As you can see from my bio, I’m the Director of Writing-Across-the-Curriculum at St. Norbert College, a small liberals arts college in Northeastern Wisconsin. I spend a lot of time, in other words, thinking not only about student writing in my classes, but talking with my colleagues in many disciplines about student writing in their classes. These conversations turn frequently to the issue of student plagiarism. My colleagues are frustrated by how frequently their students copy and paste information from the internet without attribution. Many see plagiarism as a problem particular to the digital era. No one argues that plagiarism never happened before computers, but many professors argue that it never happened so often or with such abandon before the internet.
In her article on “Preventing Plagiarism” here at ProfHacker, Amy argued, “I’m convinced that a lot (certainly not all) of the plagiarism committed by undergraduates is less than fully intentional, and that much of it stems from poor information-management practices.” I tend to agree, but this can be a hard sell, particularly because instances of plagiarism do seem to be increasing, as is the number of students who think such practices aren’t serious problems. Given this reality, calls for more effective plagiarism detectors—such as Turnitin—sound loudly, while calls for better education and dialogue about citation in the digial age can sound merely idealistic.
When I saw Susan D. Blum’s book My Word!: Plagiarism and College Culture on our new books shelf in the library (I know—I first found it as a physical book on a physical shelf! This might be my last ProfHacker post), I hoped it might clarify some of these issues for me. For the most part, the book does offer valuable perspective to debates about technology, plagarism, and modern students. I won’t belabor this review with a summary of Blum’s argument, in part because you can find a brief overview of it in her Chronicle article, “Academic and Student Plagiarism: A Question of Education, Not Ethics.” Instead, I want to highlight a few of the book’s most valuable contributions to this discussion.
First, and I think most importantly, Blum grounds her claims in evidence from modern college students. Blum is an anthropologist, and she approaches her central question as an anthropologist would, by interviewing several hundred undergraduates about how they understand issues such as intellectual property and citation, as well as about their research and writing practices. As a result, the book doesn’t just get at what modern college students do, it grapples also with why they cite (or don’t cite) and even what citation means to them.
This leads to several interesting spins on the question of plagiarism. Blum challenges the notion that academics have a perfectly clear and consistent idea of what constitutes plagiarism. When, for example, does erudite allusion end and uncited borrowing begin? If such lines are unclear even to academics, she argues, how can we expect students—new inductees into the discourse of academia—to understand where they fall, especially if we provide no guidance other than “Cite your sources.”
Blum also describes an intellectual disconnect that modern students face when confronted with issues of intellectual property. Though “digital native” is a vexed term (and not one that Blum uses), Blum argues that modern students have grown up in a culture that prizes online sharing of texts, videos, pictures, and the like. She also describes a youth culture that delights in quotations—as markers of taste, group identity, even, paradoxically, individuality. For these students, Blum argues, the idea of the footnote is antiquated, and its value not immediately apparent. Again, were the book about “kids these days,” her argument might not hold up. Grounded as it is in the words of undergraduates, however, Blum’s argument convinces more often than not.
Blum describes a spectrum of behaviors that currently all fall under the heading “plagiarism.” Some of these behaviors are morally wrong—outright cheating and/or intellectual theft. These behaviors, however, are much less common that those that are morally more complex—inadvertent copying, missed citations, etc. Blum makes a convincing case, in line with Amy’s thoughts here at ProfHacker, that most student plagiarism is “less than fully intentional.”
Unfortunately, Blum offers few solutions to the dilemma she describes so well. Her conclusion—”Conclusion: What Is to Be Done?”—makes a series of suggestions for greater dialogue and transparency about intellectual property issues on campus. There is, as she rightly points out, no “magic bullet” that will solve a problem embedded in cultural changes. I doubt, however, that Blum’s suggestions would offer much succor to the professor distraut about how to respond to plagiarism in his or her classes.
