient students are in a i am lost.” 2 post-graduate program and seem to have gotten there without Dave Tomar received these desperate and shockingly illit - any of the critical skills they should have by the time they get erate email requests during the 10 years he wrote term papers out of high school,” he says. For good students and bad, Tomar for students for money. Now a freelance writer in Philadelphia, puts his clients’ motivation down to “the shared pressure of Tomar first offered an inside glimpse into the shady world of going to school to get grades and degrees rather than learning.” term paper mills in 2010 with an exposé under a pseudonym No one knows how many websites or companies sell term in The Chronicle of Higher Education. It became one of the papers to students, but guesses are they run at least in the hun - most widely read and commented-upon articles in the history dreds . 4 A Google search for “custom term papers” yields millions of The Chronicle , founded in 1966. 3 of results, but many sites are spinoffs of the same company. In his 2012 book, The Shadow Scholar , Tomar says he began At PaperMasters.com, which promises “all our papers are writing term papers for other students when he was a Rutgers Uni - custom written by professional writers,” prices range from $22.95 versity undergraduate. A fellow student offered him money to com - per page for a college paper to $32.95 for the “rush” rate on plete an assignment. Tomar’s reputation soon spread across campus. a graduate-level paper. Other companies’ websites offering cheap - When he graduated in the spring of 2002 with aspirations er rates are often replete with grammatical errors. to become a writer, Tomar was saddled with student debt and In most states, including Pennsylvania where Tomar worked, discovered he could earn more by turning out term papers it is illegal to sell term papers that will be turned in as stu - than doing anything else. He made more than $50,000 in his dent work. 5 But, Tomar says, “I was never too worried about best-earning year. legal consequences,” because most of the companies that em - Tomar’s highest-grossing paper — 160 pages on internation - ployed him attached a disclaimer to the completed paper iden - al financial reporting standards — bore a price tag of $4,000, tifying it as a “study guide,” to be used in completing the stu - split between him and the term paper company, he says. More dent’s own work. The disclaimer helped companies “posture than an amusing peek into a shadow world, Tomar’s book is like lecture-note companies,” which offer lecture notes or sam - an indictment of the current state of education — including his ple essays online for free, Tomar says. own at Rutgers. “For $25,000 or $30,000 a year, I was increas - A recent study by Turnitin — a plagiarism-detection software ingly angry about what I was getting for the money,” he says, company based in Oakland, Calif. — found that oppapers.com, casting Rutgers as an impersonal institution that seemed more now known as StudyMode.com and offering 890,000 “model” pa - interested in collecting his tuition and parking money than teach - pers, is the second most frequent source of verbatim text match - ing him anything or preparing him for the job market. es used by college students after Wikipedia. 6 (See graphic, p. 18. ) The highest proportion of Tomar’s clients came from for- Prices range from $29.95 monthly to $89.95 for a six-month profit colleges that, he contends, used aggressive telemarketing subscription to access StudyMode’s “premium” essays, which and legitimate re-use of others’ work Think of hip-hop and electronic dance doing is remixing phrases we’ve heard gets fuzzier, here are some of the music, which freely “sample” snippets all the time,” she observes. questions being asked: of others’ recordings, Blum says. “It’s Although it’s unclear whether or to creative but not necessarily original,” she what degree the digital revolution is Is plagiarism becoming more ac - says, but it “exemplifies the way a lot to blame for much of today’s plagia - ceptable in the Internet age? of young people think about writing. rism, some experts say high school In 2009, University of Notre Dame Students I’ve talked to are pretty skep - and college students have trouble un - anthropologist Susan D. Blum published tical about this issue of originality.” derstanding basic rules of attribution a study of her travels among a strange The very idea of sole authorship and what it means to write in their tribe with alien concepts of creativity. may be losing credibility among teens own words. Rebecca Moore Howard, Plagiarism “does not horrify them,” and and 20-somethings, she says. And in a professor of writing and rhetoric at citation rules “are simply not accept - the creative arena, at least, this gen - New York’s Syracuse University, says ed,” she reported. 15 The tribe? Today’s eration may be right. “A lot of schol - college students commonly incorpo - college students. arship on language shows all we’re rate whole paragraphs from a source

6 CQ Researcher account for at least 70-80 percent of paper seems “too good,” his students the essays on the site, according to often remark that no professor would a “support guru” who answered the believe it came from a student. 8 company’s California phone number. The thousands of scholarly assign - People who submit at least one paper ments Tomar wrote covered a huge range to the site can get free access, but of subjects, including papers toward a

only to 6,000 essays, according to n master’s degree in cognitive psychology a s

StudyMode. “We also buy other peo - a and a Ph.D. in sociology, and, most iron - H

9

ple’s databases,” the support person d ically, essays on business ethics. a

said. m “If anyone asks if I have regrets doing The StudyMode.com website cau - E this job,” Tomar points to the dozens of In his 2012 book, The Shadow Scholar , tions, “Turning in an essay or research Dave Tomar says he spent 10 years writing subjects he researched. “How could you paper that isn’t your own will get you term papers for students, at one point regret the learning I managed to get?” in serious trouble at your college. Use making over $50,000 in a year. He says he — learning, he says, that he didn’t get our free essays for ideas and get a entered the shady world of term-paper in college. head start on your projects and writing to help pay for his undergraduate coursework.” 7 But the finding by Tur - education at Rutgers University. — Sarah Glazer nitin, whose software detects identi - cal texts in a student paper, suggests students are using the site 1 Dave Tomar, “No Cheater Left Behind,” Huff Post Education , Nov. 1, 2012, for more than ideas. StudyMode.com did not respond to a re - www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-tomar/cheating-in-school_b_2057008.html. 2 Dave Tomar, The Shadow Scholar: How I Made a Living Helping College Kids quest for comments on the Turnitin findings. Cheat (2012), p. 110. A well-written custom paper that doesn’t plagiarize from 3 Ed Dante, “The Shadow Scholar,” The Chronicle of Higher Education , Nov. 12, other sources can escape detection by Turnitin, which matches 2010, http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/. a student’s writing to its database of published sources and 4 One list of term paper sites, compiled by Coastal Carolina University, jumped from 35 in 1999 to 250 in 2006. The list is at www.coastal.edu/library/ other term papers. Once turned in to a teacher who scans all presentations/mills2.html. papers with the software, it becomes part of the more than 5 Marie Groak, et al. , “Term Paper Mills, Anti-Plagiarism Tools, and Academ - 250 million student papers in Turnitin’s data base. ic Integrity,” EDUCAUSE Review , September/October 2001. For an example, see To discourage this kind of cheating, Jeff Karon, visiting in - this Pennsylvania law against selling term papers: http://law.onecle.com/penn sylvania/crimes-and-offenses/00.073.024.000.html. structor in the English department at the University of South Flori - 6 Turnitin, “Higher Education by Top Site,” 2012, Turnitin.com. Note: Turnitin da, instructs his students to download a free paper from a term uses a text-matching algorithm but does not necessarily identify if the identical paper mill and critique it. “By analyzing these ‘free essays’ be - text has been attributed to another source. fore the class, students learn firsthand that the papers available 7 See www.studymode.com. 8 “A Positive Solution for Plagiarism,” The Chronicle of Higher Education , over the Internet often are far inferior to what they could pro - Sept. 18, 2012, http://chronicle.com/article/A-Positive-Solution-for/134498/. duce on their own,” Karon writes. If, on the other hand, the 9 Dante, op. cit. into their papers, changing only a few “It seems clear there is a trend of ter, points out that the two-thirds cheat - words, without using quotation marks students reading only far enough into ing rate has remained fairly steady over — a process she calls “patchwriting.” a source to get a good quotation,” she the past 20 years — before the World In an analysis of 174 student pa - says. “It’s hard for students to avoid Wide Web existed. “This is a long - pers from 16 colleges, she found that plagiarizing when they’re working standing problem — not a problem just students commonly neglected to at - with isolated sentences and quoting from the Internet age,” she contends. tribute their stolen words. And even or paraphrasing them.” 16 Perhaps plagiarism seems more com - when they did give attributions, near - According to the International Cen - mon today because easy access to ly half the citations were from the first ter for Academic Integrity, about two- text- matching software and search en - page of their sources and included just thirds of college students report that gines makes it easier to catch, suggests a few sentences — a matter of “enor - they have cheated on a written as - the Berkman Center’s Gasser. mous concern,” she says, but more as signment, by plagiarizing or buying a Emily Grosholz, a philosophy pro - a matter of “reading comprehension” term paper, for example. But Teresa fessor at Pennsylvania State Universi - than of morality. Fishman, executive director of the cen - ty, says she can confirm her suspicions

www.cqresearcher.com Jan. 4, 2013 7 PLAGIARISM AND CHEATING

a personal message, the creators react - Many Students Crib From Term Paper Mills ed a lot more positively. 19 When the leading plagiarism-detection service catches students “That study says young people haven’t converted to people who think copying sentences in their papers directly from a website, nearly a it’s OK to steal people’s work; they fifth of the verbatim text comes from so-called cheat sites that share have moral boundaries, too,” says or sell papers, according to a study by Turnitin, whose software Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, director of Na - detects plagiarism by matching students’ text to online sources. tional Programs and Site Development One-third of the direct matches it found came from legitimate at the National Writing Program, a net - homework sites. The study did not look at how often any of the work of 200 university-based projects sources were properly cited in student papers. at the University of California-Berkeley that trains teachers in writing instruc - Types of Websites Copied in Papers by High School and tion. 20 “They didn’t want to be in - College Students, 2012 visible. They were willing to be remixed, but as a creator you want a tip of the Secondary Education Higher Education hat, too.” 3% 1% Meanwhile, some college students are so afraid of plagiarizing or violat - 6% ing a copyright, says Patricia Aufder - 10% heide, a communications professor who 11% co-directs American University’s Center 33% 14% 33% for Social Media, that they won’t even read reviews of a film before they have 18% to write one for her film class. She 19% blames some of that fear on what she 28% 23% considers draconian university integrity codes that stress copying as the pri - mary crime to avoid. Citing sources is Academic and homework Social and content-sharing the more important principle, she says. Paper mills and “cheat” sites “Copying is a basic part of learn - Encyclopedia ing,” Aufderheide adds, especially when News and portals it comes to creative work. “All work Shopping in the world is recombinant.” * Percentages may not total 100 because of rounding. When 17-year-old best-selling Ger - Source: Turnitin, 2012 man novelist Helene Hegemann was accused of plagiarizing from a blog - in a matter of seconds. In a badly cording to a study of the MIT web - ger and another novel, she justified it written paper replete with spelling er - site Scratch, where kids and teens from by saying she was just “mixing,” as the rors, “All of a sudden you get a para - around the world have posted more rest of her generation does online. graph that’s beautifully crafted,” she than 2 million computer games of their “There’s no such thing as originality, says. “I just put it into Google, and I own creation. 18 anyway, just authenticity,” she said when usually find it.” Scratch encourages children over the scandal broke. 21 Easy methods of detecting plagia - age 8 to post games they have “remixed,” But Gasser says Hegemann actual - rism may explain why a majority of or based on other creations found on ly had violated the new digital norm college presidents, according to a the website. At first, when youngsters of sharing by using someone else’s Pew survey, think plagiarism has in - saw their games scrambled into new words in a print book, the profits of creased over the past decade. Of those, versions by other kids, some complained which went only to her. “If you played 89 percent blame computers and the of plagiarism. In response, the site began the ‘remix’ game, you would share Internet. 17 attaching an automatic footnote credit - back your creation and let others build At the same time, youths who cre - ing the original creator. However, com - on top of it,” Gasser says. “The norms ate online computer games often have plaints didn’t decrease. But when a game are more complicated than just ‘I remix a nuanced sense of authorship, ac - re-mixer thanked original creators with and run with it.’ ”

