“That class was so hard! My boyfriend wrote that essay for me!” A student made this confession to Ellen Genovesi, Head of the Academic Integrity Committee and Professor of Biology at MCCC, Genovesi said in an interview with the VOICE.
“Well, when I bought that paper they ensured I would get at least a B on it.” That’s what another student told members of the Academic Integrity Committee, according to Nichol Killian, who is also on the committee, a Professor of Anthropology and serves as a success coach at Mercer.
“I can’t fail this class,” the student added, according to Genovesi.
“You’re gonna fail [English] 102 if you can’t write the essays for 101,” Genovesi says she told the student.
These students, who Genovesi and Killian could not reveal the names of, as a result of the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act (FERPA), a Federal law that protects the privacy of student education records, are among many who find themselves committing acts of plagiarism, whether on purpose or inadvertently.
Although there are various forms of plagiarism, it is mistakes with in-text citation in particular that students seem to struggle with the most, according to Mercer’s Library Director, Pam Price. She says, “Sometimes that phrase throws a student off.”
Trouble with citing sources and plagiarism more generally are two things Mercer students, faculty and staff deal with according to a survey of 30 students conducted by The VOICE.
The survey found that 10 percent of students said they would pay someone to do their assignment. Six percent confessed to plagiarizing at one time or another.
English Professor Gwen Jones shared with The VOICE her experiences with student plagiarism at Mercer. “Every semester I catch someone plagiarizing intentionally. Every semester. Sometimes two or three times a semester, ” Jones said.
To get a sense of what students know about the Academic Integrity Policy at Mercer, we included a question about it in The VOICE’s survey and found 85 percent of MCCC said they had never read it.
The actual term “plagiarism” is not mentioned in Mercer’s academic policies as explained on its website, and addresses instead what it refers to as “Academic Integrity,” which it defines as “the honest, fair and continuing pursuit of knowledge, free from fraud or deception.” The term does appear, however, in faculty syllabi.
According to Profssor Genovesi, “They may not have a really good idea of what’s considered plagiarism, [and] what’s not considered plagiarism,” Ellen Genovesi said. “So sometimes it’s just the student’s not quite sure how to do a citation, so I mean we’ll work with them.”
English Professor Dr. Carol Bork told the VOICE, “I don’t think citation is difficult to grasp.” She added that she “spend[s] time clarifying the rules” of citation, a process which she says is “taught in steps.” Still, she says she encounters plagiarism. In most cases it is “accidental,” she says.
When asked how to reconcile her view that citation is not “difficult to grasp” with the number of instances of “accidental plagiarism” Professor Bork said “I’m going to get really philosophical here. There’s a difference between knowing something and being able to do it. That takes practice.”
When The VOICE asked Mercer why they plagiarized survey participants all said they did it “because of procrastination.”
Professor Killian has made a similar observation. She says, “I think time management is a big factor in this.”
Professor Genovesi said, “They don’t have good time manage and that causes a lot of problems. When you’re rushing, you start to panic, and you make poor decisions.”
The internet in particular has become host to a variety of websites that serve as a platform for students either to write papers other students can use, or papers they can purchase for their own use, a fact that Genovesi describes as “disturbing.”
She continues, “There’s websites where you can like leave a paper, take a paper. Or you can get a prewritten paper. So that’s also been detected often.”
An Education major Clare Clancey, who says she has used the Internet to plagiarize, told The VOICE, “It’s wrong but I also think that a lot of people have the same ideas and when they post them on the Internet they shouldn’t be concrete so there shouldn’t be an extreme punishment. I think that everybody plagiarizes in their life whether it be on a paper or in a speech.”
There are factors that encourage students to take this perspective. Essay writing companies operating on the internet are targeting students, encouraging them even on Twitter
Chris Quintana reported about the problem in an article last January for The Chronicle of Higher Education. He gave an example of Twitter user “AlexWr1ter,” who claims to be available for prospective plagiarizers “24/7.”
The fate that befalls students caught plagiarising varies, according to Professor Genovesi: “It depends on the course levels. So if they’re in a foundation course, then you know, they’re more likely to not know how to do it correctly so the professor might even just give an opportunity to re-write the paper.”
While a student might get a second chance for plagiarizing in English 101, that may not fly in English 102.
“By the time a student is in English 102 they should really know how to do proper citations,” Professor Genovesi said.
English Professor Carol Bork shared this expectation: “Most students plagiarize on the first draft of their first essay [in English 101] but I don’t bust them the first time.” However, she said she “wouldn’t be that lenient in [English] 102.”
Even if students caught plagiarizing are not in a foundation course, the goal in addressing the issue, according to Professor Genovesi, “Is to not have to be as punitive but have it be more instructive.”
She continued, “We really don’t want to kick people out. But then we don’t want them graduating [from Mercer] and going to another school and all of a sudden the penalties are severe. They will get kicked out of whatever program they’re in. They might get kicked out of that college.”
Professor Genovesi says since she has been on the Academic Integrity Committee there have been no expulsions for plagiarism at Mercer.
There are several examples of how Mercer takes an “instructive” approach to addressing and preventing plagiarism. Success Coach Nichol Killian told The VOICE she encourages students to visit with her or one of Mercer’s other success coaches.
Another resource is the Mercer Library. “I’ve always said that the library is the extension of the classroom,” Director Pam Price told The VOICE.
At the library students can get help using various resources that show exactly how to cite something, both in text and in the bibliography, depending on the style. For example, Price says she helps students identify which citation style they need to use, and shows students the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) and bibme.org.
Students also have access to tutoring services which are offered at three locations: LB 214: The Learning Center, LA 227: The Writing Center, and at the James Kerney Campus in Trenton.
Students should be mindful, however, that tutors cannot write their papers for them, and that the tutor’s job is not to do cold edits, English Professor Carol Bork says, “If your tutor corrects your grammar and that’s all the tutor does, that’s plagiarism.”
Professor Bork adds, but “if the tutor helps you understand how to find and fix your own mistakes.”
And professors will likely figure it out, if the student is relying too heavily on the tutor’s work, or if the student is plagiarizing through some other form, according to English Professor Gwen Jones.
She says, “Some students think that we don’t know what we’re looking at when we read their essays. I can tell you unequivocally we may not catch you now but we will catch you later.”