Blum’s insights also might not surprise many ProfHacker readers, who think about these issues regularly. However, Blum’s book could jumpstart productive conversations about plagiarism in wider campus communities, and give Profs. Hacker solid evidence to back up their hunches about why students plagiarize. I’m hoping to use Blum’s argument as starting points for a Writing-Across-the-Curriculum seminar on student plagiarism this spring. For anyone wrestling with this issue (or helping others wrestle with it), My Word! offers a valuable introduction to broader thinking on the topic. Blum’s argument, if taken seriously, might help programs avoid unproductive, binary thinking about plagiarism, student ethics, and the effects of technology on student research and writing.
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34 Responses to A Culture of Sharing: Susan Blum’s My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture
rescomp - October 21, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Forgive my for being cranky, but I am really tired of people making excuses for other people’s bad behavior. Blum take a look at plagiarism and comes up with so many gray areas that, it would be argued, plagiarism is not the fault of the poor uninformed plagiarist, but society’s awful demand that people act ethically. These relativist arguments are tiresome. They enable, in fact encourage, bad behavior. Plagiarism is theft, plain and simple. Yes, it can be done willingly and recklessly. Yes, it can be done because a person is a sloppy note-taker. Yes, it can be done by someone who effectively paraphrases sections from another person’s work. The bottom line is that the gray areas are much narrower than Blum or the author of this article would have us believe. We all need to be accountable for our actions, and we need to hold our students and colleagues accountable when they steal others’ ideas and word and, hence, commit plagiarism.
philosophy - October 21, 2010 at 4:12 pm
One thing to do, or at least try. It would take a bit of effort. After some discussion, etc., about plagiarism, hand out in hardcopy, or maybe display onscreen, some example paragraphs, best taken or modified a bit (with permission) from student papers, and have students, maybe in groups, judge them for plagiarism, proper documentation, etc. Then go over each example with the whole class.
The permission issue. In my syllabus there’s this: “Because students can learn a lot from the work of other students, we hope that you will not object to our using your written work with your name removed for illustrative purposes in this or other classes . . . Should you want your work not to be viewed by other students, let us know, and we will definitely respect your wishes.”
jbarman - October 21, 2010 at 4:31 pm
A couple of observations culled over 35 years as an administrator and finance/investment/accounting instructor for three non-selective IHEs:
One factor that has contributed to increased plagiarism is a gradual erosion of writing ability among college students. Whether that is a result of shortened attention spans, lower K-12 standards (or expectations), a greater societal expectation that everyone should earn a degree, commoditization of degrees, or a combination of factors is arguable. However, my perception is that writing ability continues to decline.
That decline is accompanied by lower student confidence, leading to a greater reliance on what can be easily found elsewhere. It’s still plagiarism, and I think it will always partially be a function of writing ability.
Even when students realize that I am on the lookout for plagiarism (over and above increasingly-ignored warnings in the syllabus), the result is often a paper that is 75%+ written by others – but with correct attribution. When I finally get those students to write in their own words, the results are often so terrible that I spend more time on writing skills than on core learning objectives.
Perhaps the most distressing part of all this is that when I do get a superb paper, I immediately wonder if it is plagiarized.
ryancordell - October 21, 2010 at 10:48 pm
rescomp,
Neither Blum (nor myself) endorse plagiarism of the purposeful or inadvertent sort, nor would I recommend that we ignore the issue. My Word! doesn’t conclude that students will borrow and there’s nothing to be done about it—indeed, the book seeks to understand and begin a conversation about how to address a pressing problem in the modern academy.
The book calls academics to be accountable for our pedagogy, and not indict students when we fail to provide adequate instruction about issues of intellectual property and academic citation. Her brief message, which I heartily endorse, is that we do ourselves and our students a disservice when the sum of our discussion about plagiarism is “cite your sources.”