8 CQ Researcher Is an over-emphasis To boost overall school per - on grades and test formance to avoid losing results making cheat - government funding. ing more prevalent? For teachers, he says, “The When dozens of consequences of truth are Stuyvesant High School costly enough that [they’ve] students were caught induced large segments to exchanging test an - believe it’s OK to lie.” swers by cell phone last When Josephson asked June, many people one superi ntendent why questioned why some schools had so little in - of New York City’s top terest in taking up his in - students felt the need stitute’s character-education to cheat on the programs to fight student statewide Regents cheating, he got this an - exams, which are not swer: “Cheating is not the considered particularly problem; it’s the tests: You challenging for have to expect kids to cheat Stuyvesant students. 22 if we test them this way.” In subsequent inter - Teachers are feeling in - g views, the students over - r tense pressure because o . t whelmingly expressed s under No Child Left Be - u r t

anger at teachers and c hind, low-scoring schools i l the school for giving b can be labeled as “failing” u p them what they con - r and lose federal funding o f r

sidered meaningless as - e or be closed. t n

signments that taught e Eric Anderman, a pro - c 23 .

them nothing. w fessor of educational psy - w

An editorial entitled w chology at Ohio State Uni - “Why We Cheat” in Ethicist Michael Josephson, founder and president of the Los versity, says less cheating Stuyvesant’s student Angeles-based Josephson Institute, which conducts surveys on occurs “when teachers em - youth ethics and teaches character development, says cheating is newspaper put the case the result of a breakdown in social mores — not excessive phasize that the learning boldly. Students who pressure from high-stakes testing. “Students do not cheat is what’s really important.” took a test in the morn - because there’s undue pressure on grades,” he says. In a study he conducted, ing often provided an - “They cheat because they’re allowed to cheat.” cheating went down swers to students taking when students moved from the same test later that day, the news - Underlying such behavior, many stu - a score-oriented middle school math paper acknowledged, but called that “an dents agreed, is the pressure placed class into a high school class where act of communal resistance.” on them to get the grades and test the teacher emphasized learning math “Copying homework or sharing an - scores needed to get into the nation’s for its own sake . 27 swers to a test, while undeniably wrong, top colleges. Stuyvesant’s former prin - The study was based on Anderman’s become [sic] minor acts of rebellion cipal used to joke to incoming fresh - observations of teachers with different against a course and school that has men: “Grades, friends and sleep — teaching styles. For example, i f a stu - [sic] devalued learning and analytical choose two.” 26 dent gets a disappointing 75 percent thought,” the editorial said . 24 Josephson, of the Josephson Insti - score on an algebra test, Anderman While cheating on such a large scale tute, says to understand the cynical prefers that the teacher give the stu - may have been rare at Stuyvesant, copy - climate at today’s schools, one need dent more time to study and then re- ing someone else’s homework happened only examine the scandals in Atlanta, test him the following week. “At that daily, students interviewed by The New Philadelphia and El Paso, where edu - point the teacher could just give the York Times said. In fact, in a survey cators are being investigated for ma - student the higher grade — if [he gets] by the student newspaper last March, nipulating students’ test scores. Their a 93 the next week — or average the 80 percent said they had cheated. 25 aim was often well-meaning, he says: two scores,” Anderman says. “But it

www.cqresearcher.com Jan. 4, 2013 9 PLAGIARISM AND CHEATING

sends the message: ‘You’re not done car garage, and this is what I have to er eventually was jailed for defraud - with this work until you demonstrate do to get there,’ ” says Anderman. ing the university of money and an that you’ve learned it.’ ” “The bottom line is, kids see other admissions place. 31 Drawing on research from Ander - people doing it and say, ‘If they can Julie Zauzmer, a Harvard senior and man and others, Pope founded Chal - do it, I can do it too.’ They don’t see author of Conning Harvard , a 2012 lenge Success, which emphasizes it as a bad thing.” book about the case, admires how Har - learning over scores and has con - vard handled Wheeler once it discov - ducted workshops with 100 elemen - Are colleges and schools doing ered that he had fabricated high school tary, middle and high schools in the enough to prevent plagiarism? transcripts and plagiarized on everything United States. Fed up with student cheating, Pana - from his college admission essay to his St. Francis High School, a Catholic giotis Ipeirotis, an associate professor Fulbright scholarship application. “They school in Mountain View, Calif., came of information sciences at New York didn’t need to bring it to the police, to Pope’s program after a rash of stu - University, decided to take a harder but they did — and they took on a lot dent cheating. After the program’s in - stance in the fall of 2010. He automat - of embarrassment,” she says. tervention, infractions at the school de - ically scanned all student papers using Some experts say stricter policing clined from 88 cases of plagiarism and Turnitin, one of several plagiarism- would prevent cheating and plagia - cheating in one academic year to 18 detection software programs that check rism; others suggest that honor codes, the following year. 28 students’ writing against a database of under which students have unsuper - In addition to introducing an honor term papers and published sources. vised exams and pledge to turn in code and having students sign pledges By semester’s end, 22 of his 108 cheaters, help students internalize val - that their homework was their own students had admitted plagiarizing, ues better. Only a minority of colleges work, Stanford’s Pope says, her pro - and Ipeirotis had spent hours dealing and some private high schools use gram got the school to focus on the with their cases. But his crusade cre - honor codes. 32 learning environment: Was there too ated such a climate of mistrust that he “Ideally, honor codes are developed much work required in too little time? received his lowest student evaluations and implemented by students, who de - Was a competitive culture creating a ever, and those poor evaluations ulti - cide what’s important to put in them,” rat race? “If everything is about the mately were the cause, he decided, of says the International Center for Aca - grade, everything will be about the his lowest salary increase ever. “[I] paid demic Integrity’s Fishman. “If you have grade,” Pope says. “It has to be sys - a significant financial penalty for an honor code that sits on the shelf temic change, a culture change at the ‘doing the right thing,’ ” Ipeirotis con - and no one knows what it says, that school to have these results.” cluded on a blog entitled, “Why I will doesn’t make a difference.” Josephson pooh-poohs the idea never pursue cheating again.” 29 The traditional honor code is a vow that there’s more academic pressure Experts say fear of poor student that each student will not cheat, steal than ever before, saying the real prob - evaluations, which can mean reduced “or tolerate those who do.” The last lem is a breakdown in social mores. pay, often discourages professors from requirement is often enough to keep In fact, he points out, the number of pursuing cheating or plagiarism. “Many many schools from adopting an honor colleges in the nation has risen, of - teachers don’t want the hassle of pur - code, says Fishman, because “people fering more students the chance to go suing a case of plagiarizing . . . through won’t turn in their friends.” to college than ever before. numerous administrative levels,” Gard - Harvard is considering enacting “People who give in to temptation ner says. Nor do they “want to be an honor code, but Crimson editor will always say the temptation was too threatened by parents or students with Zauzmer doubts it will be adopted, great,” observes Josephson. “What a lawsuits or even physical harm. So at especially since such codes usually person of character is supposed to do many places, there is in effect a kind entail students sitting in judgment. is resist temptation. Students do not of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.” 30 “You go before a disciplinary body cheat because there’s undue pressure Harvard took a hard line, howev - of students, and the next day you’re on grades; they cheat because they’re er, in a spectacular fraud case recently sitting next to them in Spanish class! allowed to cheat.” involving student Adam Wheeler, who It’s hard for me to imagine that work - Experts on both sides of the de - faked his way into Harvard, Stanford ing,” Zauzmer says. bate perceive an uphill battle in today’s and Bowdoin College by plagiarizing Student surveys conducted by Rut - environment. “We’ve had students say, his admissions documents and lying gers’ McCabe over the last 20 years ‘I want that six-figure income, I want about his credentials. Harvard pur - generally show less cheating at col - the nice house with a two- or three- sued the case in the courts, and Wheel - leges and high schools with honor

10 CQ Researcher codes. 33 “Honor codes reduce cheat - ing,” Mc Cabe maintains. But, he adds, Plagiarism Accusations Dog Writers “kids are reporting less cheating than Some of the nation’s most celebrated writers, as well as a high-profile they’re actually doing” at those schools student author at Harvard, have been accused of plagiarism. The because they feel inhibited by the publisher of a novel by Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan, 19, honor code culture. canceled her contract in 2006 after it was discovered that passages Ethicist Josephson says honor codes affect only a small percentage of stu - from How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life bore dents; even military academies with strong similarities to other works, including Salman Rushdie’s novel longstanding honor codes, such as West Haroun and the Sea of Stories. For example: Point, have been rocked by repeated cheating scandals. ( See “Background.” ) From Rushdie: From Viswanathan: “Trying to impose an honor code to solve the dishonor problem is like “If from speed you get your “If from drink you get your having foxes watch the henhouse,” thrill/take precaution — thrill, take precaution — Josephson says. It’s a pipe dream for make your will.” write your will.” schools to say all of a sudden, “We didn’t trust you before so now we’ll trust you completely,” he says. High In an earlier case, prominent historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s schools should return to old-fashioned 1987 book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys was found to have policing of exams, he urges: permit - incorporated several passages that closely resembled Lynne McTaggart’s ting only a blue book and a pen and 1983 book Kathleen Kennedy: Her Life and Times , such as: banning cell phones — a rule enforced only laxly in many schools. From McTaggart: From Goodwin: At Dartmouth, which has an honor code, teachers don’t use plagiarism- “Hardly a day passed by “Hardly a day passed with - detection software or proctor exams without a photograph in the out a newspaper photograph because that would violate the honor papers of little Teddy taking of little Teddy taking a code, says Aine Donovan, director of a snapshot with his Brownie snapshot with his camera Dartmouth’s Ethics Institute. “I don’t held upside down, or the five held upside down, or the five walk around the room looking over Kennedy children lined up Kennedy children lined up people’s shoulders, because if you’re on a train or bus.” on a train or on a bus.” a person of honor it’s like hiring a pri - vate detective to spy on your spouse,” Sources: Paris B. Bhayan and David Zhou, “Opal Mehta Contains Similarities to explains Donovan. Two other Novels,” The Harvard Crimson , May 1, 2006, www.thecrimson.com/ Higher education law expert Peter article/2006/5/1/opal-mehta-contains-similarities-to-two/. “Excerpts from Kennedy F. Lake — a professor at Stetson Uni - Books by Lynne McTaggart and Doris Kearns Goodwin,” The Associated Press, versity School of Law in Gulfport, Fla., March 25, 2002, www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-51604798.html and author of the 2009 book Beyond Discipline — says debating the value students caught cheating are granted forces academics “to play lawyer as of honor codes versus disciplinary sys - due process. Rather than turning an opposed to what they’re good at — tems is a “false choice” because the infraction into a teaching moment with education.” root cause of cheating is poor teach - a class about plagiarism as some other The financial penalty for schools with - ing and disaffected students. “Don’t schools do, Harvard creates a “penal out Harvard’s rich endowment may also turn an educational problem into a system” in which students have few explain their reluctance to treat students legal issue if you don’t have to,” he rights in hearings and generally re - harshly. “If you drop the hammer too says. “Listen to the university’s disci - ceive the harshest possible punishment, hard, you’ll scare your customers,” Lake pline officers: They’re saying a lot of The Crimson charged. 34 points out, especially “if you’re tuition your cases are coming from teachers Lake says universities should not try driven and you’re not a Harvard.” who are not competent.” to run their disciplinary systems like And one disciplinary action on a record Harvard’s student newspaper, The miniature court systems, because it in - can ruin a student’s future, a punish - Crimson , recently questioned whether vites more litigation and appeals and ment many professors are reluctant to

