7 ms·

The Magna Carta Essay

163 points by edw519 15y ago

drivebyacct2 15y ago
In what college course does that paper pass, regardless of plagiarism? WOW.
- tptacek 15y ago
  What, you mean the Magna Carta wasn't in part a reaction to the economics of the thriving trade in duck feathers?
  - drivingmenuts 15y ago
    Pssshh. The real money was in manure.
- bryanh 15y ago
  Of course what follows is anecdotal, but my first dabble in teaching at a college level (which is something I very much enjoyed) was for a entry level class in Finance. About 60 students or so in a class. Now, I might have been a lousy teacher, or some of my students could not have cared less about introductory Financial concepts, but what I witnessed between my students and my colleagues' made me very skeptical of any value a college degree has. This was simple math, simple concepts and even simpler recitation of various facts. But I suppose that can be excused, some people just don't jive with such things, but worse: A large majority of students were numbingly apathetic and put forth 0 effort, but still came crawling back after tests asking for extra credit or mulligans. But of course, some students were wonderfully engaged as well. So, in summary, I guess I wouldn't be surprised at a paper like that passing at university. Students turn that crap in all the time and they still somehow graduate.
  - makmanalp 15y ago
    You must understand that half of the students in an intro level class are there because a) They don't know what the hell they want to do so they picked a class. b) They have to fulfill some requirement. In the case of a), this happens because colleges are idiots and think that taking whole classes are a good way of going about figuring out what you want to do with your college education. What actually happens is the student takes the class, notices that they don't like the subject, and is disinterested for the rest of a whole term, even though they are still graded and can not switch. In the case of b), some bigwig university rector decided that x courses in subject y must be taken by students of major z. Z students of course blow the class off because they don't want to take it. Professors know this, and don't care much if Z students learn anything anyway. They want to focus on the students that are actually going to major in the subject of y. No one stands up to the rector and everyone takes the path of least friction. Solution: Have some goddamn flexibility. Don't enforce a strict ordering when taking classes. Don't force students into a single required class as much as possible. Instead say "must take two of these 5 classes". Have your majors defined this way also: Eg. Computer Science is 1 intro, 3 theory, 2 low level, 2 software engineering and design, 1 social issues class and 2 major projects. You can spell out specific classes that MUST be taken afterwards. Have quarters instead of semesters so that classes "die fast" and students can focus more on fewer subjects. This ends up being very intensive but there are more breaks. Allow students to fail 3 times without penalty, so they can experiment with classes out of their comfort zone, like grad classes or classes from a different major altogether. Have freshman year multidisciplinary problem solving seminars so that students have some idea of how project work an research happens, and what subjects they are interested in. My school did most of this for a very long time and the students loved it. They almost rioted when there was talk of changing this system.
    - loganfrederick 15y ago
      Out of curiosity, where did you attend?
      - makmanalp 15y ago
        http://www.wpi.edu/ http://www.wpi.edu/ , just a small sized tech school in the Northeast US.
- CWuestefeld 15y ago
  And even setting aside the nonsensical aspects... Assuming that it was all correct and coherent, it's just so shallow. How could that be a college-level essay? I'm thinking that's a high school effort, for sure.
- wisty 15y ago
  It met the word count, has 10 references, and appears to be grammatically correct. In some ways it's actually a reasonably well-written article (the paragraphs are the right length, it uses linking phrases for structure, and it seems to have an adult vocabulary), so if you don't actually read it it looks pretty good.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    It turns out actually reading is surprisingly going out of fashion. Perhaps not so surprisingly for grad students tasked with grading these by the hundred.
- impendia 15y ago
  The website for the course, linked in the article, see here http://dimensionsofhistory.homestead.com/2008L.html http://dimensionsofhistory.homestead.com/2008L.html is written just as poorly.
  - kevinchen 15y ago
    Ironically, the class is taught by Professor Mulligan. Heh.
  - stfu 15y ago
    Internet tutorials. We'll be doing two of them: The Internet Detective
xefer 15y ago
'"Discipulus tuus hunc tractatum non scripsit." Loosely translated to: “No taxation without representation.”' It actually means: "Your student did not write this essay"
- Semiapies 15y ago
  And it's amusing to google that phrase.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
grandalf 15y ago
