For all of you claiming it's unfair to name this chump: he posted the damn thing with his name on it to the public internet. It's even more amusing because what he turned in was even more amateurish than the original. It's titled "Magna Carta's Affect on the Class Structure in London", even though it scarcely discusses the class structure in London; he misspells "dimensions" in the header, even with the aid of a computer; it's white on crimson with gratuitous visual aids; the typesetting changes erratically between double and single spaced; finally, what few sentences of original writing there is to stitch the thing together betrays not so much any actual thought so much as a vague assertion that the plagiarized paper was somehow about the topic he was assigned to write about. That it was even accepted as college level coursework is a stain on the reputation not just of Aaron Kerzner, but of Drs. Michael Swanson and Debra Mulligan (who, even put together, couldn't catch this clown) and Roger Williams University.
I think what you are doing is wrong. You shouldn't judge a person based on a single essay. Whatever you think about this particular essay, it's not deserving of this witchhunt.
Edit: He should have failed the class and received a stern talking to. There is a reason students are told not to quote from homework assignments of other students. The bachelor thesis or master thesis is the first proper scientific work any student does and if you plagarize in those an instant gameover is expected and deserved. But class homework? Certainly not.
Unbelievable. HN is inundated with threads talking about how useless a college degree is. And now we have people trying to defend what appears to be an incredibly pathetic act of plagiarism.
This isn't a case of someone copying and pasting and forgetting to put in quotes. This is an act of apparent extreme brain atrophy...he had to WORK to copy this moronic essay and to alter it in a superficial way from the original, all the while having no ability to tell parody from truth.
And you want to give this person a mulligan, as if this kind of act has no bearing on ehat you would consider his puported "real" work? Jesus, our society really is heading towards Idiocracy?
I agree: It’s a pathetic act of plagiarism and he should fail the class for it. If he didn’t, then his teachers made a serious mistake. If he could get away with it, then that’s pretty fucked up.
If this is a one time thing I see no reason not to forgive it after he has failed the class. And if it’s not a one time thing he would fail classes all the time and he wouldn’t be able to get a degree anyway. That’s assuming his teachers are competent.
If it was just a one time thing (caused by some traumatic event in his personal life) then sure, it was stupid but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. People do weird things when they're stressed, and sometimes those things are not just weird but bad.
But, now he's been caught cheating the once, maybe his other work needs to get a little bit more scrutiny? And maybe his tutors need a bit of support to catch and punish those who cheat? (I've read up-thread about the reasons why punishing for plagiarism is hard).
Some people are saying this essay is ridiculous. I know very little about history or the Magna Carta (I'm English; we don't care about that any more) so I have no idea if it's just bad, or really awful.
I really want to know how would it compare to honest papers from his colleagues, or to a great paper from someone at that level?
Although large sections of the Magna Carta have been repealed over the larger part of a millenia, it could be easily argued that the most important parts of the Magna Carta Act are the ones that are still in force. To be English and say that you don't care about the Magna Carta Act is almost tantamount to saying that you don't care about justice; maybe that is your point.
The Magna Carta was the point at which England ceased to be a despotism; an absolute monarchy. If the Magna Carta was to be fully repealed without legislation that was morally equivalent to replace it, the justice system in England, and probably the rest of the UK, would come to a halt.
I think you might be thinking of Habeas Corpus, which came about in part through common law and later in the form of the Habeas Corpus Act, some 400 years later than the Magna Carta Act.
The most important part of the Magna Carta Act is the guarantee that you will be tried by your peers. In civil cases at the moment in the UK there is a strong resistance to have secret evidence even though the current Justice Minister suggests that some evidence should be withheld from the accused! So common law cases, like Habeas Corpus actions, are still tried in front of your peers with open evidence. This may change if Ken Clarke, and according to some accounts lobbying from the US CIA, have their way.
In an ideal world plagiarists would always be caught and always be failed. No need for dire consequences. Just no rewards. In the real world, most plagiarists are never punished even if they are caught. If you're a TA or prof and you think you've been given plagiarized work, you need to have iron-clad proof before you can even think about breathing the 'P' word. You can easily wind up in as much trouble as the student if your proof isn't solid! You have very little to go on if the student is at least smart enough to paraphrase and avoid copy/pasting complete sentences. I've been given work I was 99% sure was plagiarized but, since I couldn't prove it, I couldn't do anything more than give it a low grade. Even when you can prove plagiarism has occurred, you're in for a lot of extra work. Usually it's easier to just talk to the student and tell them to withdraw from your class.