www.cqresearcher.com Jan. 4, 2013 11 PLAGIARISM AND CHEATING

dole out. “Now it’s almost Kafkaesque: fact, by modern standards , Shakespeare this is plagiarism, we need more pla - If you’re lucky you’ll graduate without would be considered a plagiarist, ac - giarism,” concludes Posner. 37 being disciplined, yet all around you cording to Richard A. Pos ner, a judge In Shakespeare’s time, creativity there’s cheating,” Lake observes. “Any on the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Ap - was understood to be what Posner minute you could be the person who peals in Chicago and senior lecturer in calls “creative imitation.” The poet John gets destroyed by this system.” law at the University of Chicago. “Thou - Milton justified such “borrowing,” say - sands of lines in his plays are verba - ing it was not plagiarism if the bor - tim copies or close paraphrases from rower made the original work better. various sources, along with titles and Originality was not crucial. BACKGROUND plot details, all without acknowledge - As late as the 18th century, British ment,” writes Posner, in The Little Book novelist Lawrence Sterne, in his classic of Plagiarism . 36 comic novel The Life and Opinions of For instance, Shakespeare’s famous Tristram Shandy, Gentleman , parodied Famous Plagiarists description of Cleopatra on her barge and copied word for word from such in “Antony and Cleopatra” closely writers as Rabelais and Francis Bacon. hile plagiarism may be consid - mimics Plutarch’s description in his life He was later labeled a plagiarist by W ered an unforgivable — and of Mark Antony, but Shakespeare ren - 19th century critics for copying passages unique — transgression in the 21st cen - ders the same words into poetry. “If extensively from the 17th-century tury, history indicates medical treatise Anatomy that many great writers of Melancholy , by Robert and personalities, from Burton, without attribution, Shakespeare to Jonathan although to some critics Swift, plagiar ized liber - he was simply making fun ally from other writers. of Burton’s solemn tone. The first known use of the word plagiarism in its modern sense oc - ‘Cult of curred in the first cen - Originality’ tury, when the Roman poet Martial used the hat Posner calls “the Latin word “plagiarius” W cult of originality” — someone who steals emerged from a shift in another’s slaves — to how artistic works were complain that another marketed, which changed poet had stolen his radically with the advent verses. 35 However, pla - of easier, less expensive giarism, as it is under - printing in the 17th and stood today, was com - 18th centuries. Before monly accepted in then, copying was a form

Roman times. A poet - n of dissemination, and the a u ic form known as the y right to copy rested with i s

“cento,” in which frag - n the owner of a physical e h

ments of other poems C book, who copied the / y are strung together to r text by hand. e l l create a new meaning, a During the Renaissance, G remained popular into Richard A. Posner, a U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals judge the maker of an engrav - Shakespeare’s time. and senior law lecturer at the University of Chicago, grapples ing, a process that pro - In England, the first with debates over the definition of plagiarism in his 109-page A duced multiple printed im - accusations of what Little Book of Plagiarism. Although plagiarism generally means ages from an artist’s stealing or passing off the ideas or words of another as one’s own would come to be called without crediting the source, Posner says the reader must “care drawing, was considered “plagiarism” cropped up about being deceived about authorial identity in order for the to have produced some - in the 17th century. In deceit to cross the line to fraud and thus constitute plagiarism.” Continued on p. 14

12 CQ Researcher Chronology

after honor board cannot pinpoint Ancient Rome 20th Century blame. Concept of plagiarism intro - Cheating scandals rock West duced. Point; “creative plagiarism” 2001 continues in literature. Congress passes No Child Left Be - 1st century A.D. hind law requiring all students by Roman poet Martial uses Latin 1922 2014 to reach grade level in reading “plagiarius” to describe a poet Poet T. S. Eliot publishes “The Waste and math by passing standardized who stole his verses. Land,” drawing on Shakespeare, tests. Critics say it encourages Chaucer and others. “Immature poets “teaching to the test.” • imitate; mature poets steal,” Eliot says. 2002 1951 Historians Doris Kearns Goodwin 18th Century U.S. Military Academy at West Point and Stephen Ambrose accused of Ownership of written works expels 90 cadets for cheating. plagiarism. shifts from holders of copies to authors; copyright emerges as a 1974 2003 commercial concept. New York officials cancel statewide The New York Times reveals reporter high school Regents exams after a Jayson Blair plagiarized and fabricated 1759 scandal involving illegal answer keys. quotes in dozens of stories. Lawrence Sterne, whose innovative novel Tristram Shandy borrows from 1976 2006 other authors, is accused of plagiariz - In another West Point cheating Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan, ing a 17th century medical treatise. scandal, 150 cadets are implicated. 19, accused of plagiarizing a novel.

1769 1978 2010 In landmark Millar v. Taylor ruling, Alex Haley, author of best-seller Harvard student Adam Wheeler, English judges declare a work be - Roots , pays $650,000 in settlement who plagiarized admission essays, longs to the individual who wrote it. over plagiarism charges brought by found guilty of fraud. novelist Harold Courlander. 1790 2011 Congress passes first U.S. copyright 1989 Teacher cheating scandals erupt in law, giving author sole right to New York Education Commissioner Atlanta, Philadelphia and Washington. printed works for 14 years. cancels state chemistry exams after New York Post publishes answer key 2012 • circulating among students. Fifty-one percent of high school students admit cheating on a test • in past year. . . . More than 65 At - 19th Century lanta teachers to lose licenses over Cheating scandals erupt at U.S. cheating (April). . . . 70 students colleges; some adopt honor codes. 2000s Cheating scan - at New York City’s Stuyvesant High dals revealed at high-achieving School involved in test cheating. 1834 high schools. No Child Left Be - New Yorker writer Jonah Lehrer re - Poet Thomas de Quincey exposes hind law, which links federal signs after plagiarism discovered poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s aid to test scores, adds to pres - (July). . . . 125 Harvard students alleged plagiarism. sure for students to meet profi - investigated for cheating on take- ciency standards. home exam (August). . . . Former 1842 El Paso School District Superinten - University of Virginia adopts first February 2000 dent Lorenzo García sentenced to honor code, in which students vow At Dartmouth, 78 students accused three and a half years in prison for not to lie, cheat or steal and agree of cheating on computer science manipulating student test scores to report one another’s misdeeds. homework, but charges are dropped (Oct. 5).

www.cqresearcher.com Jan. 4, 2013 13 PLAGIARISM AND CHEATING

Can Art Justify Plagiarism? “I felt my words had become part of some grander cause.” t first, New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell was mentary state for a long time.” He cites Shakespeare’s bor - indignant when he learned that a successful Broadway rowings from Plutarch for his description of Cleopatra in “Antony A play about a serial killer was using lines lifted almost and Cleopatra” (later stolen by T. S. Eliot for his poem “The word-for-word from one of his articles. Waste Land”) and William Burroughs’ 1959 novel about a nar - Gladwell wrote to the playwright, Bryony Lavery, that to “lift cotics addict, Naked Lunch , which incorporated snippets from material, without my approval, is theft.” 1 other writers. 5 Then he read the script. “I found it breathtaking,” he re - Society’s common cultural heritage is essentially a public membered. “Instead of feeling that my words had been taken “commons,” Lethem argues, and when people become overly from me, I felt that they had become part of some grander preoccupied with who owns the words, the music or the art, cause.” 2 “the loser is the collective public imagination.” 6 When news of Lavery’s alleged plagiarism broke a few Take this example: A story titled “Lolita,” about a middle- months later, in September 2004, Gladwell was already feeling aged man who falls in love with an adolescent girl, was writ - uncomfortable with his rebuke of the playwright. In his New ten by a German writer 40 years before Vladmir Nabokov’s fa - Yorker account about his change of mind, he noted that Lav - mous novel Lolita. Did Nabokov know that he was adopting ery had created something entirely new, a work of art as well Heinz von Lichberg’s story? Or could Nabokov have read the as an entirely new story, about what would happen if a woman story many years before and captured it unconsciously in his met the man who killed her daughter. He called this kind of memory? creative act the “art defense” to plagiarism. Art, he said, is “not In any case, it doesn’t much matter to readers because Nabokov’s a breach of ethics.” 3 Lolita is so much better than Lichberg’s long-forgotten story, However, he wrote, it was clearly plagiarism when renowned Lethem suggests. historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, writing about the Kennedys, Recently, Drexel University English professor Paula Marantz borrowed material verbatim without attribution from another Cohen made a similar argument in defense of a former Har - history of the fabled family. That example couldn’t claim the vard student, Kaavya Viswanathan, widely condemned for pla - “art defense,” he said, because it had not transformed the stolen giarism. The 19-year-old’s seemingly precocious novel, about words into a work of art. an Indian-American girl dreaming of going to Harvard, bore Gladwell’s art defense is similar to a legal defense in a copy - close resemblance in phrasing to a young-adult novel by Megan right infringement case. If a writer takes a passage of some - McCafferty. When news of the similarities broke, the publisher one else’s writing and uses it in a “transformative” manner — withdrew Viswanathan’s book and canceled her contract. 7 as in a parody, for example — that can be legally permissible Calling this “creative plagiarism,” Cohen takes a contrarian view. under the legal doctrine of “fair use.” 4 McCafferty’s was a “conventional” coming-of-age novel, she writes, But what about when one artist steals a plot, character or but “Viswanathan’s novel pushes the boundaries of humorous re - passage from another artist’s work? Novelist Jonathan Lethem, alism into the realm of farce and social satire.” We should be “em - in a widely discussed essay, “The Ecstasy of Influence,” argues pathetic with writers struggling to find a creative path through the that literature has been doing just that — “in a plundered, frag - thicket of existing expression,” Cohen argues . 8

Continued from p. 12 William Wordsworth and Samuel Tay - 17th and 18th centuries in England thing just as valuable as the original. lor Coleridge. The 19th-century philoso - and Germany. Ownership no longer But as mass printing became more pher Arthur Schopenhauer helped to was attached to the physical book but available, prints lost their value. stoke a “cult of genius” with his ideas to the words and the author. From French literary and social critic Roland about the importance of brilliant com - the 1740s to the 1770s, lawmakers, Barthes (1915-1980) famously declared posers and writers. publishers and writers debated whether that the author is “a modern figure” who Nevertheless, Posner argues, “Cre - copyright attached to the author should emerges from modernity’s “prestige of ative imitation is not just a classical or be limited or last forever. In an influ - the individual.” 38 Renaissance legacy: It is a modern ential legal decision in 1769, Millar v. The idea of originality — often market imperative.” 39 As proof he cites Taylor , a British court held that a work seen as the bedrock of creativity today the many re-makes, prequels and se - belonged to the individual who wrote — grew out of Enlightenment ideas quels of popular movies. it because it was the embodiment of of individuality, which were further The concept of copyright as a the individual and a work of “origi - developed by Romantic poets such as commercial privilege emerged in the nal authorship.” 40

14 CQ Researcher Famous words and cherished music ings and poetry, direct quotations are might have been lost forever if they often “subsumed within the voice of the had not been appropriated by later artist who claims them,” he insisted, artists who made them fixtures in adding, “There are no quotation marks popular culture, Lethem similarly ar - around the elements in a Robert gues. For example, he points out, in Rauschenberg collage.” 11 his album “Modern Times,” folk singer Perhaps it was something quite dif - and songwriter Bob Dylan — who ferent that bothered Lessig. “I was . . . g

borrowed widely without attribution n especially troubled,” he wrote, “when I o W

