Aiding and Abetting Academic Dishonesty

By Madison Pangburn

I was extremely excited to sit down with another student from one of my favorite philosophy classes, Ethics and Identity. Students were writing personal statements and then analyzing how these stories reflected their moral identities. We sat down at the table and began reading his paper. To be completely honest, I almost cried reading this story. He told me the story of helping a young boy get off the streets of India and providing him with a good education with the support of his family. When I finished reading the narrative aloud, he looked at me and asked me if I liked it. I told him it was very moving.

Then, he informed me that he had made the entire story up.

I had no idea how to continue in this session. A million questions rushed through my head: Do I tell him he can’t write it? Do I work with him on the paper? Do I tell his professor? I sat there for a few moments and then asked him if there was any truth he could use to describe his ethical views. He told me that he felt he hadn’t had any life experiences that defined him ethically and he felt his only option was to make up a narrative. I had a gut reaction that what he was doing was wrong, but the situation was so unique I didn’t know what to do.

Making up a story is very different from plagiarism. These were not someone else’s ideas. This writer had managed to conjure up a vivid and emotional story himself. After the session, I hurried into the office of the director of the Writing Center and explained what had just happened and asked him for the answer to my problem. He guided me to a pile of books because he didn’t have the answer either.

This experience was unique because the writer had not taken someone else’s words, but had created an entirely false story. In A Slight Case of Plagiarism, tutor Pam Moody discusses a case of plagiarism from a disinterested writer who knowingly plagiarized a paragraph from his sister’s essay, but unknowingly plagiarized an introduction from another edition of the novel his sister had plagiarized. Although I could see similarities in the attitudes of the writers, my student had knowingly created an entire story that was false. He had not taken someone else’s words, but had mislead the reader in a false story of his own imagining.

When I ran out of academic research, I looked to my University’s Honor Statement. As I searched through the definitions of academic dishonesty under the subjects like cheating and plagiarism, I finally came across the bolded word: Fabrication. “Fabrication. Falsifying or inventing of any information or citation in an academic exercise.” There! I thought I had a clear answer. He had broken one of the rules and I could have treated this similarly to a situation of plagiarism. Then, I read the line right below it. “Facilitating Academic Dishonesty. Helping or attempting to help another to violate any provision of this code.” The writer was still in the wrong, but I was as well. I had aided and abetted in the breaking of the Honor Statement.

I had wanted the Writing Center to be a place this writer could bring his work and grow in his ability to create pieces of writing. I had wanted to create an inclusive writing center for him. Within the Writing Center, my allegiance is to the writer. When writers come in, they bring rough drafts. As advisors, we can guide them away from plagiarism and help them produce ethical writing. If they did plagiarize in the session, we shouldn’t report them because it is a rough draft and there is a chance to fix it. Although I feel that I owe the professor an explanation on my part for breaking the Honor Statement, my relationship with the writer comes first.

Recently I attended an event where the professor for the ethics class was speaking and the writer was also attending. I would be lying if I didn’t say I was uncomfortable. In fact, I even debated going up to the professor after his speech and talking to him, but I remained silent. I feel vaguely guilty, not for not telling the professor but for not being able to guide the writer more strongly away from fabrication.

By the end of the session we had not resolved the issue. All I had done was ask him if there was a truth he could tell in a paper. After I had stumbled for a minute on how to handle his paper, he asked me if it worked well grammatically. I told him it seemed to. Then, he was ready to be done with the session, so it ended. Hopefully, I will not face a situation like this again, but if I do, I believe I would like to explain to the writer that the University’s Honor Statement prohibits students from fabricating writing and then I would spend more time working on brainstorming with the student about something that could be used for a paper. I don’t want to leave the writer with no way forward. I don’t know what he turned in to his professor and that still bothers me today.

Works Cited

Moody, Pam. “Tutor’s Column: A Slight Case of Plagiarism.” Writing Lab Newsletter 17 (1993): 9-11.

 

madison_picMadison Pangburn is a sophomore at Wittenberg University majoring in Political Science and Philosophy and minoring in Women’s studies. This is her first semester working in the Wittenberg Writing Center. Outside of the Writing Center she is the President of The Wittenberg Mock Trial Association and she participates in various other organizations on campus.

 

One thought on “Aiding and Abetting Academic Dishonesty

  1. What a great, thought-provoking article. I’m glad that The Dangling Modifier is alive and well!

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