Since plagiarists are so hard to catch and punish, it's important to make examples of the ones who are caught. You can argue that this was "just class homework", but students who plagiarize homework are the same ones who hire ghost-writers to do a one-off term paper or thesis for them. If they can get by without doing the unimportant work, odds are they won't learn how to do the important work.
In this case, absolutely make this kid's life hell. It doesn't matter if he only cheated that one time or if that's how he got his entire degree. What's important is that other students see that plagiarism can come back to haunt them long after they've gotten their degrees. The student's profs ought to be made to sweat a little too. Missing or failing to punish plagiarism is entirely forgivable for the reasons I have stated above. Giving a passing grade to an obvious joke paper shows that they were negligent, and that's another matter entirely.
"Do you honestly believe you can judge the abilities and work ethic of this guy based on one essay?"
His abilities, no. His work ethic, and ethics in general, yes.
I've been the hard-working student who sat back and watched other kids buy their grades. It was truly disheartening. Students who cheat have zero respect for the work of their peers and deserve no respect in return.
If you don't understand why taking credit for work you have not done is wrong, then there's absolutely nothing more I can say to you.
I'm a pathetic bleeding heart, give the world a hug, make love not war, hippie tree hugger. Second chances that aren't earned are often wasted. It's often a cruelty, not a kindness, to be too easy on people who are going around fucking up. It frequently fails to foster real change and just helps people stay trapped.
Not saying one should always be a hardass. But defaulting to candyass isn't any better. It's got to be a judgment call.
Sounds to me like you are making a judgment call based on "it's a single essay" -- ie not a pattern of behavior. Frankly, I haven't read through the whole thing, so you may know more than I do about this specific case. I am not saying you are wrong in this instance. I am only suggesting that sweeping statements like "someone always deserves a second chance" should not go unquestioned.
I am slow to condemn people and fairly quick to forgive and quick to have compassion. But I am equally clear the minute you make it policy that "everyone always gets a second chance" and then advertise that fact, you grow your problems rather than shrinking them. My personal policy is "forgiveness is a gift but trust is earned". Somehow, people are quick to ID me as a forgiving sort and then promptly conclude I'm a doormat and they can shit all over me to their heart's content. Doormat? Maybe. Toilet? No thank you. Take your personal crap elsewhere. So I am very clear that sweeping, publicly advertised policies of "guaranteed second chance" cause more problems than they solve and tend to create situations where you have no choice but to be harder on people.
I agree with you, but disagree on the probability that this is a trivial instance in which the alleged culprit had a slip of duty. Re-read the original essay and then the new essay, and admire the work that had to have been invested in perpetrating this fraud.
You really think that could be the product of someone who has never plagiarized? In order to know how to game the cheating system (even poorly in this case), someone is likely to have, well, gamed the system.
I have empathy for the millions of students who get through university (or college) on the basis of their own abilities and hard work. These are the people who truly deserve it!
Witch hunts are characterized by the indiscriminate targeting of mass amounts of people who may not be guilty of anything wrong. This is a well deserved public shaming of named individuals.
Edit: totally out of line, my apologies. I'll just stick with saying that it's absurd to say (as implied above) that "class homework" isn't _really_ plagiarism.
The academic reaction should be failed class. I’m no native speaker. It really is this particular essay: We don’t have any evidence whatsoever for other plagiarized essays. Plagiarism in class homework is still plagiarism and pathetic. I never said otherwise.
I can’t believe I’m responding to you. I really can’t. Plagiarism is very disgusting but libel is, too.
Edit: And if you knew anything about me you would know that I would rather kill myself before typesetting anything I make like that.