— keeps alive the obscure Civil War found buried in the text” of Lethem’s x e

poetry of Henry Timrod. l essay “the only sentence I have ever A /

Borrowing from influential pre - s written that I truly like.” e

decessors is endemic to our culture, g a — Sarah Glazer m

Lethem argues: Without Charlie Brown I

y

there would be no “South Park” and t t 1

e Malcolm Gladwell, “Something Borrowed,” The

without “The Flintstones,” he main - G New Yorker , Nov. 22, 2004, www.newyorker.com/ tains, “The Simpsons” wouldn’t exist. Novelist Jonathan Lethem argues that for archive/2004/11/22/041122fa_fact. Mischievously, Lethem discloses centuries famous authors and musicians 2 Ibid. at the end of his famous essay that have borrowed from other artists to create 3 Ibid. almost every line was cribbed from new art. For example, in his album 4 Fair use requires both a transformative pur - “Modern Times,” singer Bob Dylan — seen pose and an appropriate (small enough) amount. someone else. The provocative arti - receiving the Presidential Medal of There is no requirement for attribution. See Pa - tricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi, Reclaiming cle, originally published in Harper’s Freedom from President Barack Obama on in 2007, drew critics and put Lethem Fair Use (2011). May 29, 2012 — borrowed from obscure 5 9 Jonathan Lethem, “The Ecstasy of Influence,” on the lecture circuit. Civil War poet Henry Timrod, thereby pp. 93-120, in Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of One critic, surprisingly, was Stan - keeping Timrod’s work alive, Lethem says. Influence (2011). See p. 95. ford University law professor Lawrence 6 Ibid. , p. 112. Lessig, who says the ever-lengthening term of copyright hampers 7 Kaavya Viswanathan’s novel is How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life (2006). Megan McCafferty’s novel is Sloppy Firsts (2001). creators, an argument supported by Lethem. Yet, Lessig object - 8 See Paula Marantz Cohen, “Creative Plagiarism,” The Chronicle of Higher ed, if a creator wants to build on the work of others, “It is not Education , Oct. 22, 2012, http://chronicle.com/article/Creative-Plagiarism/ too much to demand that a beautiful (or ugly) borrowed sen - 135158/. tence be wrapped in simple quotation marks.” 10 9 Jonathan Lethem “The Ecstasy of Influence,” Harper’s , February 2007, http://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/the-ecstasy-of-influence/. In a follow-up essay, Lethem conceded Lessig’s point in the 10 Cited in Jonathan Lethem, “The Afterlife of ‘Ecstasy,’ ” in Lethem, The Ec - realm of academic, scientific or journalistic writing, where ci - stasy of Influence (2011), p. 122. tations are “necessary and sensible.” But, in songs, films, paint - 11 Ibid.

Thomas Jefferson famously stood on student self-governance that is the behind the principle that authors should Cheating Scandals oldest in the country. It stemmed from have the right to benefit from their lit - the shooting murder in 1840 of a erary property temporarily — after heating scandals were common popular law professor, John A. G. which t ime the public had the right to C among students in the 19th cen - Davis, by a masked student. Re - benefit from their contribution. If any - tury. In the 1860s at Yale University, sponding to the incident, the uni - thing, he saw copyright as a necessary which was then essentially a finishing versity’s students agreed to “vouch” evil on the path to sharing knowledge, school for the wealthy, “perhaps less for one another by agreeing to re - as indicated in his frequently quoted than half of the compositions were ac - port on other students’ misbehavior. statement: “He who receives an idea tually written by the supposed author,” Eventually, the faculty established an from me receives instruction himself a student wrote in his diary. 42 “honor pledge” for examinations, without lessening mine; as he who lights In 1842, the University of Virginia, agreeing to trust students when they his taper at mine, receives light without founded by Thomas Jefferson 23 years pledged that they had “neither re - darkening me.” 41 earlier, adopted an honor code based ceived nor given assistance” on their

www.cqresearcher.com Jan. 4, 2013 15 PLAGIARISM AND CHEATING

schoolwork. Today offenses of the “bowed to public pressure,” in the centuries. In the case of canonic writ - honor pledge — that students will words of a 1978 Associated Press ers such as Swift, Coleridge and Mark not lie, cheat or steal — are pre - story, and to the recommendation of Twain, however, discoveries of pla - sented to student jury panels. 43 a special commission headed by for - giarism seem to have done little to tar The U.S. Military Academy at West mer astronaut and West Point gradu - their reputations. 48 Often authors say Point also adopted an honor code in ate Frank Borman. 46 they plagiarized unconsciously, having the 19th century that read: “A cadet In February 2000, a visiting profes - read something long ago and since will not lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate sor at Dartmouth, Rex Dwyer, accused forgotten that it came from another those who do it.” almost half of his computer science source — a process known to psy - However, in 1951 a cheating scandal class of copying answers to a home - chologists as cryptomnesia. rocked West Point, ending with the ex - work assignment from a portion of his In a famous instance, a friend wrote pulsion of 90 cadets who had received class website that he accidentally left to Mark Twain that he had admired answers to an exam ahead of time. The unlocked. Seventy-eight students were his dedication in The Innocents roots of the scandal Abroad long before were traced to a Twain published it in small group of foot - his book. In fact, the ball players. 44 friend said he had read Nicolaus Mills, a it in a book by Oliver professor of Ameri - Wendell Holmes. When can studies at Sarah Twain checked the Lawrence College, book by Holmes, he dis - notes the similarity covered, “I had really between the 1951 stolen that dedication, o

case and Harvard’s n almost word for word. a l

recent scandal. In e I could not imagine how C

the Harvard case, up e this curious thing had e L

to half of the 125 / happened.” s e

students accused of g He wrote to Holmes a m

copying from one I to apologize. Holmes

y t

another on a take- t graciously replied that e

home exam were G he “believed we all un - Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., prepare for members of the their graduation and commissioning ceremony on May 26, 2012. consciously worked over varsity football, Despite having adopted a rigorous honor code in the 19th century, ideas gathered in read - baseball and bas - the prestigious institution was rocked by cheating scandals in ing and hearing, imag - ketball teams. Mills 1951 and 1976. In the second scandal more than 150 cadets ining they were original suggests that for resigned or were expelled for cheating on a take-home exam in with ourselves.” 49 electrical engineering. some of the players Nineteen-year-old being investigated, Harvard student Kaavya the cheating can be traced to their re - implicated in violating Dartmouth’s Viswanathan made a similar claim after cruitment despite weak academic honor code. Mid-way through hearing The Harvard Crimson re ported in 2006 records. Two senior co-captains of Har - the cases, the college’s faculty-student that her novel How Opal Mehta Got vard’s basketball team withdrew from honor board decided that although Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life con - school in September in the wake of there had been cheating, it was un - tained almost word-for-word passages the scandal. 45 clear who was guilty. Dartmouth from a novel by Megan McCafferty. In 1976, West Point was hit with yet dropped charges against all of the stu - Viswanathan — who had received another cheating scandal — the largest dents. Dwyer said he had mistakenly an advance of $500,000 from publish - in its history. More than 150 cadets, put the answers to the homework on - er Little, Brown and had sold the movie about half the junior class, resigned line prematurely but blamed the stu - rights — initially claimed the copying or were expelled for cheating on a dents for cheating and collaborating had been “unconscious” and that she take-home exam in electrical engi - illicitly. 47 had “internalized” McCafferty’s novels neering. Of those, 98 were reinstat - Charges of plagiarism have trailed while reading them. But after other pas - ed the following year, after the Army writers, historians and journalists for sages from her novel were found to

16 CQ Researcher How Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement Differ

he idea that authors should have the right to benefit In contrast to plagiarism, using copyrighted material under from their literary property — at least temporarily — is the fair use doctrine does not require attribution to the origi - T enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, which gives Congress nal work. However, notes Patricia Aufderheide, a communica - the power to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, tions professor who directs American University’s Center for So - by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the Ex - cial Media, if you’re arguing in court that your use of someone clusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” 1 else’s work is legally allowed fair use, “It would be a smart Congress passed the first copyright law in 1790, giving au - thing to attribute [to the original creator], not because the law thors the sole right to print their works for 14 years and the says so, but because judges are human and they, too, think at - right to renew their copyright for another 14 years. Since then, tribution is a nice idea.” the length of copyright has been continually extended and now “You can be a plagiarist and not infringe on copyright [if lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. Disney’s lobbying you take] a small enough portion without credit that it doesn’t of Congress is often cited as the reason for the extensions, qualify as infringement,” says Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor since every time Mickey Mouse is about to come into the pub - of media studies at the University of Virginia. 6 The size of the lic domain, the mouse’s copyright is extended. 2 un-credited “portion” under “fair use” is not fixed, however. De - Legal experts point out that plagiarism and copyright are not terminations are made as copyright-infringement cases come the same: Plagiarism is not a legal crime but an ethical offense before judges. in which a writer or creator fails to give credit and makes peo - One can be found guilty of copyright infringement without ple believe a work is his own. Copyright, by contrast, is a legal plagiarizing. “If you take too much of a piece, [even if you] term for the exclusive right to reproduce, publish, distribute or give adequate credit, you can still be accused of infringement sell an original work. 3 It is intended to protect the creator’s eco - because you competed against the original in the marketplace. nomic interest in the market. “Plagiarism can become the basis They’re not the same thing, though they’re often conflated in of a lawsuit if it infringes copyright or breaks the contract be - the public mind,” explains Vaidhyanathan. tween author and publisher,” according to Richard A. Posner, a judge and the author of The Little Book of Plagiarism. 4 — Sarah Glazer Using too much of a copyrighted work without the per - mission of the copyright owner is considered illegal “infringe - 1 Quoted in Malcolm Gladwell, “Something Borrowed,” The New Yorker , ment” of the owner’s copyright unless it falls under the “fair Nov. 22, 2004, www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/11/22/041122fa_fact. 2 use” doctrine. Fair use allows copyrighted materials to be used Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence (2011), p. 102. 3 Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/copyright. Also see without permission of the copyright holder under certain con - www.copyright.gov/help/faq/definitions.html. ditions. For instance, copying works for a “transformative” use 4 Richard A. Posner, The Little Book of Plagiarism (2007), p. 34. — such as parody, criticism or comment — is considered “fair 5 “What is Fair Use?” Stanford University Libraries, 2010, http://fairuse.stanford. use.” However, millions of dollars in legal fees have been spent edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-a.html. trying to define fair use in court, and the definition relies upon 6 “Interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan #6,” University of Virginia, 2004, http://archive.org/details/thecopyfight_siva_vaidhyanathan_06. varied judicial decisions. 5 have been copied from other authors, taking. She hired a political consul - Soon, the “cover-up was forgot - including Salman Rushdie, the publisher tant to arrange support for her in the ten,” writes historian Jon Wiener in recalled the book and canceled its con - media and received testimonials from his book Historians in Trouble , and tract with her. 50 (See box, p. 11. ) prominent historians. In response to Goodwin was appearing as a com - Prominent historians also have been an exposé published in The Weekly mentator on TV. “She paid a price accused of plagiarism. One of the most Standard in 2002, Goodwin acknowl - for plagiarism,” Wiener points out famous involved Doris Kearns Good - edged that she paid a “substantial” sum “and it succeeded.” 52 win, whose 1987 book The Fitzeralds in exchange for McTaggart’s silence The same year, the Civil War his - and the Kennedys incorporated more about the incident under an out-of- torian Stephen Ambrose was ac - than 50 passages from Lynne McTag - court settlement negotiated by her cused of multiple instances of pla - gart’s 1983 book Kathleen Kennedy: lawyers and publisher. Under the se - giarism by The Weekly Standard. Her Life and Times. Goodwin insist - cret settlement, Goodwin agreed to After first minimizing the charges, ed she was not guilty of plagiarism, add at least 40 new footnotes citing Ambrose eventually apologized for claiming the copying was uninten - McTaggart in a new edition, accord - “improperly attributing” other authors’ tional and the result of sloppy note- ing to The Weekly Standard. 51 writings. 53

