Ryan
9:16pm November 5th
Hey Jill I just wanted to tell you that I will not be going to the Board of Trustees meeting this Thursday at Carbondale. I have been following the Poshard Scandal since the beginning in September. I spoke out at the last Board of Trustees in Sept when they were in Evergreen Hall and at the Student Senate meeting and at the Faculty Senate Meeting Im just real tired of this BS and I want it to be over with. I encourage you to keep this momentum going when you go to the meeting with your friends but its over for me so I am glad to pass the Torch to you. Im so glad that there are other kids on this campus that care about this issue and even better that you and your friends are freshman so good luck this Thursday let me know how it goes you can call me on my cell to let me know what happens the # is 555-555-5555[number has been changed for Ryans privacy] also if you want to speak at the meeting call the Secretary asap and get your name and your friends on the list or they wont let you speak the # is 618-536-3357
Jill
Today at 4:44pm
I will not be going to Carbonadale either, I would love to still be able to go but I am very sick and have been dragging myself to class even though I feel totally rotten and miserable.. but this battle against plagiarism will not be over until a.)Poshard decides to be a man and take full responsibility for his actions and resign or b.)a revised policy about plagiarism is issued stating a student will not be failed or expelled upon first account of plagiarism. I believe this is setting a double standard, if Poshard can get away with plagiarism and is only told to correct his mistakes without facing any other consequences, students have this same right. Its not saying we as students have the right to plagiarize, just saying if the same situation arose with a student within the SIU system they should be able to have a 2nd chance before facing a harsher consequence. I do not believe anyone else from my class is still planning to go due to gas prices and some kids do not have cars with them here on campus. I just wish people would get smarter and get Poshard out of office or change the plagiarism policy to make things fair.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Friday, November 2, 2007
Something to Consider
Editorial in the Chicago Tribune from October 22, 2007
Plagiarism with an Asterisk
There is no firm consensus on the defining features of plagiarism."We're quoting here from a memo by R. Gerald Nelms, an associate professor of composition and rhetoric at Southern Illinois University who was asked for an opinion on whether SIU President Glenn Poshard plagiarized parts of his 1984 doctoral thesis.Nelms conducted his review at Poshard's request, while a separate faculty committee was assessing allegations, first aired by the student newspaper, the Daily Egyptian, that Poshard's dissertation contained at least 30 examples of text lifted from other sources.
Neither Nelms nor the committee found much to be concerned about. Acting on the committee's recommendation, SIU's board of trustees decided Poshard was guilty of "inadvertent plagiarism" and asked him to fix his footnotes and resubmit the paper. He'll keep his job, unless he yields to a faculty revolt: Last week, the faculty senate at SIU's Edwardsville campus voted 45-5 to ask Poshard to resign.We've been scratching our heads about this debate ever since we examined a copy of Poshard's thesis alongside the materials he's accused of copying. Though it's possible to chalk up any single infraction to carelessness instead of theft, there are too, too many of them -- and too little original material left, once the cribbed passages are subtracted. It walks like a duck, and it talks like a duck. It's a duck.But things are rarely so simple in academia. At SIU in particular, there's a great deal of confusion about what constitutes plagiarism. A professor at the Edwardsville campus who was fired for copying another instructor's teaching philosophy statement is suing SIU, saying he was unfairly singled out. His supporters have formed a truth squad to root out other plagiarists. Even before they trained their sights on Poshard, the president appointed a task force to develop a plagiarism policy.The oft-stated premise throughout this exercise has been that, gosh, nobody really knows what is or isn't plagiarism. That surely comes as a surprise to the legions of students worldwide who have been flunked for forgetting to footnote, accidentally or on purpose.Is there really no clear definition? Let's try Webster's New World Dictionary: Plagiarize: to take ideas, words, etc. from another and offer them as one's own. SIU's student code of conduct says plagiarism is "representing the work of another as one's own work."Even the task force Poshard appointed begins its working definition with a straightforward declaration: "Plagiarism is defined as presenting existing work as one's own." It should have stopped right there.By the time the task force was finished equivocating, though, the faculty committee reviewing Poshard's dissertation had plenty of wiggle room to declare the president guilty of "inadvertent plagiarism" -- carelessness, in other words. This is not to be confused with "uneducated plagiarism," which suggests the writer truly didn't know better, or "intentional plagiarism," which might as well be defined as stealing someone else's work and admitting it once you're caught. Anyone smart enough to get into college ought to be smart enough to exploit the "inadvertent" loophole.The task force draft policy and Nelms' memo are both loaded with excuses for the next SIU plagiarist to employ in a lawsuit against the university. If you think plagiarism is plagiarism is plagiarism, then you don't know about "cryptomnesia," which is what happens when a writer internalizes someone else's ideas so completely that she forgets she didn't think them up herself. Another writer, in striving to imitate the lingo of his subject matter, might lift too much verbatim wording, but that's not plagiarism -- it's "patchwriting."Nelms' memo -- and the work of the task force, of which he is a member -- argues that plagiarism isn't 100 percent black and white, and that zero tolerance isn't always the best policy."We must always balance our high standards for research and scholarly publication with our need to not impede the free exchange of ideas," Nelms wrote. "The world can withstand a few unprosecuted citation infractions."Yes, it probably can. But 30 of them, from a doctoral student -- who is now the university president? Absolutely not.