I teach literature, and our bread and butter often lies in unpacking webs of allusions, partial quotations, and inherited ideas between works. Were authors to ship their books fully cited, a great deal of intellectual interest would be sapped from them. Literary works aren’t academic works, of course, but one of Blum’s points is that there is a strange irony when a teacher spends one class period describing Thoreau’s many intellectual debts to Emerson–most of which are uncited, at least directly–and then insists that those same students cite Thoreau slavishly as they compose their papers about him (Blum doesn’t mention Thoreau and Emerson specifically–that’s my comparison).
To recognize this and discuss it doesn’t lead to the conclusion: “therefore you shouldn’t worry about citing your sources. Steal away.” It leads instead to a discussion of why there are so few footnotes in Walden when I require so many in their 5 page interpretations of Walden. It leads to a rich discussion about modes of writing, academic discourse, intellectual property, and, in today’s academy, technology.
We must adapt our pedagogy to meet the needs that our students bring to our colleges and universities. For students who come from a culture of easy sharing, we might have to think harder about our own standards of quotation and citation, and work harder to explain when, where, and why rigorous citation is necessary–and how to do it right.
henr1055 - November 11, 2011 at 4:59 pm
At a private university employees – staff and administration have 30 day notice and this is it. You report something and it gets mimimized and you are concerned and go to police or to a higher level of administration and you are toast because you have exposed your immediate superior for not taking action. Remember Mai Lai? The helocopter pilot who landed between Calley’s murders and the old people, women and children lost his career in the Army. If people are going to be forthright then we better have a cadre of high powered attorneys ready to protect them thats all I can say.
david_brown - November 11, 2011 at 5:21 pm
From my experience, Penn State isn’t alone in having an insular, “keep your mouth shut” culture. The nature of universities is such that neither faculty nor many staff and low-level administrators are mobile. We can’t easily move if we speak up and the top brass wants to make our life difficult. This situation creates a palpable climate of fear.
juris_prudence - November 11, 2011 at 5:24 pm
This is an interesting and thoughtful article, but it overlooks one very significant point. Why did Penn State officials have so much “loyalty” to the university and/or the football program that they were blind to the consequences of their conduct? That happened, in part, because the fanatical loyalty of Penn State alumni led them to inflate the university’s worth as an institution.
In a very real sense, Penn State’s alumni helped created the culture in which this tragedy happened, and they bear a small but very real share of the responsibility.
bfrank1 - November 11, 2011 at 5:30 pm
As I said in an earlier post, I think this is even more directly connected to the child-sex abuse scandals of the Catholic Church. Paterno in particular had a long lifetime to become infected with the church’s particular hypocrisy on this matter, and, in feedback fashion, he exemplifies why the church’s sad excuses about the excesses of the ’60′s are just icing on the poisoned and immoral cake they are trying to serve up to rationalize their official de facto sanction of abuses of power. It is time to take action to undo more than a century of this nonsense, and make it clear once and for all to the officials of the Catholic Church that they will be held personally and legally responsible for the actions of their ‘employees’ who are in positions of power over children, in this country and abroad. This will, by example, force good Catholics everywhere to think twice about what they have taken up by their association with the Catholic hierarchy, and perhaps reassess their own morality and spirituality in the process. By their works ye shall know them.
greeneyeshade - November 11, 2011 at 5:45 pm
Baloney. This kind of guilt by association–i.e. that Paterno is Catholic and therefore his actions reflect the values of those who perpetrated abuse in the Church–is very thinly disguised bigotry. What about the overwhelming majority of priests and lay Catholics who are the greatest critics of what happened in the RCC?
cwinton - November 11, 2011 at 6:12 pm
This rings true. It is evident that Paterno at least suspected Sandusky was a bad egg because he got rid of him after the 1998 incident. No one seems to have determined to what extent he was complicit in the decision to allow Sandusky to still have the run of the athletic facilities. One can only assume that absent a criminal finding, those in charge, which included Paterno, while willing to force Sandusky’s resignation in 1999, gave him the benefit of the doubt. The mystery, and Paterno cannot escape this one, is why he ducked when the 2002 incident (as reported to him by McCleary) should have turned any suspicions he held into confirmation. Instead he passed the buck, precisely in the kind of manner Tenbrunsel describes. As the story went up the line it was increasingly laundered, as is evident from how Paterno, then his superiors, chose to describe the incident, presumably for their own self-interest in seeking to deflect any blame that might accrue to themselves. McCleary likewise protected his own self-interest in that his misplaced loyalty in letting it go after reporting the incident to Paterno may well have been a factor (aka reward) for obtaining his current position on the PSU athletic staff.