The more I reflect on it, it seems that honeypots are the optimal way to conduct any sort of intelligence gathering.
- eru 15y ago
  I doubt the universal optimality, but various works contain fictitious entries. Like trap streets or phantom settlements in maps, or ghosts in telephone books.
  - grandalf 15y ago
    One might think that just b/c entrapment is forbidden by US law that honepots are not used. All the law means is that the evidence directly gathered via entrapment can't be used. Unregulated things like Craigslist and Tor likely offer law enforcement and intelligence agencies more "honeypot value" than they "cost" in terms of petty illegal behavior.
    - philwelch 15y ago
      Besides, not all stings are entrapment, as many men discover upon soliciting the wrong hooker.
mekoka 15y ago
Disclaimer: this is by no mean an endorsement of plagiarism in any of its forms. It is one thing to catch someone plagiarizing an already fake essay. In my opinion though, exposing the cheater on the Internet by name is a punishment with far more severe consequences, that does not exactly fit the crime. Furthermore, we're not even assured that the student managed to get a passing grade for his version of the paper. If he did, maybe his teacher was also part of the problem. This type of insensitive public lynching is so reminiscent of primary school. Fortunately, we grow up, develop a conscience and learn to regret some of the stupid acts we took, just because we could, that still reverberate in others in present days. Before blowing your horn, please make sure that you're actually righting a wrong and are not causing more damage than you're repairing.
- adnam 15y ago
  I disagree: the embarrassment of being publicly outed is entirely justified for a plagiarist. It's not a lynching if you tied your own noose!
  - granfalloon 15y ago
    maybe announcing it to the rest of his class would be a justified "public outting." or announcing it in a campus publication. but this goes way, way beyond that. i think it's kind of scary how quick people are nowadays to froth at the mouth and go crazy with the big-scale internet public shaming. one of the downsides of the rise of social-media, i guess
    - InclinedPlane 15y ago
      Are you being serious? That's just a slap on the wrist, for what appears to be academic fraud. I would cancel his degree and send a notice to his current employers.
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
    - 15y ago
mathattack 15y ago
This whole exercise confirms that schools are rapidly becoming sorting institutions rather than learning institutions.
tcarney 15y ago
Forget the essay, he listed the course as "Hist203L:Dimentions of History Lab"...
theorique 15y ago
"they held a climactic battle in the forest of Runnymede, near the village of Bloor West" Toronto joke?
tokenadult 15y ago
When I was in high school, in an English class unit on journalism, I learned how the United Press caught a competing news organization (Hearst, as I recall) faking stories about the eastern front in World War I. The United Press reporters inserted details about a Russian government official named Nelotsky in their news stories, and watched the statements about Nelotsky get copied into Heart reports. There was just one problem with Hearst's journalistic procedure: there wasn't any such Russian official. The name "Nelotsky" came from reversing the spelling of the English word "stolen" and adding a Russian-looking "ky" ending. http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/246-dgb-uneasy-legacy.pdf http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/246-dgb-uneasy-legac... http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30D16FF3B5B11738DDDAC0A94D9405B888DF1D3 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30D16FF3B5B1... Similarly, in the 1990s I noticed that a popular page on my personal website was being copied diligently by a college student for his personal website. I inserted a fake entry, based on the Greek word for "steal." I also put a link at that entry leading to the copyright notice page on my personal website, which has a distinctive filename unique to my site. When the student copied the page again, I was able to show the site administrator of his site that the student had plainly violated the site user agreement at that academic institution, which specifically required students not to plagiarize for their postings on the university site. I didn't do a lot of public outing of that student--but you had better believe I still remember who he was. Teachers do well to teach students early and often to use their own noggins and to do their own writing, giving proper credit with correct citation form to sources they rely on. That's a better education than just letting students copy whatever they happen to see, without any analysis or thought at all.
oconnor0 15y ago
An interesting observation about this is that there's just enough "truth" in the essay to make it a somewhat believable source: like John was titled/surnamed Lackland, the Magna Carta was signed at Runnymede - assuming the Wikipedia article isn't lying. But that is, of course, different than plagiarism.
- Turing_Machine 15y ago
  Unless you notice the part about him having been Duke of Hazzard. :-)
  - oconnor0 15y ago