www.cqresearcher.com Jan. 4, 2013 17 PLAGIARISM AND CHEATING

the high school level has declined over Students Copy From Wikipedia and “Cheat” Sites the past four years, although it contin - Wikipedia material is copied word-for-word into papers written by ues to involve a majority of students. both high school and college students more than any other website According to the Josephson Insti - tute’s 2012 survey of 23,000 high school content, according to a study by Turnitin, which sells plagiarism - students, 51 percent admitted to cheat - detection software. The study did not determine whether students ing on a test during the past year, properly cited such websites. One so-called cheat site that charges compared to 64 percent in 2008. And students to access its term papers — oppapers.com, now known as 74 percent admitted to copying an - StudyMode — is the second most copied site for college students after other person’s homework, down from Wikipedia. 82 percent. 56 About one in three stu - dents admitted to copying an Internet Top Websites Copied in Papers by High School and document for a classroom assignment College Students, 2012 — a share that has not changed much since 2008. It’s unclear, however, High School College whether the latest survey numbers Wikipedia 8% Wikipedia 11% represent a real decline, since a quar - ter of students said they had lied on answers.yahoo.com 7% oppapers.com* 4% at least some answers on the survey enotes.com 3% Slideshare 4% — slightly more than in 2010. Answers.com 3% coursehero.com 4% The survey also shows a decline in oppapers.com* 3% Scribd 3% students’ cynicism about the need for cheating. Thirty-six percent of those Scribd 3% answers.yahoo.com 3% surveyed agree with the statement that Slideshare 2% Answers.com 3% a person must lie or cheat sometimes essaymania.com* 2% medlibrary.org 3% to succeed, compared to 40 percent shmoop.com 2% bignerds.com* 2% in 2008, but Josephson still finds that share troubling. “That level of cyni - medlibrary.org 2% papercamp.com* 2% cism supports the fact that we have a generation that has come to believe * Denotes “cheat” site or paper mill that lying and cheating is part of the Source: Turnitin, 2012 American way,” Josephson contends. At the college level, surveys con - The media also has had its share of following month, Wired terminated ducted between 2002 and 2010 of more plagiarism scandals. On May 11, 2003, Lehrer’s online column after more than than 70,000 undergraduates found that The New York Times published a front- a dozen posts were found to have 65 percent admitted cheating, com - page story revealing that reporter Jayson problems, including instances of out - pared to 87 percent in 1993-94. 57 Blair had fabricated interviews, con - right plagiarism. 55 While that suggests cheating is declin - cocted scenes and stolen q uotes from ing among undergraduates, survey au - other newspapers, often to pretend he thor McCabe says based on interviews had been on locations he never vis - and additional surveys he thinks the ited. In the fallout from the scandal, difference reflects a changing definition 54 CURRENT two top editors resigned. of what constitutes cheating. Only about And last year, New Yorker staff writer one in four college students considers Jonah Lehrer was caught self-plagiarizing SITUATION cut-and-paste plagiarism from the In - (recycling an article he had written ear - ternet to be serious cheating. And lier for the Wall Street Journal ) and about one in five (22 percent) classify fabricating quotes from singer Bob Cheating Trends cut-and-paste plagiarism from written Dylan. Lehrer resigned in July, and his sources in the same way. 58 publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, espite concerns about a growing Meanwhile, changing student atti - began recalling his bestselling book, D “epidemic” of student cheating, a tudes are especially evident with regard Imagine: How Creativity Works. The recent survey shows that cheating at Continued on p. 20

18 CQ Researcher At Issue:

Is ayes new definition of plagiarism needed?

SUSAN D. BLUM TERESA FISHMAN PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY , DIRECTOR , I NTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME ACADEMIC INTEGRITY , C LEMSON UNIVERSITY WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER , JANUARY 2013 WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER , JANUARY 2013

lagiarism” is a perfectly fine term with a perfectly learly, the processes of information-gathering have clear definition: use of someone’s words or ideas changed. We now have access to nearly unlimited infor - “p without giving credit. But words change, and c mation via electronic files, many of which don’t provide dictionaries provide only partial evidence of authors’ names. But does that mean we need a new definition terms’ meanings. of “plagiarism”? In actual use, the term plagiarism today covers almost every Although it’s difficult to reach a consensus on the precise form of academic misconduct — from imperfect mastery of wording and boundaries of plagiarism, most teachers, students academic citation conventions to buying term papers. Plagiarism and writers agree on the basics: Plagiarism is taking work that is is used for misdeeds committed by college students and pro - not one’s own; taking credit for the words of another or using fessional writers. However, this single term is less helpful than another person’s ideas without giving proper credit. Regardless of confounding because their misdeeds vary in seriousness, forms, how it is phrased, the commonalities in the definition of plagiarism motivations, type of affront and consequences. And they repre - include work, legitimate ownership, misappropriation and credit. sent differing crimes: against another’s intellectual property or While some people define it as “literary theft,” plagiarism is moral rights; against truth; against professional norms. Some a more complex idea than stealing, because it can involve the challenge higyher educatione’s monopoly s on conferring credit. misappropriation of words and idoeas rather than tangible prop - Student omission of page numbers for quotations may sim - erty, but the concepts are closely related: taking and benefiting ply reflect incomplete skill in mastering academic writing. Buy - or profiting by improperly laying claim to something that is ing or downloading term papers flouts the purpose of written not one’s own. The idea applies whether the material comes assignments and is fraud. from a website, video or book. Professional writers importing sentences or paragraphs from While it is not necessary to redefine plagiarism, it would the work of others — as in the recent case of Fareed Zakaria be useful to delineate its boundaries and conditions more using Jill Lepore’s work in his own publication without proper clearly — to refine, rather than re-conceptualize the definition. attribution — is a clear case of plagiarism properly termed. Although most plagiarism is not criminal, one could envision The young and decorated writer Jonah Lehrer both plagiarized the elements of plagiarism like those of a crime, so one can and fabricated quotations. Both are impermissible, given the identify instances of plagiarism by determining whether they norms of professional writing. But to call both plagiarism fit the definition. Plagiarism occurs when one: muddies the situation. A journalist recently cited a case in • uses words, ideas or work products . . . which one researcher used another’s data without permission, • attributable to an identifiable person or source . . . calling it plagiarism, but I explained that it was stealing data. • without attributing the work to the source . . . Another misdeed that often is called plagiarism is the • in a situation in which there is a legitimate expectation ridiculously termed “self-plagiarism.” But recycling one’s own of original authorship . . . work for republication represents no crime against the rights • in order to obtain benefit, credit or gain. of another. Surely we have a right to our own words? Howev - This definition clarifies the elements of plagiarism but doesn’t er, in the economic model of professional writing — whether change our understanding of what plagiarism is. It also makes journalistic or academic — in which “credit” accrues only to common sense exceptions for accepted practices such as the first appearance of work, recycling one’s own words is speech-writing and the kind of imitation people do when they not considered novel enough to deserve the rewards of credit, are learning — such as copying famous paintings to practice pay, promotion or glory. Only the first appearance is acknowl - artistic techniques. It clarifies that it is possible to plagiarize edged. So in a society in which competition for early appear - not only traditional printed texts but also things like graphic ance is granted primacy, this misdeed is also punished. designs, videos and other 21st-century modes of communica - Because plagiarism is used to describe so many forms of tion. In short, it maintains the definition of plagiarism that is misconduct, it confuses rather than explains. A set of new, already widely understood and protects original authorship more precise terms — under the general headings of academic and innovation, rather than using technology as an excuse to misconduct and publication ethics — would clarify our thinking take credit where it is not truly due. on theno topic. www.cqresearcher.com Jan. 4, 2013 19 PLAGIARISM AND CHEATING

Continued from p. 18 Although Zauzmer approves of the character education in November. to student collaboration — increasing - new attention to plagiarism, she worries “Very few” of the schools that par - ly encouraged by schools to build that the scandal could discourage peo - ticipate in the institute’s character edu - teamwork skills seen as necessary for ple from legitimate collaboration, such cation curriculum “are doing anything the 21st-century workforce. For the as “sitting in the dining hall with some - serious about the integrity issue,” Joseph - Harvard open-book, open-Internet take- one who is taking your Congress class son says. Partly, he says, the issue is home exam, some students said it was and discussing the readings together.” about protecting property values. In af - unclear that they couldn’t collaborate fluent suburbs such as Scarsdale, N.Y., when they did so in every other phase homeowners are willing to pay prop - of the course, including discussing the Intransigence and Scandal erty taxes equivalent to private school exam questions in groups with a tuition so their children can attend pub - teaching assistant shortly before the chools across the United States lic schools boasting a high rate of grad - exam was due. S have mounted widely publicized uates who attend Ivy League colleges. Surveys of If cheating is discovered, Duke University “the whole community students have is against your report - found an increase ing it,” Josephson says. in cheating that Perhaps more dis - involved collabo - turbingly, experts say, ration, even as some teachers engage other kinds of dis - in test cheating them - honest behavior selves — in part because — such as copy - of the No Child Left Be - p ing without at - p hind law’s linkage of fed - a n tributing the h eral school funding c S source — are de - with performance on d r clining. Some a high-stakes tests. w “students told us o On Oct. 5, former H / that working to - y El Paso School District a d gether on home - s Superintendent Lorenzo w work assignments e García was sentenced N / o was acceptable t to three-and-a-half years o because it’s ulti - h in prison for devising a P

mately the stu - P scheme to inflate stu - A dent’s responsibil - Joshua Chefec, left, Adam Justin, background center, and George Trane, dent test scores, in - ity to learn the right, are escorted from the Nassau County District Attorney’s office, in cluding forcing weaker material. How they Mineola, N.Y., on Nov. 22, 2011. The three were among 20 current and students to drop out so former students from five area high schools arrested in connection with learn is irrelevant,” a scheme to pay up to $3,000 for others to take the SAT or ACT college they would not drag 60 reported researchers entrance exam for them. The district attorney said she could not reveal down scores. Noah Pickus and the outcome of the cases because the students are considered “youthful García’s sentencing Suzanne Shanahan offenders” and records are sealed. Students taking the college entrance came after a two-year of the Kenan Insti - exams now must provide a photo of themselves when they register. state investigation im - Photos are then printed on students’ admission tickets and tute for Ethics at forwarded to students’ home schools along with the test results. plicated 178 teachers Duke University. 59 and principals in At - At Harvard, cheating and plagiarism anti- bullying programs, helped along lanta in a widespread pattern of received new attention this fall fol - by state mandates. But when it comes changing wrong test answers to inflate lowing last spring’s cheating scandal. to combating cheating, schools have scores. 61 The investigation revealed Harvard senior Zauzmer said every been “intransigent” in their lack of in - widespread cheating in at least half of course she took that semester had a terest, says Josephson, whose Joseph - the Atlanta school district’s 100 schools plagiarism statement on the syllabus son Institute mobilized 8 million school and described teachers holding a “chang - and professors were talking about the children at 7,000 schools and organi - ing party” to erase wrong answers . 62 issue more than usual. zations for a special week devoted to In April more than 65 Atlanta teach -

