Keep it original

OK, in high school, Mrs.?Smith may not have known her students played a little cut?and paste with those A- Shakespeare papers, but this is college and Mrs.?Smith has nothing to do with the grading scale.

Many professors use sophisticated soft-ware programs to detect plagiarism.

Even more threatening, the professors have hand-picked informants inside the classrooms.

Graduate students, working under the professors they report to, are often in charge of more than the customary passing out of papers. In between their own hectic schedules, they're sometimes employed to grade the papers undergraduates hand in.

Busting a cheat is a nasty business, grad student Edward Hamelrath said from behind his cubicle in Mitchell Hall.

"I've never turned anyone in, but your basic cheaters leave very little doubt."

Working towards his Ph.D., Hamelrath taught classes in the history department where his experiences brought to light a few tell-tale signs.

"The first written sample makes the biggest impression," grad student Daryl Carter said. "From then on, if you see drastic changes in writing style that's usually a strong indication."

Hamelrath said many students come to college with little more than a seventh or eighth grade writing level. They can't articulate anything, and many don't really know enough about their subject to write about it at all, he said.

Hamelrath tried an experiment in several of his classes. He gave students basic geography tests, asking them to label major cities like Paris, London or Moscow. With no dates or important facts to memorize, he hoped for high scores but wasn't surprised to see the majority failed miserably.

Luckily, Hamelrath has never personally felt the need to turn a student in for academic misconduct, but he admits having been tempted more than once.

"It's such a difficult decision because there's always that tiny chance they weren't full of it and tried to do honest work," he said. "I just tried to talk to the students one-on-one to clear up any misunderstandings and make sure they knew what I was looking for. I never once had a student question my decision."

Accusations of plagiarism carry heavy consequences. When a student is sent to The University of Memphis' Academic Integrity Committee, he or she will face a punishment based on the severity of the offense.

Pending the results of a hearing, he or she can fail the course, assignment or exam, and is subject to additional disciplinary sanctions. A student can, however, submit an appeal prior to the actual hearing.

Part of the problem exists, Hamelrath said, because students are ill-prepared and don't know how to properly cite their information.

"We're not looking for original research or observations - we want citations," he said shaking his head. "They don't know how to write a paper. No one ever taught them, I guess. No quote marks, foot notes, references, nothing. It happened with at least 80 percent of my students, even the good ones."

And for Hamelrath, good students were few and far between.

"When it's a particularly good, well-written paper, the antenna automatically go up," he said.

He said very few people, as few as two to three per year in his classes, could be considered talented, polished writers.

History instructor Douglas Cupples said he believed most students don't set out with malicious intentions, but of those who do, are easy target.

"It's almost comical," he said, telling a story about a girl who came in and forgot to get out her cheat sheet before sitting down for the exam. She was caught before she even began.

"Those that feel the need to cheat, usually do that as well as they do anything else - very poorly," he said.