Mmm... Red Tape...

I just spent nearly three hours compiling evidence for one damned plagiarism case. If I were a more cynical man, one more convinced of higher education's swift and inevitable decline into a glorified service industry, I might think that Big State University was deliberately making these cases difficult to file in order to keep everything sliding along nice and easy.

I am not such a man.

So I dutifully scoured the internet in search of each and every quotation, each borrowed phrase and theme, sifting through pages upon pages of FREE ESSAYS NOW, summaries from Bookrags and Sparknotes and God knows where else. Then it was time to photocopy the paper, highlight the offending areas, highlight the corresponding sources, copy the class text, highlight discrepancies in the student's paper and highlight the online sources, etc., etc.

I'm thankful for the poor schmuck who just found a single shitty online essay and lifted sentence after sentence from it, stopping to throw in an extra quotation or to change a word here and there. That was cake.

Now I just have to send out emails to the offending parties requesting "a discussion," preferrably with a witness, where - even though I have fairly solid evidence - I can accuse them of nothing, merely inform them that I've submitted their work to be processed for academic misconduct. I'm not really looking foreward to the stream of tears and apologies and "Oh, but I didn't realize..."

No more, please.

Plagiarism

Two instances of blatant plagiarism so far.

I'm angry that my standards have dropped so low that I'm honestly pleased that there were only two instances.

Then again, there are the three or four others that I'm fairly positive about but can't prove.

Grr.

Only 7 left.

And when this class is over? Man have I got some quotations from you. Tender, succulent little morsels of delight.

Aaak! Papers!

15 down, 15 to go.

Only one plagiarist so far! Woo!

Romans are decidedly weird.

How to hold your very own October Horse ritual in 7 easy steps

Step 1: Conduct a chariot race with teams of two horses each.
Step 2: Take the lead horse from the winning team and stab it to death with a lance.
Step 3: Cut off the dead horse's tail and head.
Step 4: Run over to the chief priest's altar and smear the bloody tail all over it. (Note - save some of the blood for later.)**
Step 5: Decorate the horse's head with a wreath of bread loaves.
Step 6: Gather some kids from two different neighborhoods and make them play capture the flag.
Step 7: Explain that instead of capturing their opponents' flag, they'll be trying to nail the horse's head to a landmark at the center of their opponents' territory.

Congratulations, you've celebrated the ritual of the October Horse.

**This blood will be used next April, during the New Year's festival, where it will be burned along with the corpses of several dozen unborn calves. No, I'm not sure how you're supposed to hold onto the blood that long. That's your job.

I knew it!

The Wolf observed my class today.

"The students were generally paying attention. Of course you can't keep all of them; one young woman decided that she urgently needed to buy herself shoes in the middle of lecture."

"They're coming..."

T - Minus 4 days until a wave of about one hundred 5 page papers comes rolling into shore.

The good news - I've got two TAs, so we each only need to handle 35 or so.

The bad news - In an effort to give them room for creativity and freedom, the prompt was wide open. I have the sinking suspicion that mediocrity will be the name of the game and that plagiarism will run rampant.

And despite the detailed guidelines made available online, several students have still emailed us about due dates and paper length. I don't get it. They have constant access to this information.

One poor soul emailed me in a tizzy last night, proclaimed his/her busy schedule and explained that s/he'd knew it was due today but wanted to check to see how long it needed to be.

I suppose I'd normally applaud him/her for working ahead of time, but when s/he actually thinks it's been put off until the last possible moment? Poor form.

Hm. I wonder just how many plagiarism cases we'll have... To quote a friend, "whoever guesses the right number wins an imaginary shiny silver dollar."

I am demonstrably un-hip.

A pot of tomato sauce has been simmering on our stove for the past four hours.

On a whim, we added some ground venison.

Will it be delicious? Or have we just ruined something wonderful?

----------------------------------------

One of our new first years - Erin - is a proficient pie maker, a snappy dresser and a veritable fountain of Bay Area slang. Unfortunately, much of this slang is completely lost on us yokels.

She spent a good seven minutes trying to explain "Ya gotta get it how ya live." I still don't know what the hell it means. Ostensibly it's something like, "get your shit together," but I feel like that's one of at least two dozen possible usages.

