“100% Original and Non-Plagiarized Term Paper Writing Services”

I tell my students on the first day of class:
I would rather see the biggest, steamiest hunk of corn-studded writing you created yourself, than a good paper you didn’t.

And still, some will try.

What is the point of going to college—which is, despite current societal pressures, entirely voluntary (see previous posts)—if you’re not going to do the work?

There are many services on the internet dedicated to selling papers to college students. You can get an awful paper for free, increasingly decent papers for increasing amounts of money, all the way up to a custom-written paper based on the actual assignment for as much as $38 per page. (One site even advertised “100% Original and Non-Plagiarized Term Paper Writing Services.” Say, WHAT?!?)

The biggest clue that I have been given a plagiarized paper is that it’s too good to be true. The vocabulary is appropriate and multi-syllabic. The facts are interesting and well-integrated. The paragraphs are sophisticated, relevant and a joy to read. It is clearly not my student’s writing.

Without knowing my student, without researching any portion online, see if you can recognize the following passage as plagiarism. It was the beginning of a research paper titled “Russian Revolutions” that was my very first brush with this kind of cheating:

The abdication of Emperor Nicholas II in March 1917, in conjunction with the establishment of a provisional government based on Western principles of constitutional liberalism, and the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in November are the political focal points of the Russian Revolutions of 1917 (Carr 24).

By the second page when I read the words, “repudiate annexationist ambitions,” I knew without a doubt I’d been had.

Yes, I caught him, but one paper late. “Russian Revolutions” was a revision he handed in on the last day of class. I found it was plagiarized, gave him the zero, and turned in his grade… then, not wanting to believe my “benefit of the doubt” was really “ignorance”, I belatedly thought that maybe he plagiarized his other paper, too. It had been a B paper, and it had sounded like him… but I looked it up anyway: plagiarized.

I was pissed.

I went to the director of the Writing 100 Department, who also ran the History Department and didn’t really give a rat’s tuchas about my puny class. I told him my story and asked what we could do about reversing this student’s grade. He laughed. He laughed and told me a story about when a kid plagiarized a paper but didn’t change the fact that it said Jimmy Carter was still president.

I said, “Oooh-kay. So what can I do about this student?”

The answer was: NOTHING. He would do nothing. I could do nothing. I finished what I had to do for that semester, and I quit. I also swore I’d never be back, but here I am. They have since reorganized and given Writing 100 its own department. There are also clear measures in place to deal with plagiarism. But I’m not letting plagiarism happen again. Not in MY classroom.

DON’T let it happen in yours.