Students Plagiarize and Why They Should Be

¶ … Students Plagiarize and Why They Should Be Told About it

Plagiarism has been the reason why "scholars'" names have been ripped off from roll of honors. Protracted court battles have been litigated because of lack of academic integrity. What exactly drives a student into using information from a source without acknowledging the source of information? Students can sometimes be a funny lot. They procrastinate so much. There are instances when assignments are given out and due dates for submitting the assignments are clearly stipulate. A student would never plan with the time he has at his disposal really well buoyed with the accessibility of information in this era of digital age where a search word in Google search engine would give you access to copious amount of information. Such students would probably party until the last day when assignments are to be submitted. That is when they will pick their laptops and lift information from the internet word by word print it out and submit it to the lecturer for marking. In this age where software for detecting plagiarism is all over, such assignments cannot escape the scrutiny of a lecturer.

Away from copy-pasting, there are students who are lazy. They find it very difficult to re-word whatever information they have gleaned from a source. To them re-wording may as well mean changing location of words within a sentence. They find it very difficult to read from the source material and independently write about their understanding of the material.

Students also plagiarize because they were not adequately addressed to the ills of plagiarism at their formative stages in college. Such students may write their term papers and essays oblivious of the penalties that failure to acknowledge having used information from a given source attracts.

When I was admitted at my college, for reasons beyond my control, I failed to attend orientation session. I could also not attend the initial lectures where course outline and material were given out by respective lecturers. This did cost me. I later came to realize that this was when the lecturers stressed the need for academic honesty. This, I came to realize, was very important. A close friend of mine lost his studentship because of lifting information from a digital source into his term paper. When the lecturer realized this, the student was summoned by the department chair where he was grilled and later dismissed. This is when I came to realize how serious the issue with plagiarism could get. I have also seen respectable scholars struck out of the roll of those who graduated from certain universities for having submitted dissertations and research papers that were plagiarized. I would never wish for such a thing to happen to me.

Consequences of plagiarism

Plagiarism can have far reaching legal ramifications to a student. Copyright laws exist that protect original act of authors. Individuals who use copyrighted material without acknowledging that they used such material are likely to be prosecuted for violating copyright laws. Such individuals can be directed by courts upon conviction to pay monetary award depending on the perceived damages. They may also pay to make up for lost profits when the owner of the work has lost income or is incapable of using their work any longer (Fulwiler & Hayakawa, 2000). A person caught plagiarizing copyrighted material can also face criminal prosecution that attracts serving jail term, involvement in community service. A civil case can also be instituted against them fines not withstanding.

A student caught engaging plagiarism may be forced to redo the assignment. This may put a lot of pressure on a student especially when s/he has other responsibilities to attend to. The student can also fail the assignment. This will depend on the lecturers' discretion. The lecturer may also decide to reduce a student's grade in the course. A student can as well fail the plagiarized course with an XF grade. This shows that the course was failed due to academic dishonesty (Fulwiler & Hayakawa, 2000). A student can only graduate after removing the XF through remediation. Students caught engaging in plagiarism or any form of academic dishonesty may as well be taken through counseling sessions and remediation recommended for them. Chances are that one might also be dismissed from the university (Fulwiler & Hayakawa, 2000). Finally, a student's record can also be made to reflect that s/he committed an act of academic dishonesty.

Plagiarism has far-reaching implications some of which can be unbearable to a student. These consequences, especially the prosecution and dismissal bits have strengthened my resolve to always not engage in any form of academic dishonesty.