When I was in high school, in an English class unit on journalism, I learned how the United Press caught a competing news organization (Hearst, as I recall) faking stories about the eastern front in World War I. The United Press reporters inserted details about a Russian government official named Nelotsky in their news stories, and watched the statements about Nelotsky get copied into Heart reports. There was just one problem with Hearst's journalistic procedure: there wasn't any such Russian official. The name "Nelotsky" came from reversing the spelling of the English word "stolen" and adding a Russian-looking "ky" ending.
Similarly, in the 1990s I noticed that a popular page on my personal website was being copied diligently by a college student for his personal website. I inserted a fake entry, based on the Greek word for "steal." I also put a link at that entry leading to the copyright notice page on my personal website, which has a distinctive filename unique to my site. When the student copied the page again, I was able to show the site administrator of his site that the student had plainly violated the site user agreement at that academic institution, which specifically required students not to plagiarize for their postings on the university site.
I didn't do a lot of public outing of that student--but you had better believe I still remember who he was. Teachers do well to teach students early and often to use their own noggins and to do their own writing, giving proper credit with correct citation form to sources they rely on. That's a better education than just letting students copy whatever they happen to see, without any analysis or thought at all.
Disclaimer: this is by no mean an endorsement of plagiarism in any of its forms.
It is one thing to catch someone plagiarizing an already fake essay. In my opinion though, exposing the cheater on the Internet by name is a punishment with far more severe consequences, that does not exactly fit the crime. Furthermore, we're not even assured that the student managed to get a passing grade for his version of the paper. If he did, maybe his teacher was also part of the problem.
This type of insensitive public lynching is so reminiscent of primary school. Fortunately, we grow up, develop a conscience and learn to regret some of the stupid acts we took, just because we could, that still reverberate in others in present days.
Before blowing your horn, please make sure that you're actually righting a wrong and are not causing more damage than you're repairing.
1. This alleged plagiarist’s college convicting him and publicizing the fact that he has been judged a plagiarist by due process, and:
2. A public accusation of plagiarism without process of any kind.
Public attention to a conviction is entirely different from public attention to an accusation. I’m with you if you want convictions by due process of plagiarism in college to be worthy of public attention. I am not in favour of accusations like this to be brandished so enthusiastically.
Certainly there is a continuum in such matters. Some accusations deserve to be kept out of the public eyes. But I don't think it's at all reasonable to imagine that we can, or should, live in a world where all of our shames are private and outed only through a laborious and secretive trial process.
The flaws of the "court of opinion" are many and worthy of concern, but they shouldn't be used as an excuse to hide any mention of blatant wrong-doing.
This essay isn't a public denouncement, it's merely presenting information. Is this a call to a lynching? "Aaron Kerzner of Boston, I blow my nose at you."
Yes, I agree with you again. The author of this post is just one person. I am not saying whether he should or shouldn’t name this person or link to a web page that appears to be an essay submitted as part of course work.
I am only speaking to what we should do in response, namely laugh uproariously at what appears to be a finely crafted piece of work, and use it as a catalysts for serious discussion about where our institutions of higher education are failing, and eschew debating this named person’s crimes or character. I think the essay would be just as thought-provoking if it left the person’s name out, it would still pose difficult and important questions:
How does such an essay get accepted?
If someone cheats and gets a degree, how do they prosper in life? Should there be a correlation between honest work on a degree and success? If not, why do we care about the degree?
How much of submitting an essay is composing the essay, and how much is mechanically rearranging existing ideas into a form that passes the professorial filter?
Is there a Turing Test going on here? If a professor can’t tell the original works apart from the plagiarized ones, is the test flawed, or is there really no distinction between the good and bad students?
I really like the post, it provides much grist for my Olde Mill, which lies just west of the Forest of Runnymede.
Indeed. For myself I prefer to be as open minded and forgiving of others as possible.
In this particular case the evidence seems rather damning, but there can always be plenty we aren't aware of, life is complicated. Personally I hope the accused can recover from this, though in general I think that if more college students realized that the shame of plagiarism could come back and bite them in the ass later in life that would probably be a good thing. College isn't play time. Nor should it be training wheels for adulthood.
> If someone cheats and gets a degree, how do they prosper in life?
You work in tech? You've seen countless idiots who blatantly lie to get jobs? You've seen them get promoted (so they can no longer do harm, or because they're really good at lying) while talented people have to stick around to fix the problems and carry the slack?
