Take her money and cut and paste a paper together from the internet that was so obviously plagiarised that she’d be guaranteed to get caught. And then, if I was able to get the information out of her, I’d report her to whatever her school was, and who knows, maybe even pump her for double money in exchange for not turning her in. Either way, I’d eventually be writing the story up in this blog, and sending her the link to it.
Is this harsh? Eh, I don’t think so. She got the syllabus saying she’d be kicked out of school for plagiarism, so she shouldn’t be surprised. Plus, I have a nice little English degree that I did all the work for myself, so I find it a little offensive that this girl for whom money is no object is buying papers like that. —Nate Kushner —Laura K. Pahl is a Plagiarist (A Week of Kindness)
Very painful to read. I can’t say I agree with Kushner’s approach, either, but then in my profession I have an obligation to correct and instruct, rather than publicize violations. Kushner could have accomplished what he says is his goal — teaching Pahl a lesson — simply by sending a private e-mail to the university. He didn’t need to publicize it in this manner. It’s hardly a secret at this point, so my link to the blog entry isn’t going to add much to Pahl’s troubles.
Just an update to my previous entry, today’s Googling of “Laura K. Pahl” got 734 hits with your blog as the 12th. By the way, Yahoo lists 13,200 hits and this blog is the 5th and 11th hit!
They changed the name on the site to, umm, protect her (hehehe)…although they mustn’t have realized that so many people would link back to the site.
I agree that it looks like a possible hoax. However, people say that they have found her name on the web, and that she is a Dean’s List student. On the other hand, though, this is a website of a sketch comedy group…
Part of me wishes it does turn out to have been a hoax. On the other hand, if students who are thinking of plagiarizing hear of this, it might make them think twice. But is that worth the damage this incident has caused to one young woman’s name?
Dr. Jerz,
I’ve just read through the entire “A Week of Kindness” site. It is still being updated constantly and is now even getting press coverage from Inside Higher Ed. Com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/03/31/plagiarize
It’s a fascinating story by itself but the speed that it spread is remarkable, even taking the author of the site, Nate Kushner by surprise. For instance, yesterday, “Laura K. Pahl” got 14 hits. Today there are 386! Tomorrow, who knows!?! If only there was just some way we could get this site that much publicity…
Wait a minute… the website has changed the student’s name from “Laura K. Pahl” to “Laura K. Krishna” (although the URL of the page still uses the “Pahl” name).
So this is looking a mite suspicious.
The site has some updates.
Hmm… that thought had occurred to me, but I jumped right on the bandwagon nevertheless. Maybe I’m an April Fool. (And maybe I’m in on it and and I’m just trying to see who else is clever enough to figure it out… yeah, that’s it. :)
I wonder if the whole thing isn’t a practical joke—after all, April 1 is fast approaching.