Sohum's Plagiarism Jihad

Most of us hate to be in a tight spot. The impending footsteps of a predatory deadline or due date spell certain doom for us, the prey. There is no flexible option, no precautionary measure, and most importantly no time to finish. You are cornered, routed, and defeated. When you are in a tight spot, you are at the mercy of the dreadful consequences that await you.

It was 3:00 AM in the morning and Billy’s entire high school career depended on this one last term paper. The assignment was given a week in advance, but his busy schedule forced him to devote only a limited amount of time to this project. Now it was only 4 hours till school began, 4 hours till his term paper was due. Billy’s, conscious of the time, thought quickly. He needed a solution and fast, but the only thing he could write on his paper was, “The allegorical mother figure represents the successive civilizations of the Fertile Crescent.” Finally an idea struck him. After just a half-hour of searching, he was finished with his reported and awaited sunrise, and the beginning of a new day. Just what did Billy do to over come his sudden writer’s block? He plagiarized of course.

Although, this story is entirely fictional, many of us can sympathize with Billy’s case. Or at least 97.5% of us who have plagiarized can, as reported by the Free Press in July of 1996. Let’s admit it, like Billy, we’ve all been in a tight spot. We weren’t clever enough to think of something up on our own, so we took something from the internet, a reference book, anywhere, and passed it off as our own work. Still that hasn’t stopped many of us who did plagiarize in 1989 to become doctors, lawyers, and in general relatively successful individuals. Our competence in the work we do everyday is shown by the increase in the standard in living and the progress of technology. Furthermore, the more euphemistic option to plagiarism, known as citation, is much the same thing, only here credit is given to the author. This cumbersome and inane process does not help the reader an insightful manner, and merely bores him or her by interrupting his reading with parenthetical references, such as (Desai, 75).

Think of Billy’s situation as an even greater test than a term paper and more like a test of our ingenuity and resourcefulness.  We often complain about how standardized tests today can’t test our creativity or intellect. Yet, we fail to realize that academic Darwinism is a reoccurring penchant of high school that weeds out the weak individuals from rising. Invoking Murphy’s Law, that we all rise to the level our work becomes incompetence; we see how those who pass this test of aptitude will eventually fail-miserably.

There is a growing industry of businesses that make it their job to detect plagiarism among students. More well known sites, such as TurnItIn.com, are receiving numerous awards and leading the industry in the largely fictitious ‘battle against plagiarism.’ The reality is their venture is quite possibly the most futile effort on the face of the planet. There ‘technology’ can supposedly detect plagiarism between students and plagiarism from websites using sophisticated ‘web crawlers.’ However, their foolproof strategy is porous with weaknesses. For example, one could easily have someone else supply a completed essay and turn the work in under his or her name. There are myriad of websites dedicated to doing so, such as antischool.com or free-essays.com. These websites go on further to use password protection to make it even more difficult for

Turnitin.com's ‘web-crawlers’ to detect a student cheating from such a website. If turnitin.com has had any success, it is relatively unlikely it will do so in the future when its methods and technology become obsolete.

The likely and legitimate direction this action should take is that plagiarism shouldn’t be considered wrong. Rather a justifiable course of action to take that would improve the flow of information around the world to people who need to see to develop new and exciting ideas. Ideas that can, quite possibly, change the human condition and nature of humanity to something good and productive.