20 CQ Researcher ers were told they would lose their li - Yet some teachers say Turnitin is cerpts of copyrighted material with - censes. 63 far from perfect. For example, says out an author’s permission. 67 (See Similar scandals or investigations of Kenyon College economics professor box, p. 17. ) Carrie James, research di - suspicious test answer patterns emerged David E. Harrington, a text that pla - rector at Harvard’s Project Zero re - in 2011 in Baltimore, Md.; Norfolk, Va.; giarized from The New York Times search center, which has studied chil - Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. “I’ve wasn’t detected by Turnitin because dren’s moral attitudes, says the never seen so many cheating scandals the company doesn’t have a sub - curriculum grew out of interviews as there have been in the last few scription agreement with The Times. with students age 10 and older, who years,” said Diane Ravitch, a former U.S. And letting students check their pa - indicated they “feared getting into assistant secretary of Education under pers on Turnitin before submitting trouble” over how they used online President George H. W. Bush who has them “is more likely to teach students sources for schoolwork. since become a fierce critic of NCLB. how to right-click words” for syn - In one unit, students must devel - “As we get closer to this deadline of onyms “and scramble phrases to get op an advertising campaign and de - 2014 [when all students must reach acceptable scores on Turnitin,” Har - cide which photos from the Internet grade level in reading and math under rington said on his blog. 66 require permission for use in the stu - the law], it’s not surprising that there Students have exploited other loop - dents’ ads. First piloted in 2009, the are schools and districts where these holes in the software to avoid detec - unit is part of a digital literacy and things happen again and again.” 64 tion, such as using Google Translate citizenship curriculum used in 50 states “That’s the tone and climate in which to translate a plagiarized passage into by 40,000 K-12 schools, according to student cheating occurs,” Josephson Spanish and then back into English so James. 68 says of the teacher scandals. “How can that it uses different wording from the In another effort to teach teens the you be surprised if students cheat?” original, according to the Internation - basics of copyright law and fair use al Center for Academic Integrity’s Fish - exceptions, Harvard’s Berkman Center man, who sits on the board of Tur - has designed a computer program that Student vs. Machine nitin’s U.K. division. has teens remix music and movie con - Turnitin’s Harrick agrees the com - tent and then take a quiz on whether o curb plagiarism, many schools scan pany is in an ongoing “arms race” to the remix violates copyright law. T student papers using plagiarism - keep up with students’ continual ef - “But this tool is hard to design,” says detection software that matches stu - forts to defeat the software, but he Berkman director Gasser, who teaches dents’ writing against a database of says company engineers change the law at Harvard. “Even courts disagree published sources and previously sub - algorithm as such efforts pop up. over what is considered to be fair use. mitted student papers. About 1,500 col - Fishman’s worries go beyond soft - If it’s unclear for us lawyers, how can leges and 4,000 secondary schools use ware. “The much larger concern is we teach it to students and give them the software developed by the com - we’ll teach students to get around it clear guidance?” pany Turnitin, and about 100 college in a mechanical way rather than learn - admissions offices use it to check the ing why it’s important to document originality of essays on applications, ac - their sources,” she says, noting that cording to a company spokesman. the software won’t necessarily distin - OUTLOOK (Turnitin is the most popular program guish when a text match it finds is with more than 60 million submissions surrounded by quotes and properly in 2011, but there are dozens of other attributed. such programs, including Blackboard’s Generational Divide SafeAssign, another market leader.) 65 Some schools require students to use Digital Ethics ome say the long-term trends in a plagiarism software program, such as S school cheating mean the emer - Turnitin’s WriteCheck, to check t heir pa - esearchers at the Harvard School gence of a fundamentally more dis - pers before they turn them in. “After R of Education have developed a honest society. Adults who admit they a year of using Turnitin, schools see school curriculum, “Our Space,” de - cheated in high school are more like - a 30 percent drop in plagiarism; after signed to help high school students ly to lie to their spouses and em - three to four years, a 50 to 70 percent identify plagiarism in writing and “fair ployers and cheat on insurance claims, drop,” according to Chris Harrick, vice use” of online content — when it is according to a Josephson Institute sur - president of marketing for Turnitin. legally permissible to use short ex - vey of more than 5,000 people.

www.cqresearcher.com Jan. 4, 2013 21 PLAGIARISM AND CHEATING

The same survey found that a gen - legal definitions of fair use, she says, “We’ve never had a governor who erational divide appears to be devel - “there’s a lot of copying that students says, ‘Seventy percent of students in oping: Teens 17 and under were five could be doing” — such as putting the state university system are cheat - times more likely to believe that it’s multimedia into class presentations — ing, and you universities better do necessary to lie and cheat to succeed but many students are afraid that would something or we’ll mess with your than adults over 50. 69 constitute plagiarizing or infringing funding,’ ” he says. “Until that changes, “The root of the mortgage crisis was copyright. I don’t think we’re going to see a big a pervasive lack of integrity at every “College students seem to be ex - dent in this cheating culture among level, and look what happened,” says tremely fearful about producing some - students.” Josephson, who implies that American thing that will ruin their job prospects values may be evolving in the direc - or label them as bad actors or im - tion of countries with high rates of cor - moral through unlawful copying,” she Notes ruption. “Thank God we’re not India, says, based on several studies she’s but why are those countries like that? conducted. 71 1 Mercer R. Cook, et al. , “Typo at root of It’s because it’s culturally acceptable to Similarly, the Berkman Center’s cheating scandal, Letter Reveals,” The Harvard ask for a bribe. I’m saying it’s becom - Gasser worries that traditional ideas about Crimson , Sept. 12, 2012, www.thecrimson.com/ ing culturally acceptable to lie, cheat plagiarism and copyright might s tifle cre - article/2012/9/12/platt-letter-reveals-scandal /. and steal, and this will be pervasive.” ativity. “You want news-literate kids and 2 Donald L. McCabe, unpublished data chart, Four decades’ worth of surveys digitally literate kids who can use all “Surveys done between Fall 2002 and Spring show that business-school students these fantastic tools we have for ex - 2011 by Donald L. McCabe, founding presi - cheat more t han their peers. 70 As pression, creativity and political engage - dent of the International Center for Acade - Donovan, at Dartmouth’s Tuck Busi - ment,” he says. “I’m not convinced that mic Integrity,” in email from The International ness School, explains, “Business stu - sticking with old [ethical] standards and Center on Academic Integrity, Oct. 5, 2012. 3 dents come from a utilitarian perspec - applying them from an adult perspec - Alvin Wei and Brian Wei, “Cheating Ring Suspensions Held,” The Spectator (Stuyvesant tive, where they say, ‘What the heck? tive is the right way to go,” he says. High School newspaper), Oct. 18, 2012, http:// Who cares about a Spanish class? It’s When it comes to moral behavior, stuyspectator.com/2012/10/18/cheating-ring- a requirement I needed to tick off on many trends for the younger genera - suspensions-held /. Seventy-one students were a box, and I cheated.’ ” tion are going in the right direction, suspended. The cheating was discovered But there’s also a counter trend, she with dropping rates of teen pregnan - June 18 after a cellphone confiscated from notes: “I can’t think of a single stu - cy, drunken driving, teen homicide, a 16-year-old junior tipped off administrators dent in the MBA program who didn’t smoking and binge drinking. Yet a ma - that students were sharing test information. have some experience with a soup jority of high school and college stu - 4 “Cheat or Be Cheated? What We Know kitchen or Habitat [for Humanity]. dents still admit they cheat, despite About Academic Integrity in Middle & High They know it’s part of what it takes declines in self-reported surveys. School & What We Can Do About it,” Chal - to be a business leader.” “There’s a second moral compass that lenge Success, 2012, www.challengesuccess. org/Portals/0/Docs/ChallengeSuccess-Academ New-media expert Aufderheide, who young people have when it comes to icIntegrity-WhitePaper.pdf . also is skeptical of dire predictions, getting ahead,” Cheating Culture author 5 Vivian Yee, “Stuyvesant Students Explain says, “I would be very hesitant to blame Callahan suggests. the How and the Why of Cheating,” The New a generation.” Everyone — adults in - That moral outlook is exacerbated, York Times , Sept. 25, 2012, www.nytimes.com/ cluded — “is now in a world where he believes, by the fact that academ - 2012/09/26/education/stuyvesant-high-school- it’s much easier to copy, remix and ic integrity remains a low priority students-describe-rationale-for-cheating.html? create,” she points out, adding that for among school and government au - pagewanted=all&_r=0 . the most part that’s a good thing. “We thorities. “You’re expelled if you’re 6 For background, see Kenneth Jost, “Revis - never had an environment where so found with a joint in your locker but ing No Child Left Behind,” CQ Researcher , many people created so much. More if you buy a term paper off the In - April 16, 2010, pp. 337-360. Also see Barbara people are writing than ever before. ternet there’s no expulsion” at most Mantel, “No Child Left Behind,” CQ Researcher , May 27, 2005, pp. 469-492. Think of people using GarageBand or schools, he notes. 7 See Wendy Fischman, Howard Gardner, et al. , iMovie who would never a generation Making Good: How Young People Cope with ago have done that. ” * * GarageBand is Apple software that permits Moral Dilemmas at Work (2005), www.amazon. Aufderheide worries about the re - the creation of music or podcasts; iMovie is com/Making-Good-Young-People-Dilemmas/ verse problem — that young people Apple software that lets people create and edit dp/0674018303/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8& will start censoring themselves. Under video. qid=1352710223&sr=1-3&keywords=howard+

