What is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is wrong, and if you do it you will be punished for your actions. Plagiarism is defined as the writer failing to credit the person that they got their information from. It is when someone writes a paper and copies another person's ideas. I think that is was wrong for Poshard to plagiarize because he is looked upon as a very professional individual and the president of Southern Illinois University. I think that he should resign because of the mistake that he made. This looks really bad on our university, and it will be our reputation from now on. This mistake is also going to haunt Poshard for the rest of his life. I don't understand how he can continue being the president of Southern Illinois University knowing what a big mistake he has made. I also do not understand why the university is letting Poshard get away with this mistake. There are many reasons why plagiarism is wrong, and Poshard is a good example of why it is a mistake.

Plagiarism is wrong because it is stealing. When someone plagiarizes, they are actually stealing the work of another. One type of plagiarism is when the writer finds someones paper and hands it in without even altering it. This is an example of laziness. Anyone who does this is not putting any effort into their paper at all. They are trying to find the easy way out. I believe using this type of plagiarism is completely intentional. Another type of plagiarism is when the author takes out exerts of another person's paper and puts them in their own work. I think that this is also intentional because it seems as though the person doing the plagiarizing is only trying to hide the fact that they are by only taking small paragraphs of another person's work. There are also types of plagiarism that are unintentional, but no matter what the case is, i think that all plagiarism is nothing but wrong.

When we hear about the president of a university plagiarizing, what does that mean for our school. Does it mean that it is correct for the students to plagiarize as well? No, this is not the case. We as student are not allowed to plagiarize, and if we did we would be kicked out of our university. On the other hand, we see the president of the university plagiarizing, and he still gets to keep his job. I think, and I am sure that many would agree with me, that there is something wrong with this situation.

I also do not understand how Poshard can say that his mistakes were unintentional. If he plagiarized that big of a document, he must have known of his mistake. Yet all we are doing about this is letting him fix his mistake. If we plagiarized, there would be no chance for us to fix our mistake.