The beauty of this whole thing is that we're parsing due process responsibilities over an allegation of plagiarization of an essay on the Magna Carta, one of the founding moments in the history of due process.
In general I agree with you in regards to accusations vs. due process. But in a plagiarism case like this, it's hard to imagine a situation in which the accusation isn't true. If the essay was factual, the student could claim that the similarity between the essays was coincidental, but an essay which just happens to contain the same made-up facts as the original? That's proof enough for me.
In terms of discussion and priority, I find it hard to give a plagiarism case equal worth to any number of social and political controversies that grace the front page of HN, or any reputable news site for that matter.
Plagiarism is a matter for the plagiarist, their employer or their institution, and the person whose work was copied (at a stretch). It's not the responsibility of a vigilante or a mob to chase up and vilify someone who has made an entirely academic mistake, deliberately or not.
That it's proof enough for you, or me, or anyone in this thread, is irrelevant, unless you're one of the three aforementioned parties involved. What influence do you or I have on their academic conduct? That's the teacher's, tutor's, or lecturer's job.
And since I'm overlooking the fact that plagiarism in itself is a form of copyright infringement, I'll posit this: people are against SOPA because it bypasses due process and presumes guilt, as decided entirely by the self-certified victim.
How is a name-and-shame post like this, where the accused has had no opportunity to defend themselves or explain, any better? Were they even made aware of this beforehand?
Does anyone even know under what circumstances this happened either? Because an undergrad copying an article means absolutely nothing compared to a PhD doing the same.
How is it proof enough for you when you haven’t even heard what this wretched person has to say in their defence? Imagine you were a juror. Having heard the prosecution, would you tell the defence that they are wasting their breath calling their own witnesses?
I don’t know if you intended to scare me out of my skin, but I find that phrase chilling. Men have been lynched and hanged without trial given that very same sentiment.
Maybe you're right and I'm being a bit heavy-handed here. But if I painted a painting or released a song that showed up in someone else's portfolio, I wouldn't think twice about writing a blog post naming them. This doesn't really seem much different to me.
Accusing someone of plagiarism on the Internet and sentencing someone to death are such completely different scenarios that I have a hard time comparing the two.
edit: Upon further reflection, I do think that creating a honeypot essay for the sole purpose of shaming whoever copies it does seem rather malicious to me. However, I'm speaking more about the general case of publicly naming plagiarists than this particular witch-hunt.
I think we’re talking at cross purposes. I agree that a lynch mob is a heavy-handed comparison. I am trying to speak to what we do when we encounter the accusation, rather than whether the accusation should be made. I amy not be clear about that, and of course I may not be right.
And there's a difference between just accusing someone and linking to that person's public posting of the essay.
Process is always warranted in the case of punishment, but when someone makes the evidence of their wrongdoing public on the internet, it's silly to act like it's some kind of witch-hunt or lynching to point it out.
As programmers who have college degrees and have to pass FizzBuzz at job interviews, I think we all have a low opinion of how good college degrees are. As such, I think cheating on a college degree is similar to cheating on an exam when you're 13. C'mon, it's not that important that you got it fraudulently.
That could be the case with some people, but cheating is not that rife. The amount of rubbish programmers is massive. There are loads of students who don't cheat, and can't programme, but can get a CompSci degree.
As such, I think cheating on a college degree is similar to cheating on an exam when you're 13. C'mon, it's not that important that you got it fraudulently.
I'd say the main issue here is not that cheating on a college degree indicates a lack of competence. Rather, it indicates a lack of trustworthiness. This is just as serious of a shortcoming.
That's not especially true, actually. If something on the internet receives enough public attention it never dies, but lots of unnoticed and uncontroversial things just rot away quietly without anyone caring or being the wiser.
If the teacher didn't bother enough to read the paper and fail him, maybe he deserves the degree that he got.
Though someone stated that (not sure if this is fact) there is no statute of limitations on plagiarism, I feel like when it comes to college papers there should be.
Regardless of the fact that legally, college students are adults, they are still very prone to making mistakes. I see no reason to punish this one simply because he had the misfortune of copying a paper from an internet blogger.