Plagiarism with an Asterisk
There is no firm consensus on the defining features of plagiarism."We're quoting here from a memo by R. Gerald Nelms, an associate professor of composition and rhetoric at Southern Illinois University who was asked for an opinion on whether SIU President Glenn Poshard plagiarized parts of his 1984 doctoral thesis.Nelms conducted his review at Poshard's request, while a separate faculty committee was assessing allegations, first aired by the student newspaper, the Daily Egyptian, that Poshard's dissertation contained at least 30 examples of text lifted from other sources.
Neither Nelms nor the committee found much to be concerned about. Acting on the committee's recommendation, SIU's board of trustees decided Poshard was guilty of "inadvertent plagiarism" and asked him to fix his footnotes and resubmit the paper. He'll keep his job, unless he yields to a faculty revolt: Last week, the faculty senate at SIU's Edwardsville campus voted 45-5 to ask Poshard to resign.We've been scratching our heads about this debate ever since we examined a copy of Poshard's thesis alongside the materials he's accused of copying. Though it's possible to chalk up any single infraction to carelessness instead of theft, there are too, too many of them -- and too little original material left, once the cribbed passages are subtracted. It walks like a duck, and it talks like a duck. It's a duck.But things are rarely so simple in academia. At SIU in particular, there's a great deal of confusion about what constitutes plagiarism. A professor at the Edwardsville campus who was fired for copying another instructor's teaching philosophy statement is suing SIU, saying he was unfairly singled out. His supporters have formed a truth squad to root out other plagiarists. Even before they trained their sights on Poshard, the president appointed a task force to develop a plagiarism policy.The oft-stated premise throughout this exercise has been that, gosh, nobody really knows what is or isn't plagiarism. That surely comes as a surprise to the legions of students worldwide who have been flunked for forgetting to footnote, accidentally or on purpose.Is there really no clear definition? Let's try Webster's New World Dictionary: Plagiarize: to take ideas, words, etc. from another and offer them as one's own. SIU's student code of conduct says plagiarism is "representing the work of another as one's own work."Even the task force Poshard appointed begins its working definition with a straightforward declaration: "Plagiarism is defined as presenting existing work as one's own." It should have stopped right there.By the time the task force was finished equivocating, though, the faculty committee reviewing Poshard's dissertation had plenty of wiggle room to declare the president guilty of "inadvertent plagiarism" -- carelessness, in other words. This is not to be confused with "uneducated plagiarism," which suggests the writer truly didn't know better, or "intentional plagiarism," which might as well be defined as stealing someone else's work and admitting it once you're caught. Anyone smart enough to get into college ought to be smart enough to exploit the "inadvertent" loophole.The task force draft policy and Nelms' memo are both loaded with excuses for the next SIU plagiarist to employ in a lawsuit against the university. If you think plagiarism is plagiarism is plagiarism, then you don't know about "cryptomnesia," which is what happens when a writer internalizes someone else's ideas so completely that she forgets she didn't think them up herself. Another writer, in striving to imitate the lingo of his subject matter, might lift too much verbatim wording, but that's not plagiarism -- it's "patchwriting."Nelms' memo -- and the work of the task force, of which he is a member -- argues that plagiarism isn't 100 percent black and white, and that zero tolerance isn't always the best policy."We must always balance our high standards for research and scholarly publication with our need to not impede the free exchange of ideas," Nelms wrote. "The world can withstand a few unprosecuted citation infractions."Yes, it probably can. But 30 of them, from a doctoral student -- who is now the university president? Absolutely not.
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