I'm not paid enough as an adjunct faculty member to research cases of academic dishonesty; as a result I spend 20 minutes talking about plagiarism the first day of class when I go over the syllabus, and every time I hand out an assignment I give dire warnings about plagiarism and its consequences, all in hopes of striking the Fear of God into them.
All to no avail, apparently. I've spent the last two hours grading 5 essays from my lit class, and two of them are clearly plagiarized, and I immediately found the source materials online using Google. One student at least tried to re-write the original language, tho she used some nearly exact formulations, and the exact quotes from the story, and the same arguments as the original document. I caught her because she tried to rewrite a sentence that was too sophisticated for her, and she left it completely insensible. I typed her sentence into Google and up popped the undocumented scholarly article. The other simply framed two entirely stolen paragraphs between her own intro and conclusion.
Now I've got to decide whether or not to take these to the Chair, or to simply give them Fs on the assignment, or to give them a sound thrashing in my office and make them rewrite the essay, threatening them with the Chair and academic probation, etc. Worst thing is that both of the plagiarizers are smart and articulate and completely capable of writing their own essays.
I've still got 17 papers to go out of this batch, and I'm worried there may be more lurking undocumented whoppers.
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