"Regardless of the fact that legally, college students are adults, they are still very prone to making mistakes."
How is it that you define wholesale copying of someone else's work and passing it off as your own a "mistake"? You might as well call burglary a "mistake".
"I see no reason to punish this one simply because he had the misfortune of copying a paper from an internet blogger."
Holy chutzpah Batman! He chose of his own free will to copy someone's work rather than do the work himself (which is CLEARLY against the rules). But because the person he copied from is a blogger who has the means to expose his misdeeds, that's unfair?
Punching a hole in the wall is a mistake. Cheating on your wife is a mistake. Steering your car into a ditch, or into another car, is a mistake. People can do these things out of a sudden lapse of attention or outburst of emotion. Plagiarism isn't a mistake, it's premeditated and everyone knows not to do it.
I can't imagine the circumstances where that's true. In general, you'd have at least a few hours to decide and change your mind. In most cases it wouldn't happen at all unless you actively show your interest in that other person.
Maybe when you're drunk and a lady just throws herself at you out of nowhere? I don't know how I would call such a person though ... lucky bastard?
Humans are hard wired to eat, fuck, fight and flee; everything else takes deliberation. That said, you may be right and I'm not inclined to quibble this particular point :)
I'd like to see the teacher and school named too. If 1 plagiarist in a million is publicly ripped to shreds, it won't make a difference. If a school that possibly graduates thousands of plagiarists is discredited, more professors might actually do their jobs.
I don't think it's unethical to cheat if cheating becomes the norm. At some point, it becomes the fault of the system, not the participants, and the schools are higher up the food chain.
maybe announcing it to the rest of his class would be a justified "public outting." or announcing it in a campus publication. but this goes way, way beyond that.
i think it's kind of scary how quick people are nowadays to froth at the mouth and go crazy with the big-scale internet public shaming. one of the downsides of the rise of social-media, i guess
Plagiarism is sometimes punished with the academic death penalty. If you were a journalist who plagiarized in the last 10 years then your career is over.
i was just pointing out that there are different degrees of public outing. revoking his degree, getting him fired, and ruining his reputation with hsi colleagues is sufficient...no need to make him an international internet villain
Ever heard of benefit of the doubt, or extenuating circumstances?
Ok, we know the guy cheated on this paper.
There's a whole lot we don't know though:
who is this guy?
what led to the cheating?
was it his first offense?
is this paper really relevant to his professional career?
was he looking to profit from it?
Many more things we don't know and for which it's usually better to handle such things away from the Internet.
For one, I'm not excusing the crime, I'm merely stating that the punishment should fit. Secondly, you sound pretty adamant in your declaration. You know, having had my share of experience with the human element, I'm sometimes curious with the attitude of the morally superior people who can't see shades of gray and are so willing to cast the first stone. I wonder what we would uncover if we were to put their own lives under the magnifier.
>I wonder what we would uncover if we were to put their own lives under the magnifier.
I'm unclear as to what this has to do with the fact that plagiarism is always wrong, 100% of the time. Just because one may be guilty of doing something they know is wrong doesn't mean their declaration of that action being wrong is somehow invalid.
One of the important causes of doubt, even after we are sure that laughable plagiarism has occurred, is whether we've identified the right person. It seems that the moron thief posted this essay under his own name somewhere, which is quite unambiguous. But then we also see a LinkedIn account. Someone else will probably write down a Facebook account, someone else a Skype name, etc etc. Someone along the way will get it wrong, and if the hordes at reddit or 4chan happen to pick up on the story, they could easily do something damaging to the wrong person.
agreed...if you think the kid should be punished, contact the professor or the school. no need for the frenzy in the comments section, with people trying to make this a number-one search result
No need to apologize. Trail and conviction by mob is odious whether the mob is a collection of allegedly intelligent and educated hackers or whether it’s beer-guzzling trailer-trash.
The bottom line is, you have an accusation on the Internet without the benefit of an accused person facing their accusers, without a process for presenting and evaluating evidence in context, and without any kind of judge or referee in place to rule on any issues of admissibility or propriety.
We get together and lament how places like Fox news can distort the truth and present biased cases against people. And then when something comes along and plays to our prejudices, we whip out the torches and pitchforks, planning to ruin the accused plagiarizer and whatever professor may or may not have accepted this ridiculous essay.
