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Copy Cat
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We've all felt it - the pressure to do well in school and the desire to get good grades on our papers and tests. But how far would you go for your GPA? Kids across the country have turned to plagiarism, the illegal act of claiming someone else's work as your own. Do you have the strength to resist this temptation?
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Imagine this: Tomorrow morning a 7-page paper is due in your English class on Great Expectations. It's already 9 PM and you're so tired you feel like you're going to collapse. You've written all of ONE sentence. What are you going to do?
If you don't have the willpower to stay up and write the paper, or the guts to "fess up" to your teacher tomorrow that you didn't do the assignment, you might turn to plagiarism. There are tons of sites on the Internet devoted to selling student papers. These sites claim that you can basically buy your grades. If it's so easy, what's wrong with it? After all, if you look up recent news stories on CNN, you can find many recent plagiarism cases:
In May of 2003 a New York Times writer (Jayson Blair) was accused of plagiarizing articles he supposedly wrote for the Times.
In 2002 the University of Virginia kicked out 45 students for plagiarizing. Plus, they took back three graduate degrees for the same reason.
In May of 2003 New York Post writer Robin Gregg plagiarized a story.
In 1998 Boston University sued online term paper "mills."
The New York Times reported in July of 2003 that a New Jersey teenager who was accepted to Harvard University was denied entrance after admitting to plagiarizing some articles she wrote for a local newspaper.
But it's not just stories in the news; it's also part of history. Many ancient or medieval pieces of artwork or literature do not have the name of the creator on them. In past times, "plagiarism" wasn't really considered a problem or even a crime - if you wrote something or designed a beautiful building, it became part of the public culture. Recent studies have suggested that even Martin Luther King Jr. plagiarized - much of his dissertation (a very long paper) appears to have been taken directly from other sources. In our culture, however, ideas are not so public, even though you may think that plagiarizing is common AND acceptable. Did you know that plagiarizing (which is also the stealing of copyrighted information) is against the law? Or that being accused of plagiarism in high school could hurt your chances of getting into a college? Read on under "DEFINED" and "HOW TO" to make sure that what you write is really your own!
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