    Oh, there's certainly junk that should alert someone to its comedic nature, but there's also content isn't entirely fabricated.
  - wnewman 15y ago
    Any assignment that expects footnotes probably ought to have graders who scan the footnotes, and I find it particularly funny, in a grim and ghastly way, that no one tripped over the jests concentrated there. Bollock & Maidenhead _The Interminable History of English Law_ was mentioned in the original post. And _From Magna Carta ..._ (i.e., 1215) _... to Domesday Book_ (i.e., 1085)? Or D. Rumsfeld _Killing Will Make You Free_?
- mikeash 15y ago
  I agree, it's really well done. It's enough like a real essay to withstand a semi-casual scan such as might be done by a student wanting to copy it, but contains enough absurdity to be blindingly obvious to anyone who reads through it thoroughly.
lukejduncan 15y ago
It reminds me of Neal Stephenson's Anathem where the Internet (called something else in the book) essentially became worthless because competing search engines polluted it with misinformation to screw with each others algorithms.
cafard 15y ago
One thinks of Kipling's story "Dayspring Mishandled"...
jobu 15y ago
"Plagiarism Saves Time." http://www.tanga.com/photos/570411/large http://www.tanga.com/photos/570411/large
mkramlich 15y ago
Plagiarism & propaganda: the two evil anti-patterns of the written word. Those who don't understand the strengths, weaknesses and subtle tricks and traps of human language and communication are doomed to be victimized by those who do.
cuu508 15y ago
I remember writing a "trojan horse" essay in secondary school, but in my case the target was my history teacher. I had noticed there's little correlation between the effort I put into my assignments and the grades I got--they were always good-ish. So one time I wrote an essay, not just with factual errors, but filled with blatant nonsense. This passed with a good grade too, so it was time to escalate the issue.
pnmahoney 15y ago
This appears to be the guy's self-description on LinkedIn. He loves software-as-a-service: Intense, energetic, and ambitious professional interested in staying as close to the bleeding edge as I can in the realm of SaaS, social, and mobile commerce. I love fitness, tech, and good food. found on http://www.linkedin.com/pub/aaron-kerzner/1a/b96/3b0 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/aaron-kerzner/1a/b96/3b0 (same school, approx graduation date)
tbsdy 15y ago
It would be amusing to issue the college lecturer with a DMCA takedown order.
philwelch 15y ago
Keep in mind that the essay, as shown in the OP, is not what was finally submitted by Aaron Kerzner to his class. This is: http://dimensionsofhistory.homestead.com/files/2008/londonprojects/Kerzner_London.pdf http://dimensionsofhistory.homestead.com/files/2008/londonpr... For all of you claiming it's unfair to name this chump: he posted the damn thing with his name on it to the public internet. It's even more amusing because what he turned in was even more amateurish than the original. It's titled "Magna Carta's Affect on the Class Structure in London", even though it scarcely discusses the class structure in London; he misspells "dimensions" in the header, even with the aid of a computer; it's white on crimson with gratuitous visual aids; the typesetting changes erratically between double and single spaced; finally, what few sentences of original writing there is to stitch the thing together betrays not so much any actual thought so much as a vague assertion that the plagiarized paper was somehow about the topic he was assigned to write about. That it was even accepted as college level coursework is a stain on the reputation not just of Aaron Kerzner, but of Drs. Michael Swanson and Debra Mulligan (who, even put together, couldn't catch this clown) and Roger Williams University. By the way, this guy is in our industry: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/aaron-kerzner/1a/b96/3b0 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/aaron-kerzner/1a/b96/3b0. And he majored in history.
- ugh 15y ago
  I think what you are doing is wrong. You shouldn't judge a person based on a single essay. Whatever you think about this particular essay, it's not deserving of this witchhunt. Edit: He should have failed the class and received a stern talking to. There is a reason students are told not to quote from homework assignments of other students. The bachelor thesis or master thesis is the first proper scientific work any student does and if you plagarize in those an instant gameover is expected and deserved. But class homework? Certainly not.
  - danso 15y ago
    Unbelievable. HN is inundated with threads talking about how useless a college degree is. And now we have people trying to defend what appears to be an incredibly pathetic act of plagiarism. This isn't a case of someone copying and pasting and forgetting to put in quotes. This is an act of apparent extreme brain atrophy...he had to WORK to copy this moronic essay and to alter it in a superficial way from the original, all the while having no ability to tell parody from truth. And you want to give this person a mulligan, as if this kind of act has no bearing on ehat you would consider his puported "real" work? Jesus, our society really is heading towards Idiocracy?

