Acephalous: Proudly Empowering Plagiarists and/or Making Dreams Come True Since 1949

A reader currently teaching "Ode on a Grecian Urn" emails:

Scott,

Hi!  I'm one of those "deep lurkers" who doesn't even respond to direct requests, but I had to send this to you.  Call me a voyeur if you will.  [Voyeur! — The Management]  For the past week I've been cribbing lectures notes from your discussion of Keats because I knew I was teaching it this Monday.  To make a long story short, at the University of [Anonymous Readers], we have to do these weekly writing assignments in introductory courses like the one I'm teaching.  This week mine was about Keats.  Imagine my surprise when I found these sentences in student's response:

Since it can't speak for itself, the speaker must impute meaning to the urn.  So any interpretation teeters on the critic's evaluation of his honesty.  In most criticism, this evaluation occurs covertly, by attributing the speaker's words to Keats or an analogue thereof.

They take plagiarism too seriously here, so I didn't want to report the poor kid, but he kept denying it.  I had the same sentences printed out in my notes and everything.  I wanted to show it to him and tell him "Look, I know where you got that from because it's where I got it from."  I didn't.  Eventually he said a friend of his sent some comments to him that he thought were so smart he kept them in his paper. 

He wanted to know whether acknowledging his friend's help in the next paper would get him off the hook.  I told him he would be fine so long as he admitted where he got those sentences from.  Finally he confessed that his fraternity brothers told him that if they use Google Blog Search to find ideas, no one will ever find out because they don't include those results on Google or Turnitin.com. 

Which means you're empowering plagiarists everywhere!  I love you, Scott, but you are now officially part of the problem.

With the permission of its author, I forwarded this to a friend of mine.  He said:

Admit it, you're like one of those porn stars who loves the thought of all those guys getting busy on their bad selves.  The only question is, what do you say when the camera stops rolling?  Do you turn the cameraman and complain that $400 isn't worth all the shit you have to put up with.

I have absolutely no idea what he's talking about.  Not that I'm changing the subject—even though I am and at twice the speed of type no less—but the nice young lady who sent the original email loved the thought of my publishing it (and my friend's response) here.  She said it would be "a dream come true" to appear on this site. 

Not only do I empower plagiarists, I now make dreams come true.  So if you have dreams that can be fulfilled by an appearance on this site, don't hesitate to write.  Unlike others who shall remain nameless, I'm still all about helping the helpless.  Only when I do it, I look way better in a bathtub ...

Comments

[Paul Decelles]

Of course Google can find blog entries! Putting
"Since it can't speak for itself, the speaker must impute meaning to the urn." in google's search window immediately brought up your blog.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Paul, some of these fraternity boys, they ain't too bright.

[i.m.butch]

ummm, wasn't the teacher plagiarizing, too. maybe they are part of the problem.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

The teacher wasn't plagiarizing but preparing. I do the same thing whenever I teach: scan the web for the common readings (and misreadings) -- if only so I can parry with students who'll do the same -- then hit JSTOR or Project Muse to round it. It's part of the teaching process, an acknowledgment that you, yourself, don't know everything there is to know about the interpretive history of a work.