Heidelbergers Everywhere Fight Plagiarism

It must be in our DNA, or maybe just some resonant harmony in the pattern of Es in our name (hat tip to my man T!)....

The St. Paul Pioneer Press offers a reminder that plagiarism isn't just a pet peeve of this blog, but a real and serious problem, in school and elsewhere:

School officials say plagiarism is a serious issue, as more students contemplate taking shortcuts on assignments and the Internet puts a wealth of information at their fingertips.

"It's important because plagiarism is really stealing," said Celeste Heidelberger, dean of academics at St. Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights, an all-boys Catholic prep school. "Our goal is to teach students the responsibility of documenting, of what's right and wrong" [Bao Ong, "Schools Staying Vigilant in Fight Against Plagiarism," St. Paul Pioneer Press, 2008.01.05].

I've never met Celeste Heidelberger, but apparently Heidelberger really is the first name in fighting plagiarism!

Celeste Heidelberger's St. Thomas subscribes to turnitin.com, on online plagiarism checking service. It works the same way my own plagiarism searches work, scouring the Internet looking for text that matches the paper under investigation. Turnitin.com has the added advantage of collecting a database of student papers for comparison as well: each paper checked becomes part of the database.

Turnitin.com's service isn't without controversy: Four high school students filed suit against the company last April, claiming that the company violates students' copyright by using their writing to make a profit without obtaining student permission or compensating them. Interesting strategy: get more background at DontTurinitin.com, a website that appears to be created by students involved in the lawsuit. While they oppose their schools "arbitrary and inequitable" application of turnitin.com, even these students agree that plagiarism itself is bad:

Cheating and plagiarism should, of course, never be tolerated in any academic or workplace setting. McLean High School has in place a comprehensive honor code that is endorsed by students and faculty alike. The use of turnitin.com to augment the honor code on a voluntary basis or to assist the students in learning proper citation methodology might be acceptable [DontTurnitin.com home page, McLean, VA, 2007].

I am pleased to see the McLean kids still recognize the moral failing of plagiarizers. They likely are not among the thousands of students have no moral problem at all with submitting their papers to online essay mills that make a profit selling essays to other cheating kids.

Teachers fighting plagiarism aren't just up against a handful of kids furiously transcribing the encyclopedia or their big brothers' old term papers. Teachers now are up against unscrupulous, corrupting web fiends making money off kids' worst impulses. We Heidelbergers -- and everyone else -- need all the tools we can legally get to ward off that corruption and teacher our kids the right way to write.