To the Editor:
I was recently at a conference in San Antonio. It was unbelievably hot—Texas in the midst of a six-month heat wave. When I browsed through my e-mail during a conference break, I saw that another challenge was waiting for me—potentially as merciless as that steamy San Antonio heat. It was a message from my associate dean. The subject sounded ominous: Plagiarism.
I knew immediately what it was about. I recently faced an egregious case of plagiarism and decided to pursue it. The dean and associate dean agreed to go along with it, or rather, reluctantly decided to allow me to proceed after I told them that 70 percent of the student’s paper consisted of whole pages borrowed from sources available on the Internet.
The student came up with ridiculous accusations against me, such as that I yelled at him in my office, calling him a criminal and telling him that he was going to jail. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, the student spent over an hour in my office begging me for forgiveness. Please, he said, please, “it was an honest mistake.”
“What’s honest about it?” I asked. The student was unperturbed, saying he just hadn’t quoted the material properly.
When I talked to our dean of students, she warned me that this was the student’s last course in our M.B.A. program—he had a lot to lose. I knew pursuing the case was not going to be easy, but the act of plagiarism was so egregious that I wouldn’t respect myself if I let it go. The associate dean was concerned and appeared to believe everything the student said. “Why did you call him a criminal?” he asked. “You are not supposed to call him criminal. And why did you say that he is going to jail?” I hadn’t, I told him—none of this was true. He was not listening.
One day someone peeked into my office and asked, “May I come in?” It turned out to be the student’s dad, accompanied by his mom and the student himself. The parents were immigrants. The son was their pride and joy: a first-generation American. He would go where they could not have, because this was not their country, not their language, not their culture. It was his, though, and the pressure on him was almost impossibly high. But there was a way out—a bonanza on the Internet. It was free, too: almost too easy.
I felt really bad for the family, but I did not cave in. Finally, the student confessed. There was no appeal afterward. It seemed to go away.
Well, not quite. In the e-mail I received in San Antonio, the associate dean wrote the following: “The dean has sent this article to me about plagiarism. I know you have dealt with this issue recently and thought you might want to take a look at this article. It makes some good points about how to deal with this without placing too much emphasis on it.”
I glanced at the message sent by the dean to the associate dean. It was about Rob Jenkins’s “Toward a Rational Response to Plagiarism” (The Chronicle, August 14), with the article attached. I read it.
Mr. Jenkins argues that one should not stress out about plagiarism. “It comes down to this: Either you can be a teacher or you can be the plagiarism police. I choose to be a teacher.” Our dean loved the article and commented: “Interesting thoughts, worth pursuing.” Indeed, the dean liked the article so much he sent it to the entire faculty of the college. The message was loud and clear. Think twice before you bring these charges.
One day I got a different message from a student. He complained that one of his best friends had plagiarized all the courses in our M.B.A. program. Moreover, when he told a professor about it, he was ignored. His best friend, the pride and joy of his immigrant parents, had gotten an A again! Feeling ashamed for caving in to the associate dean, I stopped by our M.B.A. office and asked if I could get the student’s records. No, they said, that would be a Ferpa violation. I tried to talk to the associate dean, but he was not interested. He warned me that if I did not give up, there would be hell to pay. After all, the dean has chosen Mr. Jenkins’s solution: Don’t worry, be happy.
Dmitry Khanin
Assistant Professor of Management
Steven G. Mihaylo School of Business and Economics
California State University
Fullerton, Calif.