Plagiarizers

Before last semester, I hadn't had plagiarism problems in my classes in a couple of years. I started using Turnitin.com, and the problems pretty much went away. Turnitin is a good preventative, and it lets students know you're thinking about plagiarism and that you actually care whether they do their own work.

Or so I thought. Last semester, despite using turnitin, I got lots and LOTS of plagiarizers--about fifteen in my hugey intro-to-lit course, and another two in my upper-division medieval. The lower-division plagiarizers mostly subsisted of students cheating off each other. But the upper-division one really took me for a loop. Who would snitch stuff off SparkNotes, KNOWING that their paper is going to go through an automatic source-checker? Duh?

But two did. Of course turnitin picked up the copyists immediately. And for some reason--lord knows why!--I gave these students the option to rewrite.

(Okay, I must pause to consider my motives. I know why it was: it was because I knew one of the students and didn't think that person would really want to cheat. I thought that surely there must be some mistake. Did this student not understand what plagiarism means? And once I gave one the benefit of the doubt, I had to give it to the other, too.)

So anyway, one student--the one I'd given the benefit of the doubt to in the first place--rewrote. And it was a fine paper.

The other--get this! --turned in a fresh paper, and it was plagiarized AGAIN.

It was like he was saying, "Oh! I'm so sorry you caught me! Here, try this one instead!"

Gah....