cmwolff - November 11, 2011 at 6:25 pm
Can we now
end the whole business of “branding” any educational institution? The
amount of money spent hiring expensive consultants to do marketing and
advertising to promote the reputation of a school does nothing but put a
financial drain on already scare educational budgets and creates a
culture of secretiveness and insulation, all to protect the “brand”. The
amount of money sports brings in adds to the corruption. This creates
incidents such as the one at Penn State to be swept under the rug, only
to come to light and truly damage an institution’s reputation.
We should care more about our reputations than our brands. We have
cheapened ourselves by becoming mere products, enamored with the price
that sports can fetch for us, usually at the expense of academics. I
thought educational institutions were better than that. How many other
scandals don’t we know about elsewhere because the need to protect the
brand is more important than doing the right thing?
disillusioned_prof - November 11, 2011 at 10:00 pm
Fascinating article on what sounds like an intriguing book. This is exactly the kind of reflection we need to have on the larger issues raised by the sordid events at Penn State… and, I might add, many other campuses where the blind spots and cover-ups of similar behaviors have simply been more successful.
darccity - November 11, 2011 at 10:42 pm
College sports virtually assures such behavior. Team sports are all about circling the wagons and covering for everyone. Teams and athletic organizations that let egos and self interest dominate are sure to fail. Loyalty breeds team success on the field. Yet the greatest sin to the NCAA is lying to them. This sports cartel of arbitrary or self-interest regulations imposes exactly the opposite culture on the college programs it oversees. Now throw in real crimes (as opposed to NCAA violations) — rape, murder, pedophilia — to the mix. Athletic programs are far more afraid of the NCAA than they are of the police or university. Only the NCAA can impose a “death sentence,” or reduce scholarships and bowl appearances. Is it surprising that athletic programs will devote its monitoring resources to prevent ghetto players from receiving a few bucks or talking to an agent while ignoring criminal conduct?
Chris Syme - November 12, 2011 at 8:06 am
Boy, that’s a pretty unrealistic, and maybe bitter, reach. Evil is a universal value and you don’t need to be a member of the Catholic church to indulge. Maybe he was a scout master, or a member of the YMCA. Let’s not forget anybody.
corwinamber - November 12, 2011 at 9:25 am
I have read their book and find it useful in my MBA law and ethics class. A related book that can contribute to the analysis of this case is Hoyk & Hershey, The Ethical Executive, which goes through 45 “behavioral traps” that lead people to engage in unethical conduct. Obedience to authority is one example (the Milgram Experiment example) and certainly fear of losing ones job appears to be a factor here. I also think that the excessive belief that university life revolves around football rather than, say, education, is a factor here. Herd mentality and cooking up courses that only exist to enable football players to pass them (“rocks for jocks” in the old Matt Groening cartoon) is per se unethical. Once you have an entire university culture that is unethical, and faculty concerns about loss of teaching positions subordinated to outsized coach compensation, you ensure that awful behaviors like this will be tolerated. More to come, no doubt. Will we do anything about it?
darccity - November 12, 2011 at 10:51 am
Group ethics replaces individual conscience and morality. That’s why most professions adopt and patrol their codes of ethics that amount to thinly disguised self-interest. Doctors, lawyers, realtors, journalists all hide behind these codes. Violating a code can strip you of your license or certification, depriving you of your livelihood and status. Colleges and the NCAA have analogous codes of conduct. Laws and common decency become secondary within those sanctuaries, not unlike the Catholic Church.
rurbane - November 12, 2011 at 11:44 am
What is the difference (really …) between willful ignorance and “motivational” or “indirect” blindness?
