Re: Plagiarism/boilerplate

[Denise Rogers <dmr2899@usl.edu>]

Lynnell,

Talk about synchronicity! A friend of mine showed me an article from the
Chicago Tribune (I believe Ron Gowers was the reporter--trying to document
here :)) that discussed a recent court decision/monetary award given to Dr.
Carol Phinney. It seems that when Dr. Phinney was a graduate student, her
research notes, etc. were appropriated by her professor and passed off as
the instructor's work. Dr. Phinney took it to a civil court, which ruled
that Phinney should have been credited with work and so the court ordered a
payment from the school in the amount of something over $1 million dollars.
Anyway, the rest of the article pointed out a number of other instances in
which graduate students--and undergraduates--are taking universities and
mentors to court and suing them for plagiarism.

>
>I appreciate your thoughtful response to my post, especially the ways that
>you complicate the notion of "plagiarism only matters in the academy" with
>your experience with writing in a law firm.  I didn't mean to imply in the
>first part of my response that intellectual property isn't worth defending
>as much as other property --- just that that's all we have, really.  I
>suppose institutions are defined in some ways by their "property rights"
>and we'd be fools not to fight to the death for our rights to intellectual
>property.  Because if we lost it, we'd have nothing left.

I guess my emphasis, and it might have gotten buried in my post, was that
there could be a way of teaching citation/document systems that helps the
student see himself or herself as entering into a rather sophisticated
arena of discussion--and perhaps getting a thrill from identifying their
ideas from those of the scholars. So much of the time they don't value
their own ideas. They think all ideas are worth the same amount--usually
not much. Perhaps we can teach them to not have to pass off other people's
ideas as theirs because their ideas are good ones.

My fear is that students do plagiarize not just out of laziness but because
they undervalue their own products or think they do not have anything
important to say. And even if they don't make any new, exciting
discoveries, the *way* they express themselves is often exciting. I try to
say to my students, "Okay, document your sources so that I can praise
*your* ideas rather than Dr. X's."

>
>But I think we have to talk more explicitly about how plaigarism and the
>taboo against stealing intellectual property is a construct of the
>academic ethos, (and a relatively recent one at that) and not some
>transcendental value that comes down as the 11th commandmant, when the
>rest of the culture is basically telling them otherwise.  (How come
>nothing in TIME magazine is ever documented MLA style?)

Well, that might have to do with the content. Maybe nobody wants credit for
it, and nobody wants to go on the record as having said this or that. But I
do see your point. ;) But I know what you are talking about. For example,
Chinese painters often prided themselves on creating works that were
virtually indistinguishable from the work of the master they were copying.
In fact, being able to "sell" such a work meant you had ascended to a
particular rank as a painter. And in general, much of the rest of the world
sees expert imitation (which we might call "plagiarism) in a flattering
light. But should this "legitimitization" (is this a word?) of plagiarism
sanction it for our corner of the world? I don't know. Values are different
from place to place, circumstance to circumstance. And as the Tribune
article pointed out, even the academy doesn't always follow through on its
own rules regarding plagiarism. But it may have to start doing so if more
lawsuits are filed.

>
>It also informs the subsequent conversations we have about documentation
>styles --- they represent the particular values of disciplines.  Students
>get angry and frustrated about variations in documentation styles because
>when they learn one they mistakenly think they're learning some kind of
>universal axiom about documentation; documentation makes no sense because
>it seems random, arbitrary and subject to the whims of the professor.

I agree. It's incredibly frustrating for me to have to teach documentation
because everyone has gotten a different story about what needs to be
documented. I'm not sure myself sometimes, especially when we are talking
about historical fact. If I read a book on the paintings of Artemesia
Gentileschi, which includes factual details of her life, do I have to
document the information on those factual details? I'm not sure. It doesn't
seem to fit in "commonly known facts" unless you are talking about a
particular group of people (historians and artists). But I figure that if
the author of the book cites it, I cite it. But if the author doesn't?


> It defeats them because it appears that they could never know or guess
>all the >possible rules.  And sometimes, from the WC perspective it looks
>that way to me >too.  We get all varieties of "formatting" and
>"documentation" requirements, >some of which look absolutley unacceptable
>for academic work.

Agreed. On the other hand, let me tell you that in almost every kind of job
I have had outside the academy, I had to accomodate my employers' whims
whether I thought they made sense or not. So maybe one of the ways we could
talk about this with the student is to tell them that in their jobs, they
will come up with these sorts of situations and here is a practice for them
in following directions (no matter how silly they are).

>
>"My instructor said we didn't have to document anything we used from the
>textbook"
>
>"My instructor said use MLA style, only please single space long quotes
>and indent them on both sides"
>
>"My instructor said as long as we do a bibliography page we're okay."
>
>Aaaaarrrggghhh!


Oh, yes. And I'm sure I've made similar errors, too. But sometimes, I'm
trying to help them learn one piece of the documentation puzzle at a time
because it is so unwieldy.

>
>I've said enough; and in fact most of what I think is really interesting
>in this post was finished by the first paragraph anyway.

I don't know...I do share your frustrations; I am trying to find a way to
work comfortably within this academy framework knowing that the world
outside of it is different in *some* ways, but not so very different in
other ways (I can't tell you how difficult it is to learn again how to
spell judgement! In the legal world, it's judgment. Talk about arbitrary
and confusing!).

Denise


>
>lynnell edwards
>concordia university, portland or


Denise
drogers@linknet.net