I ♥ the Interweb
There are times where I just sit dumbfounded and amazed at the power and resourcefulness of the Internet. I had two big assignments due yesterday. By cleverly googling certain key terms, I was able to find not only the exact same type of questions but the solutions to the exact problems I was trying to answer. I mean verbatim; there it was, on my screen, I just had to transcribe them onto my own paper.
Now, one can accuse the professors for their lack of ingenuity when it comes to creating problem sets but I think we need to realize that the professors themselves half the time don’t even know how to solve the problems they assign. However, they have a trusty old-worn down handbook where all the answers are instilled within. It’s much like the Fraternity’s Guide to Getting Laid which is often times depicted in such films as American Pie (1999) and Slackers (2002). I must have been in elementary school the first time I heard about the existence of this mythical book. The Book of All Questions and Answers I would call it. It was much discussed but only ever seen “by a friend of a friend.” It was a myth, a legend and folklore. However, today that book exists. And it’s called the Internet.
At first, I felt this was very unethical to find the exact answers to the questions online. However, after running it by a few people whom are much more ethical than I, the consensus was that this is public information and there is no hint of academic dishonesty. However, since this is my last quarter before I graduate and wanting to leave nothing to chance, I decided to dig around and find the academic dishonesty policies deployed at my university.
Although much of the policy simply discusses the basics of cheating (e.g. copying from someone during a test, stealing answer keys, having someone else take an exam for you, etc) — one section caught my eye:
Plagiarism is intellectual theft. It means use of the intellectual creations of another without proper attribution. Plagiarism may take two main forms, which are clearly related:
1. To steal or pass off as one’s own the ideas or words, images, or other creative works of another.
2. To use a creative production without crediting the source, even if only minimal information is available to identify it for citation.Credit must be given for every direct quotation, for paraphrasing or summarizing a work (in whole, or in part, in one’s own words), and for information which is not common knowledge.
So, is finding answers to the same questions from other universities and other professors plagiarism? Given that definition, aren’t the professors themselves facilitating academic dishonesty? Unless they actually own the copyrighted material where the originating problem sets are generated, it appears that they are. What are your thoughts on this hypothetical predicament?
Adieu. Navid.
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