An absence of character, failure of integrity, fear of discovery, and intensity of cover-up all amount to the same thing – a lack of care; the banality of evil.
It may be more spectacular when it’s systemic, but it’s basically the same dynamic – you witness something unacceptable in ANY terms, and you do NOTHING to intervene (except perfect an appearance of having done something, of having actually cared).
Carole Eagle Luby - November 12, 2011 at 12:03 pm
“So what’s the solution?” Mr. Bartlett asks. Perhaps it is seeing this problem couched in terms of heirarchical power relations where the assumption of subordination of individuals is normal and expected. Consider the meaning of the phrase “letting employees know that the organization wants…” The assumption is that employees would not ordinarily know what is desirable for an organizational good. They have to be told.
Could the solution be more readily apparent if members of organizations were psychologically empowered? Where openness to organizational learning was a genuine reality?
And where the myth of leadership was debunked so that special power and privilege was not accorded to some individuals at the expense of others who must fear consequences of reprisal if wrongdoing is exposed? Consider the Emperor’s new clothes…
rod2312 - November 12, 2011 at 5:10 pm
I don’t know if every instance of ethical breeches leading to coverups can be evaluated in the same terms. Certainly the Penn State case harks of the Catholic clergy abuse. But in the Catholic clergy abuse you are talking about thousands of perpetrators and thousands of victims with at least hundreds of people who knew and who were in contact with people who knew. One would think that a collective like that would be more protective of victims than a few individuals knowing about one particular perp. In the situation of the Church you have higher ups who knew about more than one perp. That harks more of conspiracy to cover up the abuse versus a general attitude that places school athletics above human rights. The question for the Penn State situation is then how pervasive is this in college sports overall and what exactly does the cover up system reflect. This is not the first case of course, though it is the most gruesome since it involves several minors.
I knew of some ethical breeches once at a place where I worked before I went back to school. In many ways it was minor compared to the rape of children, but was still incorrect nonetheless. I did everything I could short of actual whistleblowing to the FDA - I informed colleagues of the problem and directly confronted both PIs listed on the study (it was an issue on a protocol). The result should have been a minor change to the study to ensure the safety of the patients enrolled, but instead the result was arguments with people who were too arrogant or thought that I was out of place in pointing out the problem. The saddest part? I was the ONLY person to bring up the issue – everyone else involved in the study should have noticed the problem. And worse, I’m not “unnaturally” ethical – I’m just a regular person. Why did they say or do nothing? I don’t want to reduce that to philosophy – I don’t know that the same forces are at work every time someone watches something bad happen – it’s not always for the same reason and the same people don’t react the same way every time. But at the point where there is “backup” in the form of support from others who agree that there is a problem, I have to say it is much easier to come forward. When one is the only person aware of the problem then as a whistleblower you end up being a victim too.
The other problem might just be the lack of concern for human rights that is pervasive. Victims get blamed for the crimes that fall on them - really just an extension of predators who psychologically manipulate their victims into taking blame for their victimization. After all, this is a country where (at least in the city I’m stuck in) people honk their horn viciously at a car that is obvious broken down while people try to get it off the road. I bet those horn honkers are incapable of harming a child the way that it was done at Penn State, but in some ways I see that as an extension of the kinds of attitudes that allow for those kind of crimes to occur and for those who know to turn their faces. Just my opinion.
disillusioned_prof - November 13, 2011 at 9:10 am
I wish I could believe that the utopia you sketch could come about.
I wish I could have hope that our institutions of higher learning in particular could practice the principles, legacy of the Enlightenment, that they preach.
I wish I could have faith that the organizational structures within which classrooms are embedded could be consistent in reflecting and reinforcing the values that we try to impart to a new generation in those classrooms.
Ah, such stuff as dreams are made of…..
