Plagiarism: Who Is To Blame?

Plagiarism: Who is to Blame? In “An Ethical Dilemma: Talking about Plagiarism and Academic Integrity in the Digital Age,” authors Ebony Elizabeth Thomas and Kelly Sassi reiterate that the digital age has had a tremendous effect on plagiarism. They make a point of bringing up one very important fact: the definition of plagiarism has changed. With that, they say, the academic community needs to reevaluate what they deem to be plagiarism and what they do not deem to be plagiarism; and they also need to make sure that students are aware of what both academic dishonesty and its consequences entail. While Thomas and Sassi are correct in stating that the definition of plagiarism has changed with the prevalence of the digital age, they are incorrect to argue that the Internet is the reason why it has risen to epidemic proportions. Plagiarism has been described as the “academic death penalty” (Purdy 48), which, in fact, is the perfect representation of its consequences. The reasoning behind this is that if someone plagiarizes, the results can vary from getting a zero on an assignment, to getting expelled from a higher learning facility — which, of course, is the death sentence for any pupil. Such harsh …show more content…
Regardless of this ease of access, current day students are certainly not the first ones to cheat on their schoolwork. Students have been plagiarising their assignments ever since homework has existed; the only difference is that since technology can now provide us with services where we can easily check for plagiarism, we are much more apt at catching it than we previously were. It can be argued that there have been epidemic levels of plagiarism for many years, and in fact the only change that has occurred is the increase in educator and administrator proficiency at catching