22 CQ Researcher gardner+good+work . Gardner quotes are from 24 “Why We Cheat,” The Spectator , May 22, 41 Quoted in Malcolm Gladwell, “Something “Over 100 Harvard Students Suspected of 2010, http://stuyspectator.com/2010/05/22/why- Borrowed,” The New Yorker , Nov. 22, 2004, Cheating,” WBUR Boston, http://cognoscenti. we-cheat /. www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/11/22/0411 wbur.org/2012/10/02/harvards-cheating-scandal - 25 Yee, op. cit. 22fa_fact . as-a-play-in-four-acts . 26 Kolker, op. cit. 42 Blum, op. cit. , p. 25. 8 See “2012 Report Card on American Youth,” 27 Eric M. Anderman and Fred Danner, 43 “The Code of Honor,” Short History of U. Va., Josephson Institute, Nov. 20, 2012, p. 12, “Achievement Goals and Academic Cheating,” www.virginia.edu/uvatours/shorthistory/code.html . Table 9, http://charactercounts.org/programs/ Revue Internationale de Psychologie Sociale , 44 Nicolaus Mills, “An Easy Out for Athletes in reportcard/2012/index.html . 2008, no. 12, pp. 155-179, pp. 166-167. Harvard Scandal?” CNN, Sept. 25, 2012, http:// 9 Joy Resmovitz, “Atlanta Public Schools Shak - 28 “Academic Integrity,” Challenge Success edition.cnn.com/2012/09/25/opinion/mills-har en by Cheating Scandal,” The Huffington Post , Vodcast, www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTZ2Gv_ vard-cheating/index.html . June 5, 2011, www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/ 46Qc . 45 Ibid. 07/05/atlanta-public-schools-cheating_n_890 29 Marc Parry, “NYU Professor Vows Never 46 Yochi J. Dreazan, “A Class of Generals,” 526.html . to Pursue Cheating Again,” The Chronicle of The Wall Street Journal , July 25, 2009, http:// 10 “2012 Report Card on American Youth,” Higher Education , July 21, 2011, http://chroni online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240529702048 op. cit. cle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/nyu-prof-vows- 86304574308221927291030.html . Also see The 11 Donald McCabe, et al. , Cheating in Col - never-to-probe-cheating-again%E2%80%94and- Associated Press, “86 Survivors of 1976 Scan - lege (2012), p. 58. At colleges without honor faces-a-backlash/32351 . dal among West Point Graduates,” Toledo Blade , codes, the number of students admitting cheat - 30 E-mail interview with Howard Gardner. June 7, 1978, http://news.google.com/news ing declined from 83 percent in 1999/2000 His answers have since been posted on his papers?nid=1350&dat=19780607&id=fhhPAAA to 65 percent in 2002-2010. website: “On Plagiarism, Cheating and other AIBAJ&sjid=bAIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4931,3511547 . 12 Ibid. , p. 59. Academic Sins: A Conversation Between Sarah 47 Nathaniel Ward, “Two Years Later, CS De - 13 Richard A. Posner, The Little Book of Pla - Glazer and Howard Gardner,” http://howard partment Draws Lessons from Scandal,” The Dart - giarism (2007), p. 20. gardner.com/2012/10/30/on-plagiarism-cheating- mouth , April 17, 2002, http://thedartmouth. 14 “Harvard Guide to Using Sources,” Har - and-other-academic-sins /. com/2002/04/17/news/two . Also See “Dartmouth vard College Writing Program, http://isites.har 31 “Harvard Wannabee Tries Again,” CBS News, Drops Cheating Charges,” The Harvard Crim - vard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k70847&pageid= Nov. 11, 2011, www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_ son , March 13 2000, www.thecrimson.com/ icb.page342054 . 162-57322651-504083/harvard-wannabe-tries- article/2000/3/13/dartmouth-drops-cheating- 15 Susan D. Blum, My Word! Plagiarism and again-lies-again-puts-school-on-resume . charges-pdartmouth-college /. College Culture (2009), pp. 58-59. 32 For background, see Kathy Koch, “Cheat - 48 Posner, op. cit. , p. 9. 16 For data, see The Citation Project, http://site. ing in Schools,” CQ Researcher , Sept. 22, 2000, 49 Rachel Toor, “Unconscious Plagiarism,” The citationproject.net/?page_id=224 . pp. 745-768. Chronicle of Higher Education , June 20, 2011, 17 “The Digital Revolution and Higher Edu - 33 See McCabe, et al. , op. cit. http://chronicle.com/article/Unconscious-Pla cation,” Pew Research Center, Aug. 28, 2011, 34 The Crimson Staff, “A Penal System: The giarism/127928 . www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/08/28/the-digi Ad Board Clearly Requires Further Reforms,” 50 Posner, op. cit. , pp. 3-5. tal-revolution-and-higher-education . The Harvard Crimson , Oct. 30, 2012, www.the 51 Jon Wiener, Historians in Trouble (2005), 18 The Scratch website is at http://scratch. crimson.com/article/2012/10/30/Harvard-ad - pp. 183-184. mit.edu /. board-penal . 52 Ibid. , 184-185. 19 Andrés Monroy-Hernández, “Computers Can’t 35 Posner, p. 50. Information in this section 53 Ibid. , p. 190. Give Credit: How Automatic Attribution Falls is from Posner unless otherwise noted. 54 Dan Barry, et al. , “Correcting the Record,” Short in an Online Remixing Community,” in 36 Ibid. , p. 51. The New York Times , May 11, 2003, www.ny - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human 37 Ibid. , p. 53. times.com/2003/05/11/national/11PAPE.html?e Factors in Computing Systems, May 7-12, 2011, 38 Quoted in Blum, op. cit. , p. 35. x=1078981200&en=d3b9f9f30f4742e0&ei=5070 . http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op= 39 Posner, op. cit. , p. 77. 55 Peter Finocchiaro, “Wired Fires Jonah Lehrer,” view_citation&hl=en&user=WDSU0ucAAAAJ& 40 Blum, op. cit. , pp. 33-34. The Huffington Post , Sept. 1, 2012, www.huff citation_for_view=WDSU0ucAAAAJ:0EnyYjri UFMC . 20 See National Writing Project, www.nwp.org /. About the Author 21 Nicholas Kulish, “Author, 17, Says It’s ‘Mixing’ Sarah Glazer contributes to CQ Researcher and was a Not Plagiarism,” The New York Times , Feb. 11, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/world/eu regular contributor to CQ Global Researcher. Her articles on rope/ 12germany.html . health, education and social-policy issues also have appeared 22 For details on the cheating scandal see in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Her re - Robert Kolker, “Cheating Upwards,” New York cent CQ Global Researcher reports include “Future of the Magazine , Sept. 16, 2012, http://nymag.com/ Euro” and “Sharia Controversy.” She graduated from the Uni - news/features/cheating-2012-9 /. versity of Chicago with a B.A. in American history. 23 Yee, op. cit.

www.cqresearcher.com Jan. 4, 2013 23 PLAGIARISM AND CHEATING

ingtonpost.com/2012/09/01/wired-fires-jonah- lehrer-_n_1848459.html . “Jonah Lehrer Resigns from the New Yorker,” The New York Times , FOR MORE INFORMATION July 30, 2012, http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes. com/2012/07/30/jonah-lehrer-resigns-from-new- Berkman Center for Internet & Society , 23 Everett St., 2nd Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138 ; 617-495-7547 ; http://cyber.law.harvard.edu . Harvard University research yorker-after-making-up-dylan-quotes-for-his- center that studies youth and digital media. book /. 56 “2012 Report Card on Ethics of American Challenge Success , P.O. Box 20053, Stanford, CA 94309 ; 650-723-6609 ; Youth,” op. cit. , Table 39, p. 42. www.challengesuccess.org . Stanford University-based organization that works with 57 McCabe, et al. , op. cit. , p. 58. parents and educators to foster more balanced school life for children. 58 Ibid. , p. 59. 59 Noah Pickus and Suzanne Shanahan, “I say Center for Social Media , American University, School of Communication; 3201 ‘cheating,’ you say ‘collaborating,’ ” The Chron - New Mexico Ave., N.W., Suite 330, Washington, DC 20016 ; 202-885-3107 ; http:// icle of Higher Education , Sept. 27, 2012, http:// centerforsocialmedia.org . Research center founded by American University commu - chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2012/09/27/ nication professor Patricia Aufderheide; analyzes media and fair use issues for i-say-cheating-you-say-collaborating /. public knowledge and action. 60 “2nd official in week resigns over teaching , 650 Townsend, Suite 435, San Francisco, CA 94103 ; scandal,” SF Gate , Nov. 2, 2012, www.sfgate. Common Sense Media 415-863-0600 ; www.commonsensemedia.org . Provides information to parents and com/default/article/2nd-official-in-week-resigns- educators about children’s use of the media. Its Digital Literacy and Citizenship over-El-Paso-testing-scandal-4003857.php . Curriculum ( www.commonsensemedia.org/educators/curriculum) teaches students 61 Resmovitz, op. cit. Also see Jeffry Scott, about copyright and fair use. “Teacher testifies during Atlanta Public Schools tribunal she told students to ‘focus’ — but GoodWork Project , 124 Mount Auburn St., 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138 ; didn’t cheat,’ ” Atlanta Journal-Constitution , 617-495-4342 ; www.goodworkproject.org . Harvard-based research project that stud - Oct. 29, 2012, www.ajc.com/news/news/teacher- ies young people’s ethics; produced a digital ethics curriculum for schoolchildren testifies-during-atlanta-public-schools-tr/nSrHF . covering plagiarism and copyright issues. 62 “Report Details Culture of Cheating in Atlanta,” Education Week , June 13, 2011, www.edweek. International Center for Academic Integrity , 126 Hardin Hall, Clemson University, org/ew/articles/2011/07/13/36atlanta.h30.html . Clemson, SC 29634-5138 ; 864-656-1293 ; www.academicintegrity.org . Consortium of 63 “Ga Revokes Licenses After Cheating Scan - schools, colleges and educational organizations that work to promote academic integrity. dal,” Education Week , April 18, 2012, www.ed week.org/ew/articles/2012/04/18/28brief-2.h31. Josephson Institute , 9841 Airport Blvd., #300, Los Angeles, CA 90045 ; 310-846- html?r=1681753581 . Also see “Experts Outline 4800 ; http://josephsoninstitute.org . Conducts surveys on youth ethics and runs Steps to Guard Against Test Cheating,” Edu - character education programs. cation Week , March 7, 2012, www.edweek. org/ew/articles/2012/03/07/23testsecurity.h31. Safe Assign, Blackboard Inc. , 650 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., 6th Floor, Washington, html?qs=teacher+cheating+scandals . DC 20001-3796 ; 202-463-4860 ; www.safeassign.com . A plagiarism prevention service, 64 Resmovitz, op. cit. offered by Blackboard, Inc. — a provider of educational software — to help edu - 65 See “Five Technologies to Take the Cheating cators detect plagiarism by checking student papers against a database of pub - Out of Online Education,” Technapex , Nov. 29, lished and web sources. 2012, www.technapex.com/2012/11/5-technolo gies-to-take-the-cheating-out-of-online-education /. Turnitin, iParadigms, LLC , 1111 Broadway, 3rd floor, Oakland, CA 94607 ; 510- Also See, Jonathan Bailey, “PlagAware takes 764-7600 ; http://turnitin.com/en_us/home . Produces software for schools and col - leges to check student papers for plagiarism. top honors in plagiarism checker showdown,” Plagiarism Today , Jan. 13, 2011, www.plagiar ismtoday.com/2011/01/13/plagaware-takes-top- 2011, www.goodworkproject.org /. for So cial Media, April 3, 2007, www.centerfor honors-in-plagiarism-checker-showdown /. 68 “Digital Literacy and Citizenship Classroom social media.org/fair-use/best-practices/online- 66 David E. Harrington, “(Moral) Hazards of Curriculum,” Common Sense Media, www.com video/good-bad-and-confusing-user-generated- Scanning for Plagiarists,” Blog: Moving Mar - mon sensemedia.org/educators/curriculum . video -creators-copyright and Ad Hoc Commit - kets into the Light, Sept. 4, 2011, http://davide 69 “Josephson Institute of Ethics Releases Study tee on Fair Use and Academic Freedom, harrington.com/?p=594 . on High School Character and Adult Conduct,” International Communication Association, “Clip - 67 Howard Gardner, et al. (The GoodPlay press release, Josephson Institute, Oct. 29, 2009, ping our own Wings; Copyright and Creativ - Project), and Henry Jenkins, in collaboration http://josephsoninstitute.org/surveys . ity in Communication Research,” Center for with researchers at MIT and the University 70 McCabe, et al. , op. cit. , pp. 156-160. Social Media, March 2010, www.centerfor of Southern California (Project New Media 71 Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi, “The socialmedia.org/fair- use/related-materials/docu Literacies), “Our Space: Being a Responsible Good, the Bad and the Confusing: User Gen - ments/clipping-our- own-wings-copyright-and- Citizen of the Digital World,” released Oct. 4, erated Video Creators on Copyright,” Center creativity-communication-r .

