A few years ago, one of my students disappeared a couple of weeks into the semester. She re-appeared near the end of semester, begging me to allow her to make up the work she missed. I relented. She submitted the essays and research paper a week before the final exam.
I didn’t have to read much to confirm my suspicion: She hadn’t written those essays or the paper. On the day of the final exam, I returned her work with red “F”s scrawled across them, along with the web addresses where I found “her” work.
“I didn’t plagiarize.”
“So why did I find these papers on the web?”
“I didn’t plagiarize them. My friend did it for me!”
This week’s “Sunday funny” reminded me of that episode. Just as my former student thought she was not violating the college’s academic integrity policy because she hadn’t done the plagiarism herself, a public official tried to save face by claiming that he was behaving more responsibly by riding his bicycle rather than driving after a night of drinking.
Ty Ross, a Fernandina Beach (Florida) City Manager, had been in his post for only two weeks when police found him lying beside his bike on a roadside.
Whether or not getting on two wheels instead of four is more responsible behavior after drinking, the officers decided he hadn’t committed a citeable offense and offered him a ride home, which he accepted.
If I recall correctly, my former student failed my class but the college didn’t expel her. That didn’t upset me. But I wonder whether she refined her sense of what is right or wrong—or whether Ross will.
Had he caused or suffered any harm, he would’ve been a candidate for a Darwin Award.
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