Re: Plagiarism

[v-balester@tamu.edu (Valerie Balester)]

Jo, this seems like a better system than ours.  I like this idea.

 1) We keep the students' folders of
>graded work for a year after FYC, then permit them to be copied. Then the
>original folders are destroyed. This has made it very easy to get our hands on
>material in cases of grade questions, etc., and very few students seem to keep
>photocopies of all their papers that will then migrate into frat files, etc.
>Only a very small percentage of students comes and asks to copy their files.
>All
>this costs us is the allocation of one basement office as the file room.
>
I also had trouble with the CE article you mention.  Hey, I am a good
social constructionist, but this is still plagiarism.  I do think we should
care, and in all the programs I have been in, we have always understood the
difference between what we call intentional and unintentional plagiarism,
the latter being, in part, someone learning about boundaries and
appropriation in an acceptable way.

>I'm glad to know, btw, that other people out there still care about this
>issue.
>When I read articles like the one in last December's _College English_ that
>argues that most plagiarism is just a sign of growth and that good social
>constructionists shouldn't treat it as anything else, I begin to wonder if I
>shouldn't have been a horticulturalist after all.....
>

Valerie Balester
Director of Writing Programs
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-4227
(409) 845-3155
(409) 862-2292 FAX
v-balester@tamu.edu