I think the University should install an artificial sun to melt away all the snow and make it 72 degrees and pleasant at all times. Surely, someone is the sciences can do it. Please? Anyone?
It's amazing that we're on our FIFTH week of classes already...which means that we're a third of the way to a glorious summer, which will be, as aforementioned, 72 degrees and pleasant at all times.
Anyway, onto my two thoughts for the week.
1) This is from the Independent article that we are reading for Friday. Since my blog in informal, I will provide the link and it will be sufficient enough for my unique form of citation. After all, if Barthes proclaimed the death of an author, MLA must have gone with it. "In this struggle to separate an aesthetic debt from straightforward larceny, everything hangs on the intentions of the plagiarist. A popularising author who chances on an abstruse work by an obscure academic, takes its themes, structures and intellectual viewpoint and sells half a million copies on the back of this expropriation has clearly stepped over the line, but what about the innocent act of homage."
I think INTENT is very important in determining a student's punishment/lesson for plagiarism. And what if by intent, it is merely an imitation of a writing style, not an actual word-for-word theft? For instance, assume you watched a lot of Star Wars and you annoyingly spoke like Yoda all the time. "The death of the author, it is." Would I then be stealing the ideas of George Lucas? Most likely, no, I'd just be an idiot. But then would legitimate paraphrasing of another kind warrant discipline? I guess that's not for me to decide.
2) "If it appears to an instructor that you might be involved in an incident of academic misconduct-for example, cheating on an exam, plagiarizing a paper, or interfering with another student's lab work-the instructor will invite you to meet to discuss the situation.*" This is from the University website regarding academic misconduct. Note that there is an asterisk, and nowhere on the page does it list what the asterisk is supposed to mean. I'm just saying.
1 comment:
While it is obnoxious at times to cite source, I do not believe that it is overly difficult. I think that for the most part a student doesn’t have to worry about the penalties associated with academic misconduct via plagiarism if that student does his/her own work as intended.
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