What Is Plagaqrism?

What is plagiarizing? According to Riverside Webster's II Dictionary it is to "take and use one's own ideas or writings of another". Here in America plagiarism is taken very seriously because it shows that students are not using their own writing, reading and critical thinking skills that they will use in the future or in the real world; that's a problem because integrity is at risk. Teachers are interested in having students learn how to think by themselves to be able to become leaders and not followers. That's why schools have become stricter about student's researches and to make sure they let the students know that they won't tolerate any cheating or plagiarism.

Now, all schools have an academic policy to discourage students from cheating which includes how they should conduct and represent themselves with their school and school assignments. Our school is not the exemption; I went to check our policy about plagiarism and this is what I found. Merced College has a policy for academic honesty which was founded by the Merced College Faculty Senate and is administered by the Office of the Vice President of Student Personnel. The policy says that any student that is caught cheating being dishonest about their work will be submitted to disciplinary decisions like call to the attention of the students, will get a failing grade, or even be kicked out of the college if there is more then one offense. Students are encouraged to read this policy and can get a copy of these regulations at the guidance office. Most schools have disciplinary policies; but not many students know were to get this policy from, and that is one of the reasons students cheat because they don't know what their school does and doesn't tolerate.

One of many questions is why students are being drawn to plagiarize more often, and what can we do to avoid it. Students usually have different reasons why they decide to use this practice. Some of those reasons are the fear of failing, bad management skills, personal problems at home, and others. Of course these are still not an excuse to copy your work but it shows you the stress that students go through and why they make certain decisions. Another question remaining is how can we prevent students from doing this? Well first I think we can avoid this by enforcing the school policy among the students. Show that you are serious and won't tolerate misconduct behavior and what we are doing now, write a paper about plagiarizing, so we can learn more about it. Educating the student about the subject is always a good way to show the consequences of their actions and why it is so bad.

I don't want to generalize but I think that most of us know that whatever behavior we have during our college years that same behavior will build our characters and credibility in the future and will show who we are to society. There are also some of us that don't think about this and take the opportunity to get a higher education as a joke; and when they plagiarize also affects the rest of us by not having the teachers and school to trust us to present to them a well done research job.

We say "well how will plagiarizing affects me, it's not like I'm going to be a writer." The purpose of teachers teaching us is for us to learn and to apply it later on in our lives and careers. The teacher's job is to show us how to react, analyze, and how to take decisions in certain situations. If we don't