Gregory_Sadler - November 13, 2011 at 1:14 pm
Yep, the “Catholic Church abuse scandal” is the easy, almost thoughtless association that never seems to get old. Whether its just straight-out bigotry or ignorance is tough to tell in individual cases. Here’s two things that tend to get overlooked, which help place matters in perspective:
First, various Catholic dioceses had different patterns, policies, and thus outcomes — Boston being one of the worst, and Cardinal Law being treated — rightly — as a pariah by his fellow bishops once his gross mismanagement came to light.
Second, by best estimates, the proportion of abusive Catholic priests was roughly similar to those of other clergy — and those of clergy roughly similar to those of teachers, police, medical personel, etc. — in short, all those occupational groups that had considerable unsupervised contact with children.
charlie1112 - November 13, 2011 at 6:45 pm
I am amazed at how many people keep comparing this situation to that
which occurred within the Catholic Church. I do not see it as
analogous. I see it as more evidence of Catholic bashing, especially
since Joe Paterno and his family wanted to establish a Catholic center
at Penn State. Judge Paterno and the others as individuals, not based
on their religious beliefs.
bfrank1 - November 14, 2011 at 11:15 am
Yeah, I see how good a job that did cleaning house at the vatican. Keep that up.
bfrank1 - November 14, 2011 at 11:18 am
The Church of Rome purports to be a sovereign entity, entitled to the freedoms and perquisites of a nation state, like the ability to whisk lawbreakers out of the country to perpetrate their bad deeds elsewhere. They are above the law, and they should not be.
bfrank1 - November 14, 2011 at 11:28 am
Oh, and for what it is worth, I grew up in the Catholic Church and spent 9 years in a catholic school. I have seen plenty of hanky-panky, but the issue is less the human failings of individuals than the systematic lack of institutional accountability, and the corruption of moral leadership that lack of accountability entails.
Antsy Kuhnwisse - November 14, 2011 at 11:33 am
It’s analogous not because of the religious affiliation of any of the individuals involved in this scandal, but because of the similarity of the issues of loyalty and belonging — the way concern over harming one’s institution and its reputation trumps the concern for individuals that may be harmed by people in your institution.
meanneighborlady - November 14, 2011 at 1:48 pm
While the case against Penn State is very specific, the culture of protecting the institutional name and hiding wrong doing is part of the culture of higher education in this country. Rather than standing up and saying “we will not tolerate X” people invest a lot of time in turning away and pretending they did not see and do not know of the wrong-doing. There is the inevitable amount of back-peddling or outright denial of what is known to be true. Spanier made that gamble as would dozens of other university presidents and vice presidents about any number of cases of wrong-doing.
While I do happen to agree that the stakes around Big 10 football skew rational thought, we are fooling ourselves if we think that the only horrible decisions occur around the deified college sports arena. When reputations are at stake, the unflattering truth is that a lot of leaders first thought is not about the crime, or the victims, but instead “how can we make this go away?” The person doing the telling has to be prepared for the consequences. The choice seems easier when there are innocent victims, but apparently not.
Luckily in most states (PA is an exception) individuals who witness child sexual abuse or abuse in general have no choice but to report what they have seen to the police.
bisscom - November 14, 2011 at 5:11 pm
If “money is speech,” why can it buy so much silence?
If “corporations are people,” why are they not responsible for their actions?
If higher education is for learning, why does it seem slow to learn?
So many questions, so few answers.
Oh wait, there is an answer. The balance of power between public and private interests must be restored! If this sounds too simplistic I suggest researching the calculated and systematic takeover of Higher Ed by corporate interests. This is not only in sports, but also housing, food service, and especially research. Warning – the classroom is the next target!
Guest - November 14, 2011 at 5:40 pm
I agree with you 100%. And we only have to scroll up to this very article to see what you mean — this writer conveniently links the Sandusky case to the Catholic church while not saying anything about specific decisions by the gay male political lobby which have resulted in the sexualization of children. We see what we want to see, interpret things as they suit our agenda, get pious against easy targets, and become blind when the issue strikes at what we hold dear. Gays completely ignored and silenced people who were worried about sexual abuse between men in the military, in public schools, and by the Duke University dean who whored out his adopted black son on the Internet — because it was part of their agenda to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, teachers’ unions are their allies, and it would look bad for gay marriage to draw attention to a horrible case of child abuse by a progressive gay dean.
