Callander 1 Plagiarism and Punishment There seems to be a growing consensus that writing instructors should view plagiarism differently,

but few have taken the next step to discuss how teachers should respond to different levels of plagiarism. While most people consider plagiarism a pretty straightforward case of cheating, writing scholars (Howard, Porter, Schick, Valentine) increasingly point out that it isn t that simple Some (Howard, Porter) point out that students may not be intentionally plagiarizing if they are doing things such as patchwriting and intertextuality. Others (Schick, Valentine) argue that teachers jump right into accusing students of plagiarizing and don t focus on the work that the students do and how it may not be the students fault they don t know how to properly cite things. These attempts to complicate plagiarism, however, haven t progressed to the next step: how educators should respond differently to different types of plagiarism. The idea of giving students the chance to fix their mistakes and changing the level of punishment for different levels of plagiarism is something that hasn t been looked at. Should all of the different things that are put into the category of plagiarism receive the same punishments? Whether students are intentionally plagiarizing or not they still receive the same levels of punishment. Should students be punished for not learning correct citation from their teachers? Perhaps some things that are considered plagiarism should be looked at as more of a compliment than an insult that deserves punishment. There are many different things that are considered plagiarism such as copying and pasting someone else s writing word for word, patchwriting, and improper citation.

Callander 2 Copying and pasting someone else s work is obviously a form of plagiarism that is intentional. If a student takes a writer s work and copies it word for word and doesn t acknowledge the writer, the person clearly deserves punishment. This is clearly cheating that does not need further discussion. When students do this they are not innocent in any way. Patchwriting, on the other hand is a form of plagiarism everyone may not be clear about. In Howards article A Plagiarism Pentimento, she describes patchwriting as copying from a source text and then deleting some words, altering grammatical structures, or plugging in one-for-one synonym-substitutes (233). This is something that a student may not be doing with the intentions of stealing the author s work. When students write in this way it is very possible that they like the idea and the author is sharing and think they could build off of the idea. A lot of the time students may not think that they need to change the words completely because the author has probably written the idea in the same way that the student wants to say it. Students improperly cite writer s works for many reasons. Students may not have learned how to cite sources the correct way in school; should they get punished for this? Students who are not aware of which sources need to be cited should not receive a harsh unreasonable punishment. This is one example of something currently considered plagiarism that needs to be reexamined for whether it is truly academic dishonesty. Every time a citation is missing or done improperly it should not be assumed by teachers that the student is intentionally cheating.

Callander 3 When a student does any of these mistakes society usually assumes one of two things students don t appreciate academic textual values and therefore deliberately submit work that is not their own; others don t understand academic citation and therefore plagiarize inadvertently (Howard 233) When a student is accused of any of these things it is considered academic dishonesty even if the case is unintentional. In Margaret Price s article Beyond Gotcha! Situating Plagiarism in Policy and Pedagogy she mentions how if students are caught cheating they can suffer from failing, suspension, or expulsion (89). Is it fair for students to receive any of these punishments for all of the actions currently considered plagiarism? University honor codes have different policies, which teachers are to follow when it comes to academic dishonesty (Whitaker 126). Teachers tend to jump right into punishing students for plagiarism because of the rules they are supposed to follow. If a teacher does not punish a student the way they are supposed to, it reflects badly on the teacher, so teachers tend to pay more attention to the plagiarism than the students writing. In his article Citation Obsession? Get over it! Kurt argues that teachers are too obsessed with the use of citation. He asserts that teachers should reinvest time teaching more important skills like credible sources, recognizing bias or faulty arguments, paraphrasing and summarizing effectively, and attributing sourced information persuasively and responsibly (Chronicle of Higher Education). The amount of effort being put into catching and punishing a student for plagiarizing should be put into fixing the problem and teaching students the correct way to do things. It would be more beneficial to the students if teachers always started off with reviewing what needs to be cited and how it needs to be

Callander 4 cited so the students are informed and know how instead of teachers just assuming that students know already. Also, patchwriting is one of the things that I personally think shouldn t be plagiarism and if a teacher thinks a student has used too much of a source they should just tell the student it needs to be cited and fix the issue instead of putting time into punishments. Patchwriting is a form of plagiarism that does not deserve harsh punishments. Howard discusses patchwriting in her article Plagiarisms, Authorships, and the Academic Death Penalty, she argues that there are positive motivations for patchwriting arguing that patchwriting is more of a pedagogical opportunity, not a juridical problem and that the policies should be revised to allow for alternative approaches (788-789). Students should be able to get a chance to talk to the teacher and discuss the paper and have alternatives before receiving a failing grade or worse. When I was in High School a good friend of mine along with three other students in her class all got suspended for plagiarizing. Did all of these students really plagiarize in their papers? Is it possible that the students weren t aware that patchwriting was considered plagiarism or didn t know they had to cite certain things? Another similar situation that I have witnessed was with my roommate freshmen year at Ohio University. She wrote a paper for her freshmen English class. After she had turned in her paper to the teacher she received an e-mail saying that she had plagiarized in her paper. She had turned her paper into turn-it-in.com and it came back suggesting that she had plagiarized. She had honestly not intentionally

