I’ve long been fascinated with plagiarism, not so much as a problem of students, but as a preoccupation of certain professors. A fear of plagiarism– and an anxiety about grade inflation–seems to be symptomatic of our era, to use the old term from theory. Yet, as Rob Jenkins suggests, there’s really not much to worry about when it comes to plagiarism (“Toward a Rational Response to Plagiarism.”)
Urban myth at the University of Texas at Austin held that the fraternities had extensive collections of tests and papers, dating back decades, that the fraternity brothers could use for all sorts of mischief. I am not sure how much of that story is reality and how much is braggadocio, but…
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