Shades of Gray

Martin Lockman

Cheating, plagiarizing, and other types of academic fraud are unquestionably and unfortunately a deeply ingrained part of the academic system. As a student, I can’t count the number of friends, acquaintances, and even complete strangers that have asked me for help on tests. (Actually, I can. The answer is three.)

Facetiousness aside, I agree with most of the suggestions in “Degrees of Cheating” and “Cheating in Academic Institutions” regarding methods to prevent cheating and create an atmosphere hostile to dishonesty. However, the definitions of plagiarism leave a large gray area - the accidental plagiarism of ideas.

The issue of peer-to-peer plagiarizing in the classroom is complicated by the simple fact that a shared intellectual environment will often result in similar thoughts. My sister and I share many political opinions, but I doubt anyone would claim that those beliefs arose from intentional intellectual mimicry. In any healthy intellectual environment there will be debate, discourse, and discussion, inevitably leading to an exchange of ideas.

Faced with this complication, the question then becomes “What can we, as students and educators, do to correct the problem?”. There is no simple answer, but in general I think that educators should encourage introspection in their pupils. Students should be taught to inspect their own thoughts and identify the main idealogical sources behind their arguments. As well as preventing accidental plagiarism, such self-examination would result in a well-rounded, reasonable, and self-aware student body, creating an environment hostile to plagiarism of every kind.