Callander 5 plagiarized. She had to have a meeting with the teacher and found out that she was going to be failed for the class and had to retake it. This is the type of situation where she should not have gotten such a harsh punishment if any punishment at all. In a case like this it should be the teacher s job to explain to her why what she did was wrong and have her rewrite the paper. One of the things that Howard discusses in her articles Sextuality, Textuality: The Cultural Work of Plagiarism is how teachers may not be doing their job when it comes to teaching students how to use citations. She says that misusing citations would be a form of unintentional plagiarism. This is something that a writer or student did not mean to do, but it is still called plagiarism. Students do not deserve to be punished for this and need to be taught rather than punished. Punishing a student for something they have unintentionally done isn t going to do anything positive. Teaching the student and correcting their mistake would fix the problem and help the student in the future so they would then understand what they did wrong and how to fix the issue. The idea of intertextuality is also something that needs to be looked at when talking about punishing people for plagiarism. In James E. Porter s article Intertextuality and the Discourse Community, he explains that intertextuality is the idea that all texts contain traces of other texts and that there can be no text that does not draw on some ideas from some other texts (34). Every idea that a person has is drawn from something else so does that mean that you are never writing original work? People may have the same idea as someone else and not know that the idea is already out there and has been used. It is possible for someone to

Callander 6 coincidently have something similar to another person s writing. Porter also mentions the conceptions society holds, one that our writing must be original, and two that if a writer borrows ideas from another writer without acknowledging that borrowing it is plagiarizing (34). The idea of having different levels of plagiarism and different punishments and possible solutions hasn t been completely brought up. If there were different levels and ways of dealing with plagiarism it could make the issue of students getting undeserving punishments go away. The thing that everyone can agree on is the obvious intentional plagiarism of copying and pasting deserves the harsh level of punishment it receives. The concept of patchwriting is something that deserves reconsideration. If a student patchwrites in their paper they are not trying to steal the idea they are giving the author a compliment. They are using the other s idea and words because they like how the author has explained the idea. Students are a lot of the time using the author s idea to build off and trying to make the same point as the author. Someone using a writers idea is showing the author that they had a good point and a worded the idea so well that it will help the writer using it to get their own point across. Jumping straight to punishment for this is unreasonable. The student should get to talk to the teacher and come to an agreement on what the student needs to do. As I discussed earlier, misusing citations should not result in punishment for a student so this should not be considered plagiarism at all because it s the teacher s job to show the student how to use the cite correctly. I know from experience that students aren t always taught citation. My hometown school district

Callander 7 was known for being very good academically, and I did not learn the proper use of citations until I was in the 12th grade. People might argue that plagiarism is plagiarism and there should not be a range of punishments. I can understand how people can view using another person s work as a bad thing because they obviously want credit for work that they have done. If someone were to copy and paste someone s work word for word then they do deserve some sort of punishment. In this case the level of punishment, after a warning from a teacher is reasonable. People may say that when you write it is supposed to be your own work so patch writing someone s work should still be considered plagiarism. Writers may also disagree and say although someone using their work could be considered a compliment they think they deserve full credit for anything of theirs used. This could be true but does the student deserve suspension? It could also be the teacher s fault if a student plagiarizes and doesn t realize it because of the way that students learn. We are taught to answer questions out of books and different things like this throughout school and they could be a big part of a student thinking certain things are not plagiarism. All students deserve the chance to correct a mistake such as patchwriting or misuse of citations before they are given a failing grade. It would be more beneficial for students to get the opportunity to learn from their mistakes by fixing them and receiving credit for fixing them, giving the student the ability to improve their work. In Sean Zwagerman s article Plagiarism Panopticism and the Rhetoric of Academic Integrity, he discusses how the instructors response has an impact by reacting in a more helpful way than accusing it will be more benficial. If the policies were

Callander 8 changed a little this would give the instructors the ability to react in a more helpful way rather than just punishing the students and leaving it at that. By making these simple slight changes the number of students plagiarizing would go down. The reason it is thought that so many people plagiarize is because of the things that are put into the category of plagiarizing and the rules teachers are required to follow. Reconsidering the rules is going to give the students the ability to change the mistake they unintentionally made and make it right. By doing this, the number of cases reported would go down. Teachers would have the ability to have more trust in their students because the rules wouldn t be so strict, and they wouldn t have to be so cautious. Having less strict rules would take a lot of pressure off the teachers and give them the ability to really read the students writing and understand it instead of worrying about the plagiarism. It could benefit students and teachers both if the policies for plagiarism were changed.

Callander 9 Works Cited Howard, Rebecca Moore. "A Plagarism Pentimento." Journal of Teaching Writing (1993): 233-46.Print. Howard, Rebecca Moore. "Plagarisms, Authorships, and the Academic Death Penalty." College English. Vol. 57. National Council of Teachers of English, 1995. 7 vols. 788.Print. Howard, Rebecca Moore. Sexuality, Textuality: The Cultural Work of Plagiarism . College English. 62.4 (2000) : 473-491. JSTOR Web. 3 Oct. 2009.Print. Porter, James E. Intertextuality and the Discourse Community. Rhetoric Review 5.1 (1986): 34-47. Print. Price, Margaret. Beyond Gotcha! : Situating Plagiarism in Policy and Pedagogy. College Composition and Communication. 54:1 (2002): 88-115. Print. Schick, Kurt. Citation Obsession? Get over it! Chronicle of Higher Education 58.11, 2011. Print. Whitaker, Elaine. Peers and Plagiarism: The Role of Student Judicial Boards . CCC 59:1 (2007) 125-127. Print. Valentine, Kathryn. Plagiarism as Literacy Practice: Recognizing and Rethinking Ethical Binaries College Composition and Communication. 58.1 (2006): 89109. Print. Zwagerman, Sean. The Scarlet P: Plagiarism, Panopticism and the Rhetoric of Academic Integrity CCC 59:4 (2008): 676-710. Print.