Quite honestly, I find the thought of this person suffering in the future when they apply for a job somewhere entirely repugnant. Now, if there is some process and he is expelled from school or censured on his academic record, let him explain that to whomever asks. But the idea of having to defend himself against mob sentiment is a giant step backwards to frontier justice.
People fuss and fret over surrendering their liberties to the TSA. We should think about what part of civilized behaviour we voluntarily surrender when we act like this.
I was actually apologizing for the due process reference since it was a concept formed from the Magna Carta, and I wasn't necessarily adding to the discussion.
But I do fully agree he should have due process, for all we know he was punished already by his university (though I don't know why they would leave the essay posted online...)
"t is one thing to catch someone plagiarizing an already fake essay. In my opinion though, exposing the cheater on the Internet by name is a punishment with far more severe consequences, that does not exactly fit the crime."
While I agree with you that the punishment Paul Christophoro got from the internet is too severe for the crime being a bully (and bad at his job), please don't make a medical diagnosis on the basis of a reddit comment from someone else describing a phone call. Your profile says you are a medical doctor, you really should know better.
> In our conversations, he has compared himself to no less than Howard Stern and Charlie Sheen. He has proclaimed himself to be the biggest thing on the internet, and has repeatedly touted how much power he thinks he now has with the press. He told me tonight "if they fuck with me, I got all these websites all over me. Whatever I tell them to write, they write." He says that he has a TV interview with SPIKE TV next week. I look forward to him telling them what to do and what to edit into their coverage.
Tonight, he reiterated that in unmistakable, forceful terms.
> His abrupt swings in tone and mood were astoundingly rapid. He told me he would burn the company to the ground and destroy everyone associated with it, including me, he regretted to inform me. "I know you're just a guy doing a job and you don't know any better. I'm gonna ruin your life if I have to."
I shouldn't have used the affirmative, but it is highly probable. Megalomania and rapid mood swings are serious telltale signs.
Another possible cause for mania would be side effects of drugs. You can read in this interview[1] that he takes testosterone to correct a deficiency, it could also be the culprit.
I remember writing a "trojan horse" essay in secondary school, but in my case the target was my history teacher. I had noticed there's little correlation between the effort I put into my assignments and the grades I got--they were always good-ish. So one time I wrote an essay, not just with factual errors, but filled with blatant nonsense. This passed with a good grade too, so it was time to escalate the issue.
It reminds me of Neal Stephenson's Anathem where the Internet (called something else in the book) essentially became worthless because competing search engines polluted it with misinformation to screw with each others algorithms.
I doubt the universal optimality, but various works contain fictitious entries. Like trap streets or phantom settlements in maps, or ghosts in telephone books.
One might think that just b/c entrapment is forbidden by US law that honepots are not used. All the law means is that the evidence directly gathered via entrapment can't be used.
Unregulated things like Craigslist and Tor likely offer law enforcement and intelligence agencies more "honeypot value" than they "cost" in terms of petty illegal behavior.
This appears to be the guy's self-description on LinkedIn. He loves software-as-a-service:
Intense, energetic, and ambitious professional interested in staying as close to the bleeding edge as I can in the realm of SaaS, social, and mobile commerce.
Of course what follows is anecdotal, but my first dabble in teaching at a college level (which is something I very much enjoyed) was for a entry level class in Finance. About 60 students or so in a class.
Now, I might have been a lousy teacher, or some of my students could not have cared less about introductory Financial concepts, but what I witnessed between my students and my colleagues' made me very skeptical of any value a college degree has. This was simple math, simple concepts and even simpler recitation of various facts. But I suppose that can be excused, some people just don't jive with such things, but worse:
A large majority of students were numbingly apathetic and put forth 0 effort,
but still came crawling back after tests asking for extra credit or mulligans.
But of course, some students were wonderfully engaged as well.
So, in summary, I guess I wouldn't be surprised at a paper like that passing at university. Students turn that crap in all the time and they still somehow graduate.
You must understand that half of the students in an intro level class are there because a) They don't know what the hell they want to do so they picked a class. b) They have to fulfill some requirement.