Whatever. Ya gotta get it how ya live.

"And you will know my name is the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon thee."

You vile, contemptible, insignificant, sniveling excuse for student. I wish I could drop you on the sole - and irrefutable - grounds of being a consummate prick.

You bitched and moaned and complained and raised holy Hell because we called you out for your reprehensible behavior. You weren't outraged because you thought it was fine to leave class when you did. You were outraged because you didn't think we'd do anything about it.

But we did. Barry failed your pathetic ass as you rightfully deserved. And then, for the first time in weeks, you suddenly care enough to wiggle your fingers over the keyboard for as long as it takes to accuse him of being unfair and unprofessional.

So we thought about it. And Barry decided to give you another chance. Just come to another section and we'll call it even.

And what did you do?

You couldn't be bothered to send a reply of thanks, or even acknowledgment. I don't know what sparked your sudden change of heart on the matter - though I suspect it was the implication that we expected you to act like a student.

And come recitation, where the fuck were you? Where were you after you'd fought so hard for your precious quiz points (which, given your performance, weren't worth a bent Confederate nickle)? Were you at home studying? Were you helping an old woman cross the street? Were you wiping the remains of your dignity and self respect off the bottom of your shoe?

Wherever you were, you weren't in class.

Welcome to the top of my shit list.

The Battle Continues

I came home today expecting to eat some lunch and get down to some of my own work. What I found was a veritable shit-storm email exchange between Barry & Gamer Student. The Student became increasingly hostile and legalistic. Barry, to his credit, kept his cool - something I found thoroughly difficult to do when I had to wade into the middle of it.

I don't know why it is that students come to college (ostensibly to learn) and then spend so much effort trying not to. And this one? It's clear that Gamer rarely attends lecture and puts little or no work into the quizzes or exams. So why s/he suddenly cares about these points, I'll never know. Student has spent the entirety of class fucking about and only now decides that these points are going to make or break the grade.

And the arguments! Jesus! They're not even good. It's shit like, "If I'd have known this was going to happen, I wouldn't have done it." Well, we fucking told you that attendance was mandatory, we just didn't say what would happen if you skipped out. Your complaint should really be, "I knew I had to come, I just didn't think you'd do anything if I didn't."

It's enough to make me pull out my hair.

But. Barry found a solution. Gamer has the opportunity to attend another recitation (later in the week). If s/he goes (for all 50 minutes, sweet Jesus) s/he'll get credit for the quiz. An equitable resolution, I thought. Actually, I was quite impressed with the idea. Tied things up rather nicely.

I still expect to hear some more bitching from the student, though. Christ is this exhausting.

My Syllabus is Not a Legal Document

So Barry, one of my TAs, hails me in the office.

Barry: Hey, I was just looking for you! I just had three students take the quiz, turn it in and walk out! I caught up with the last one and he just mumbled something about 'Call of Duty.'
Me: Oh, yeah! That video game just came out, didn't it?
Barry: Last night, I think. So I'm sending them an email explaining that they're not receiving credit for the quiz because they left immediately after.
Me: That's what I'd have done. The quiz is there to make sure you're in recitation, you're not in recitation, you don't pass the quiz. Easy enough. *shakes head* Man, though! What bastards.

Of course, I should have expected there'd be fallout.

While the syllabus says that attendance in lecture and recitation is mandatory, and says that the quizzes are there to make sure students keep up with the readings and attend recitation & lecture, we did not spell out the fact that students are thereby expected to stay in recitation the whole 50 minutes.

Silly us.

Luckly, Gamer Student was there to remind us of that fact with a snarky little email demanding his points because we didn't mention this policy (of actually needing to be in class) beforehand.

I suppose we also didn't mention that yelling, playing the radio or furiously masturbating would be distracting activities in class and are thus not acceptable. I'll make a note.

Right after I finish seething with anger.

The absolutely fuck-all annoying part is, I have the sneaking suspicion that if s/he complains enough, I will have to cave. Bottom line, the quiz is a tool for assessing what they've learned, and if Gamer has demonstrated that s/he's learned something... yeah. That's where that logic goes.

And I hate that I may be in the position of having to contradict my TA on a call I feel is completely justified.

I'll keep you updated.