March 29, 2005
Here's a sticky one
So this guy gets a random IM from someone claiming to be a college student. This person asks the guy to write a paper for them, and offers to pay for it. It needs to be done by midnight, 10AM at the latest. So what does the guy do? Why he blogs the proceedings, obviously.
The ethics of this are in question. Plagarism is wrong. Really wrong. Asking random people from the internet to do your homework is worse. But is it okay to expose someone for doing this? I'm tempted to say yes. The student runs the real risk of getting kicked out of school and being academically blacklisted for the rest of her life. Which sucks. But if she's willing to fake freshmen World Religions papers, then I don't want her to get a degree anyway. She doesn't deserve it. Does she deserve to be publically outed in this way? Maybe, maybe not, but she certainly asked for it, that's for sure.
The post has been picked up my MetaFilter, so the comment section runs several pages long, but there are a decent number of people taking her side of things. Can't say I have much sympathy. If you really are stupid enough to pull something like that, you don't deserve to have been admitted to college in the first place. Get back to the shallow end of the gene pool, where you belong.
Wow, I can't believe the freaking storm that's been created! 350+ comments at MetaFilter. And who KNOWS how many freaking comments at the original blogsite. This guy sure has won some publicity for sketch team! Have you seen them before? I see they're based in NYC.
Posted by: Ryan Musser at March 30, 2005 12:43 AMI am not endorsing this kind of behavior; however, I also cannot align myself with an attitude of elitism that suggests one who does this sort of thing is at the "shallow end of the gene pool." She's just a college freshman. It's certainly irresponsible and ethically wrong, but, "get back to the shallow end of the gene pool, where you belong," is a harsh and oddly disturbing statement.
Posted by: frk at March 30, 2005 04:01 PMIt was supposed to be. Odd, anyway. Sarcasm has always been one of my vices. I'll answer to the epithet "elitist" most of the time though, so unfortunately, if I hadn't been kidding it still wouldn't have been entirely out of character.
That aside, there are plenty of freshmen - I'd like to say most of them - who don't solicit random strangers on the Internet for college papers based solely on a random word in their profile. This is a particularly spectacular breed of stupidity that betrays a truly special level of incompetence.
Did this girl deserve what she got? Actually, I don't think she did. But she certainly asked for it, and though I don't have much sympathy with the guys who pulled this prank, I don't have any sympathy for her either. If she's expelled, well that sucks, but she deserves it. I would probably argue that the dean should show some clemency here, but he'd be perfectly within his rights to kick her out. Academic dishonesty may yet prove to be the disease that kills higher education, so if this kind of example is needed to stem the tide, so be it.
Posted by: ryan at March 30, 2005 04:10 PMProbably somewhat inconsequential, but she's a junior.
Posted by: Ryan Musser at April 1, 2005 01:23 AM