In the case of a), this happens because colleges are idiots and think that taking whole classes are a good way of going about figuring out what you want to do with your college education. What actually happens is the student takes the class, notices that they don't like the subject, and is disinterested for the rest of a whole term, even though they are still graded and can not switch.
In the case of b), some bigwig university rector decided that x courses in subject y must be taken by students of major z. Z students of course blow the class off because they don't want to take it. Professors know this, and don't care much if Z students learn anything anyway. They want to focus on the students that are actually going to major in the subject of y. No one stands up to the rector and everyone takes the path of least friction.
Solution: Have some goddamn flexibility. Don't enforce a strict ordering when taking classes. Don't force students into a single required class as much as possible. Instead say "must take two of these 5 classes". Have your majors defined this way also: Eg. Computer Science is 1 intro, 3 theory, 2 low level, 2 software engineering and design, 1 social issues class and 2 major projects. You can spell out specific classes that MUST be taken afterwards. Have quarters instead of semesters so that classes "die fast" and students can focus more on fewer subjects. This ends up being very intensive but there are more breaks. Allow students to fail 3 times without penalty, so they can experiment with classes out of their comfort zone, like grad classes or classes from a different major altogether. Have freshman year multidisciplinary problem solving seminars so that students have some idea of how project work an research happens, and what subjects they are interested in.
My school did most of this for a very long time and the students loved it. They almost rioted when there was talk of changing this system.
RIght. Never require students to demonstrate they can learn something unfun or uninteresting. Because they will never have to do that in real life! How dare they make that part of getting a degree - why it makes a mockery of what a degree means! Which is, I guess, evidence of 4 years tenure in a dormitory?
It met the word count, has 10 references, and appears to be grammatically correct. In some ways it's actually a reasonably well-written article (the paragraphs are the right length, it uses linking phrases for structure, and it seems to have an adult vocabulary), so if you don't actually read it it looks pretty good.
It turns out actually reading is surprisingly going out of fashion. Perhaps not so surprisingly for grad students tasked with grading these by the hundred.
Assuming that it was all correct and coherent, it's just so shallow. How could that be a college-level essay? I'm thinking that's a high school effort, for sure.
Plagiarism & propaganda: the two evil anti-patterns of the written word. Those who don't understand the strengths, weaknesses and subtle tricks and traps of human language and communication are doomed to be victimized by those who do.
An interesting observation about this is that there's just enough "truth" in the essay to make it a somewhat believable source: like John was titled/surnamed Lackland, the Magna Carta was signed at Runnymede - assuming the Wikipedia article isn't lying.
But that is, of course, different than plagiarism.
I agree, it's really well done. It's enough like a real essay to withstand a semi-casual scan such as might be done by a student wanting to copy it, but contains enough absurdity to be blindingly obvious to anyone who reads through it thoroughly.
Any assignment that expects footnotes probably ought to have graders who scan the footnotes, and I find it particularly funny, in a grim and ghastly way, that no one tripped over the jests concentrated there. Bollock & Maidenhead _The Interminable History of English Law_ was mentioned in the original post. And _From Magna Carta ..._ (i.e., 1215) _... to Domesday Book_ (i.e., 1085)? Or D. Rumsfeld _Killing Will Make You Free_?
For all of you claiming it's unfair to name this chump: he posted the damn thing with his name on it to the public internet. It's even more amusing because what he turned in was even more amateurish than the original. It's titled "Magna Carta's Affect on the Class Structure in London", even though it scarcely discusses the class structure in London; he misspells "dimensions" in the header, even with the aid of a computer; it's white on crimson with gratuitous visual aids; the typesetting changes erratically between double and single spaced; finally, what few sentences of original writing there is to stitch the thing together betrays not so much any actual thought so much as a vague assertion that the plagiarized paper was somehow about the topic he was assigned to write about. That it was even accepted as college level coursework is a stain on the reputation not just of Aaron Kerzner, but of Drs. Michael Swanson and Debra Mulligan (who, even put together, couldn't catch this clown) and Roger Williams University.
By the way, this guy is in our industry: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/aaron-kerzner/1a/b96/3b0. And he majored in history.