I am probably not above this problem. But the least we can do is break silences and overturn the taboos against pointing out where abuse is going to happen. Here’s my take on the role of well-meaning but misguided gay activism in this:
http://criticalnewsscan.blogspot.com/2011/11/what-does-penn-state-rape-scandal-have.html
ED101 - November 15, 2011 at 3:11 pm
My research on instructors and administrators mirrored this finding. Loyalty measures slide negative when questions are asked. What is good for the institution always is the measure instead of what is the moral or right thing.
swish - November 15, 2011 at 5:54 pm
I believe what they’re pushing is acceptance of young people who already identify themselves as gay. Doesn’t mean that anyone should identify their sexual preference or gender orientation until they’re good and ready. (If anyone is pushing young people to do that, it’s the rabidly straight/homophobic community.)
12080243 - November 15, 2011 at 11:35 pm
When reporting a research article about petty corruption at the University of Southern Mississippi, I said, “If you believe that ethics is developed over one’s entire life, there is no reason to think that only our students’ ethical development occurs over their careers. The same is true of deans and faculty. And deans and faculty [and most certainly provosts and presidents] may be most in need of help in keeping an ethical focus because of their positions of power. Nevertheless, a hope, but not a panacea, is that senior faculty should be key to the ethical success of a business college because they have experience and the protection of tenure to speak to power. Quite frankly, why else have tenure if faculty fails to put it to good use?” (I tempered this last comment with a sorry reality: ”Faculty timidity, even tenured faculty, is well known. See, for example, William’s and Ceci’s report that ‘[o]ur survey leads us to conclude that tenure is not living up to its original promise: It does not liberate professors to exercise the freedoms of speech, writing, and action. The muzzling effect of the current system of promotion in higher education — in which even tenured associate professors refrain from exercising academic freedom for fear of derailing their chances for promotion to full professor — must be weighed against tenure’s virtues …’ “)
The petty corruptions at USM lulled and encouraged some faculty, students, and administrators to accept and be silent in the face of other corruptions, petty and serious. We learn our “ethics” and practice it.
If you believe that individuals or institutions will suddently act ethically on issues of major importance, like child abuse, when their daily practice with minor misconduct is encouraged, promoted, or ignored, you and your institution are mistaken and destined to live Penn State’s ethics.
The title of the research report, by Chauncey M. DePree, Jr., is “Daily Practice: Ethics In Leadership.
slowbadhands - November 17, 2011 at 9:43 am
Whatever he comments on, R.O.P. Lopez inevitably insinuates–or sometimes says outright–that it’s the fault of “gay activists.”
This ostensibly Christian conservative, married, bisexual (presumably practicing) father of a daughter is–on the basis of his many posted comments and on his own blog–conflicted with a capital “C.” I really wish R.O.P. Lopez would take a deep breath, see a therapist, and work this stuff out before he comments.
Either that or just type the sentence, “It’s all the fault of gay activists,” and paste it in as his every comment on anything. It’d sure save him time, and us having to read his tortured reasoning every time out.
slowbadhands - November 17, 2011 at 9:54 am
Whatever he comments on, R.O.P. Lopez inevitably insinuates–or sometimes says outright–that it’s the fault of “gay activists.”
This ostensibly Christian conservative, married, bisexual (presumably
practicing) father of a daughter is–on the basis of his many posted
comments and on his own blog–conflicted with a capital “C.” I really
wish R.O.P. Lopez would take a deep breath, see a therapist, and work
this stuff out before he comments.
Either that or just type the sentence, “It’s all the fault of gay
activists,” and paste it in as his every comment on anything. It’d sure
save him time, and us having to read his tortured reasoning every time
out.