The Pissed Off Professor

Yesterday, while minding my own business checking my department box and running off a few photocopies, I got into a discussion debate an argument with one of my fellow teachers regarding the issue of plagiarism.

The situation began this way: one instructor (we’ll call her Sally) asked another instructor (we’ll call him Boyd) whether or not it was acceptable for a student to present the same essay to the instructors of two separate classes.

I was thinking to myself that the adage regarding “stupid questions” was again proving false when Boyd replied to Sally,

“Goodness, no—that’s plagiarism.”

I couldn’t help myself: I laughed out loud. He’d missed nary a beat while managing to mock her—and it was so funny, she couldn’t possibly get mad at him. As the cackles tumbled from my lips, and I turned away from the copy machine to share in the moment, I realized both instructors were staring at me in a manner I can only describe as unkind.

“You find plagiarism funny?”

I had one of those moments that lasts a really, really long time as I evaluated Boyd’s body language, replayed the tone of his voice in my head, and looked carefully at the glare that had set itself into his eyes, I realized I was in trouble. I also realized it was the kind of trouble that once one is in, one has to roll with and hope for the best.

“Of course not, Boyd”

I directed my next words to Sally. “The student’s work was her own, correct?”

Sally nodded, and I looked back at Boyd.

“So how is that plagiarizing?”

“Well, that should be obvious: it’s not original work.”

The dripping sarcasm in his voice did it: the fight was on.

“Hmmm—I guess it’s not obvious to me. Perhaps you can enlighten me about how printing something twice negates its originality.”

“The student turned in the same essay to two separate teachers; that’s cheating—it’s plagiarism.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No—no I’m not kidding, and I think you’ve been around long enough to know better.”

I held back from inquiring whether or not he’d meant that I’d been around long enough to know what plagiarism was or that I’d been around long enough to know that he wasn’t kidding.

“I’m sorry, but I have to go to class. I’ll leave the two of you to finish.”

Sally seemed both nervous and embarrassed as she walked out of the room.

Boyd and I looked at one another. It was my turn, and he seemed anxious to continue our little chat spat.

“C’mon Boyd, turning in a paper twice is nowhere near presenting the work of another as your own. It’s not plagiarism, and it’s not cheating. The only thing it might be is a violation of a particular instructor’s policy if that instructor has included a ‘don’t-turn-in-a-paper-to-me-that-
you’ve-turned-into-another-instructor’ clause on his or her syllabus.”

Before I had I’d finished, Boyd’s head had begun moving left-to-right-to-left in a repetitive no-no-no kind of way.

“I think someone needs to review the definition of plagiarism.”

Obviously, I was in a battle of wits with an unarmed man, so I smiled broadly at Boyd as I said,

“Happy reading,”

and walked out of the office heading for my class.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 3:19 pm and is filed under Argument, College, Education, English, Essay, Students, Teaching, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.