24 CQ Researcher Bibliography Selected Sources

Books novelists who recycle others’ stories and passages to create something new. Blum , Susan D. , My Word! Plagiarism and College Cul - ture , Cornell University Press , 2009 . Cook , Mercer R. , et al. , “Typo at Root of Cheating Scandal, A Notre Dame anthropologist finds that today’s wired col - Letter Reveals,” The Harvard Crimson , Sept. 12, 2012 , lege students have different views of plagiarism and origi - www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/9/12/platt-letter- nality from those of older generations, based on her inter - reveals-scandal . views. A typographical mistake gave away plagiarism on a Harvard government take-home exam, the biggest cheating scandal in Lethem , Jonathan , The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions , Harvard’s history, according to the university’s student paper. Etc. , Vintage Books , 2011 . In this essay collection, novelist Lethem reprints his contro - Kolker , Robert , “Cheating Upwards,” New York , Sept. 16, versial essay of the same title arguing in favor of cultural bor - 2012 , http://nymag.com/news/features/cheating-2012-9 . rowing in art and answering some of his critics. Students at New York City’s prestigious Stuyvesant High School cheated by exchanging text information by cell phone. McCabe , Donald L. , et al. , Cheating in College: Why Stu - dents Do It and What Educators Can Do About It , The Monroy-Hernández , Andrés , “Computers Can’t Give Cred - Johns Hopkins University Press , 2012 . it: How Automatic Attribution Falls Short in an Online Remix - A professor of management and global business at Rutgers ing Community,” Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Business School and fellow researchers report on more than Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’11) , May 7-12, 20 years of surveys asking high school and college students 2011 , http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_ how much they cheat. citation&hl=en&user=WDSU0ucA AAAJ&citation_for_view= WDSU0ucAAAAJ:0EnyYjriUFMC . Posner , Richard , The Little Book of Plagiarism , Pantheon Kids age 8 and up care about getting credit for computer Books , 2007 . games they create after the games are “remixed,” according A U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge and senior lec - to an MIT study. turer at the University of Chicago law school provides an excellent primer on the history, ethics and legal aspects of Reports and Studies plagiarism. “Cheat or Be Cheated? What We Know about Academic Tomar , Dave , The Shadow Scholar: How I Made a Living Integrity in Middle & High Schools & What We Can Do Helping College Kids Cheat , Bloomsbury , 2012 . About it,” Challenge Success , 2012 , www.challengesuc A one-time hired gun for term-paper mills writes a funny cess.org . but devastating critique of students unable to complete their This excellent summary of research about cheating was assignments and the colleges that produce such students. produced by a Stanford University-based program, Challenge Success, which trains schools to emphasize learning over Zauzmer , Julie , Conning Harvard: Adam Wheeler, the getting high grades and scores. Con Artist Who Faked his Way into the Ivy League , Lyons Press , 2012 . “Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth,” Joseph - A Harvard University senior and managing editor of The son Institute , 2012 (updated) , http://charactercounts.org/ Harvard Crimson student newspaper presents a detailed ac - programs/reportcard /. count of how Wheeler plagiarized admissions essays to fake The Los Angeles-based Josephson Institute, which surveys his way into Bowdoin and Harvard, got caught plagiarizing high school students on ethics every two years, finds that a Harvard professor on his Fulbright application and finally more than half admit to cheating in the past year, but that went to jail for fraud. the share doing so has declined since 2010.

Articles “White Paper — Plagiarism and the Web: A Comparison of Internet Sources for Secondary and Higher Education Cohen , Paula Marantz , “Creative Plagiarism,” The Chron - Students,” Turnitin , 2013 (updated) , turnitin.com . icle of Higher Education , Oct. 22, 2012 , http://chronicle. A maker of plagiarism-detection software used by schools com/article/Creative-Plagiarism/135158 /. reports on the top Internet sources of text matches for stu - A Drexel University English professor defends students and dents’ college and high school papers.

www.cqresearcher.com Jan. 4, 2013 25 The Next Step: Additional Articles from Current Periodicals

Grades www.newsobserver.com/2012/11/17/2490476/insider- unc-tolerated-cheating.html . Ball , Andy , “Teens: Why Has Cheating Become So Preva - Many student-athletes at the University of North Carolina lent?” San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News , March 2, 2012 . at Chapel Hill have cheated and plagiarized to remain aca - Many students cheat because they have begun to believe demically eligible to play sports, says a reading specialist at that school is only about grades, says a columnist. the university.

Gardner , Howard , “Why Kids Cheat at Harvard,” The Rhor , Monica , “On Multi-Choice Final, ‘C’ Stood for Cheat - Washington Post , Sept. 7, 2012 , p. A29 . ing,” Houston Chronicle , Jan. 6, 2012 , p. A1 , www.chron. Some Harvard students have cheated out of fear of being com/news/houston-texas/article/Clear-Lake-students-in bested by others who cheat, says one of the university’s volved-in-cheating-scandal-2444654.php . education professors. Teachers at a Houston high school confirmed cheating sus - picions by reordering questions on a multiple-choice test Habib , Nour , “The Question: To Cheat . . . or Not to and finding that many students were submitting the same Cheat?” Tulsa (Okla.) World , Sept. 17, 2012 , p. D1 , www.tulsa answers in the same order. world.com/scene/article.aspx?subjectid=38&articleid=2012 0917_44_D1_Pesrnh675568 . Silverberg , Melissa , “Officials Investigate Possible Cheat - Oklahoma psychologists and school counselors say pres - ing at Naperville Central,” Chicago Daily Herald , Dec. 9, sure to do well in school causes many students to cheat or 2012 , p. 3 , www.dailyherald.com/article/20121208/news/ consider cheating. 712089837 /. Officials at a suburban Chicago high school are investi - Quintela , Gabriel , “Learning Should Take Priority Over gating cheating allegations involving students using cellphones Mania for Good Grades,” San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News , and tablet computers while taking tests. July 4, 2012 . Students would cheat much less if schools prioritized learn - Internet ing over getting good grades, says a columnist. Akin , Stephanie , “Internet Adds New Twist to Battle With Incidents Plagiarism,” Chicago Tribune , Jan. 3, 2012 , articles. chicagotribune.com/2012-01-03/features/sc-fam-0103-edu Alaimo , Carol Ann , “Academic Cheating Common at UA, cation-plagiarism-20120103_1_turnitin-com-plagiarism- Anonymous Poll Finds,” Arizona Daily Star , March 23, psychology-professor . 2012 , p. A1 , azstarnet.com/article_ba6670d1-5def-5285- Professors say students are more likely to plagiarize Inter - bf05-2fd2265afab9.html . net content unless policies against plagiarism are clear and Most University of Arizona students say cheating is wrong consistent. and should be punished, but most admit to having cheated at least once. Gormly, Kellie B. , “Internet Creates a Rise in Cut-and-Paste Plagiarism,” Pittsburgh Tribune Review , Jan. 23, 2012 , trib Carmichael , Mary , “Students Bridle at Alleged Cheating,” live.com/x/pittsburghtrib/ae/s_778004.html#axzz2EJHY2 The Boston Globe , Sept. 1, 2012 , p. A1 , www.boston. JCT . com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2012/09/01/at_ The Internet makes it easier for students to plagiarize, but harvard_cheating_scandal_raises_concerns__and_eyebrows /. it also makes it easier for teachers to catch cheaters. Harvard students accused of cheating on a take-home exam say the professor’s test rules were both permissive and con - Keilman , John , “Teachers Put to Test by Digital Cheating,” fusing. Chicago Tribune , Aug. 7, 2012 , p. A1 , articles.chicago tribune.com/2012-08-07/news/ct-met-schools-cheating- Clark , Patrick , “A Harvard Student Writes In on Cheating 20120807_1_digital-technology-calculators-quiz-answers . Scandal,” New York Observer , Aug. 31, 2012 , observer.com/ Some educators say the best way to address digital cheat - 2012/08/a-harvard-student-writes-in-on-cheating-scandal /. ing is to simply convince students that it is wrong. A student implicated in the Harvard cheating scandal says teaching fellows were also helping students with their take- Namiotka , Jim , “Academic Honesty: Antiquated Ideal?” home exams. Star-Ledger (N.J.), Oct. 7, 2012 , p. 1 , blog.nj.com/perspec tive/2012/10/qa_is_academic_honesty_an_anti.html . Kane , Dan , “UNC Tolerated Cheating, Insider Mary Will - The Internet has blurred the lines over what constitutes ingham Says,” News & Observer (N.C.), Nov. 17, 2012 , cheating, with many students creating their own definitions.

26 CQ Researcher Simpson , Kevin , “Rise Attributed to Blurred Lines of Karon , Jeff , “A Positive Solution for Plagiarism,” The Digital World,” Denver Post , Feb. 7, 2012 , p. A1 , www.den Chronicle of Higher Education , Sept. 18, 2012 , chronicle. verpost.com/news/ci_19907573 . com/article/A-Positive-Solution-for/134498 /. Anti-plagiarism policies haven’t caught up to the Internet School officials can address plagiarism better with a system based age, says a Colorado State University composition professor. on honor rather than on a culture of fear and accusation.

Punishment Martin , Jonathan , “5 Ways to Combat the Plague of Student Cheating,” The Arizona Republic , May 21, 2012 , p. B6 , www. Baker , Al , “Students Are Suspended in Stuyvesant Cheat - azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/201205 ing,” The New York Times , Sept. 8, 2012 , p. A17 , www.ny 18student-cheating-myturn.html . times.com/2012/09/08/education/12-students-suspended- Schools can better combat student cheating by focusing more in-cheating-plot-at-stuyvesant-high-school.html . on learning than on grades and by making integrity expecta - A prestigious New York City high school suspended a dozen tions clear, says the head of an Arizona preparatory school. students after an investigation into cheating on final exams. Mathews , Jay , “Plagiarism and the Disappearance of Aca - Beaver , Ty , “Work Starts to Fix Grading System,” Tri- demic Standards,” The Washington Post , July 26, 2012 , City Herald (Wash.), June 14, 2012 , p. B1 , www.tri-city - p. B2 , www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/class-struggle/post/ herald.com/2012/06/14/1986256/kennewick-school-board - how-academic-standards-disappear/2012/07/26/gJQAjO starts.html . scAX_blog.html . A school board in Washington State wants to change its Professors who charge students with academic dishonesty grading system to make students more accountable for cheat - are immediately buried in paperwork, especially if students ing and plagiarism. dispute accusations.

Eslinger , Bonnie , “Teen Caught Cheating Can’t Return to Pope , Justin , and Lindsey Anderson , “Can an Honor Code Sequoia High Honors Class, Judge Rules,” San Jose (Calif.) Prevent Cheating at Harvard?” The Associated Press , Aug. Mercury News , May 18, 2012 . 31, 2012 , bigstory.ap.org/article/can-honor-code-prevent- A judge has ruled that a student kicked out of an honors cheating-harvard . English class for copying homework cannot return to the A Harvard honor code could reduce the likelihood that same class. students will cheat.

Gordon , Larry , “Copy, Paste, Caught: Plagiarists Beware,” Riley , Sheila , “Tech Fights College Plagiarism,” Investor’s Los Angeles Times , Jan. 30, 2012 , p. A1 , articles.latimes. Business Daily , Feb. 28, 2012 , p. A5 , news.investors. com/2012/jan/29/local/la-me-plagiarism-20120129 . com/technology/022712-602487-technology-enables-hinders- Many top universities revoke admission offers to students college-plagiarism.htm . caught plagiarizing their application essays. Computer programs such as SafeAssign and Turnitin are helping professors catch students who plagiarize. Maffly , Brian , “Is Southern Utah University Tolerating Plagiarism by International Students?” Salt Lake Tribune , CITING CQ RESEARCHER Nov. 26, 2012 , www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/55287015-78/ Sample formats for citing these reports in a bibliography plagiarism-esl-frost-program.html.csp . Southern Utah University has placed an instructor on pro - include the ones listed below. Preferred styles and formats bation over charges he tolerates plagiarism. vary, so please check with your instructor or professor. Solutions MLA STYLE Jost, Kenneth. “Remembering 9/11,” CQ Researcher 2 Sept. Bierer , Lee , “Cheating Forces Increased Security at Tests,” 2011: 701-732. Buffalo (N.Y.) News , April 26, 2012 , p. C3 . An SAT cheating scandal has forced the test’s administrator APA S TYLE to implement new security measures on testing days. Jost, K. (2011, September 2). Remembering 9/11. CQ Re - Harrington , Rebecca , “Song of the Cheaters,” The New searcher, 9 , 701-732. York Times , Sept. 15, 2012 , p. A23 , www.nytimes.com/ CHICAGO STYLE 2012/09/15/opinion/the-long-legacy-of-cheating-at-har vard.html?_r=0 . Jost, Kenneth. “Remembering 9/11.” CQ Researcher , September Many college students say universities need to develop bet - 2, 2011, 701-732. ter rules over what constitutes cheating.

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