Plagiarism Among University Student

Alberta university dean of medicine apologizes stealing parts of speech

EDMONTON — The focus at convocation ceremonies shifted from pride to plagiarism Monday as the University of Alberta struggled to deal with a dean who admitted stealing part of his inspirational speech to future doctors.

While the school said it would use "due diligence" in the handling of Dr. Philip Baker's address to medical school graduates, students reacted with everything from resigned shrugs to outright indignation.

"I don't even care to see him here anymore," said Hart Stadnick, adjusting his cap and gown before receiving his masters degree in lab medicine.

"I think he should either step down or be removed and, if that doesn't happen, I think it looks bad on the university."

"If he violated the student code of conduct, then yeah, he should be fired and kicked out of the university," added engineering graduate Cam Breckon. "They're always harping on us to follow those rules."

Moments before she was to address Monday's graduating class, university president Indira Samarasekera simply said the matter will be handled fairly.

"The University of Alberta undertakes fair process and due diligence in all of its affairs, and that's what we're doing right now."

She issued a news release a few hours later saying only that the university "has undertaken a process to examine allegations of plagiarism" against Baker.

"These are serious allegations, and the University of Alberta will treat them as such," she said. "Academic integrity is at the heart of this university, and must continue to be so."

Baker wrote a letter on Sunday to the graduating class of 2011 in which he apologized for his banquet speech Friday night. He said he deeply regretted what he did and added there was no excuse for his "lapse in judgment."

The dean wrote that when he was researching his own speech, he was inspired by the text of a convocation address called "The Velluvial Matrix" that was given last year by Dr. Atul Gawande to graduates at Stanford University in California. It touched on personal family stories about overcoming adversity. Baker admitted that the theme and much of the content for his address came from what Gawande said.

"The talk was intended for a private audience, nevertheless, my failure to attribute the source of my inspiration is a matter of the utmost regret," Baker wrote.

Many of the students who were at the banquet Friday didn't want to talk publicly about it Monday. Class president Brittany Barber referred calls to the University of Alberta communications department.

Confessions of a Community College Dean: Plagiarism, Process, and ...

Confessions of a Community College Dean

In which a veteran of cultural studies seminars in the 1990's moves into academic administration and finds himself a married suburban father of two. Foucault, plus lawn care. Comments are welcome. Comments for general readership can be posted directly after the blog entry. For private comments, I can be reached at deandad at gmail dot com. The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of commenters), and not those of my (unnamed) employer.

This exchange from The New Inquiry has been wending its way around the intertubes of late. (Thanks to @colinized on twitter for flagging it for me.) It’s a dialogue between “Teach,” an adjunct professor of philosophy, and “Cheat,” a term-paper-writer-for-hire. It’s surprisingly thoughtful in its consideration of the motivations behind plagiarism and the ways that faculty deal with it. The discussion boils down to a sigh. The students don’t see the relevance of what they’re assigned to write about, so they see the requirement as merely arbitrary. Given an arbitrary hurdle to a credential they need for a middle-class life, they find a way around it. The instructor admits that there’s considerably more plagiarism in the class than he bothers to bust, drawing the line only at the most egregious cases. “Cheat” points out, too, that the adjunct’s own marginal standing in his own workplace is a sign that the institution itself doesn’t take his work seriously, and suggests that, at some level, students are picking up on that. It’s true that there’s typically little direct relation between the content of a philosophy paper and the day-to-day tasks on most jobs. (From Hannah and Her Sisters: “How do I know the meaning of life? I don’t even know how the can opener works!”) But it’s not about the content. And that’s why Cheat is trivially right and colossally wrong. Students who outsource their papers short-circuit the entire enterprise, and not only for themselves. To the extent that they go undetected, or unpunished, they raise the cost of experimentation for the honest students. They blow the curve, thereby discouraging honest students from going out on risky limbs. That’s why I’m absolutely old-school when it comes to policing plagiarism. It cuts to the heart of the academic enterprise. Put differently: if we academics don’t take writing seriously, why should anybody else?

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