163 points by edw519 15y ago

drivebyacct2 15y ago

In what college course does that paper pass, regardless of plagiarism? WOW.

tptacek 15y ago
What, you mean the Magna Carta wasn't in part a reaction to the economics of the thriving trade in duck feathers?
- drivingmenuts 15y ago
  Pssshh. The real money was in manure.
bryanh 15y ago
Of course what follows is anecdotal, but my first dabble in teaching at a college level (which is something I very much enjoyed) was for a entry level class in Finance. About 60 students or so in a class. Now, I might have been a lousy teacher, or some of my students could not have cared less about introductory Financial concepts, but what I witnessed between my students and my colleagues' made me very skeptical of any value a college degree has. This was simple math, simple concepts and even simpler recitation of various facts. But I suppose that can be excused, some people just don't jive with such things, but worse: A large majority of students were numbingly apathetic and put forth 0 effort, but still came crawling back after tests asking for extra credit or mulligans. But of course, some students were wonderfully engaged as well. So, in summary, I guess I wouldn't be surprised at a paper like that passing at university. Students turn that crap in all the time and they still somehow graduate.
- makmanalp 15y ago
  You must understand that half of the students in an intro level class are there because a) They don't know what the hell they want to do so they picked a class. b) They have to fulfill some requirement. In the case of a), this happens because colleges are idiots and think that taking whole classes are a good way of going about figuring out what you want to do with your college education. What actually happens is the student takes the class, notices that they don't like the subject, and is disinterested for the rest of a whole term, even though they are still graded and can not switch. In the case of b), some bigwig university rector decided that x courses in subject y must be taken by students of major z. Z students of course blow the class off because they don't want to take it. Professors know this, and don't care much if Z students learn anything anyway. They want to focus on the students that are actually going to major in the subject of y. No one stands up to the rector and everyone takes the path of least friction. Solution: Have some goddamn flexibility. Don't enforce a strict ordering when taking classes. Don't force students into a single required class as much as possible. Instead say "must take two of these 5 classes". Have your majors defined this way also: Eg. Computer Science is 1 intro, 3 theory, 2 low level, 2 software engineering and design, 1 social issues class and 2 major projects. You can spell out specific classes that MUST be taken afterwards. Have quarters instead of semesters so that classes "die fast" and students can focus more on fewer subjects. This ends up being very intensive but there are more breaks. Allow students to fail 3 times without penalty, so they can experiment with classes out of their comfort zone, like grad classes or classes from a different major altogether. Have freshman year multidisciplinary problem solving seminars so that students have some idea of how project work an research happens, and what subjects they are interested in. My school did most of this for a very long time and the students loved it. They almost rioted when there was talk of changing this system.
  - loganfrederick 15y ago
    Out of curiosity, where did you attend?
    - makmanalp 15y ago
      http://www.wpi.edu/ http://www.wpi.edu/ , just a small sized tech school in the Northeast US.
CWuestefeld 15y ago
And even setting aside the nonsensical aspects... Assuming that it was all correct and coherent, it's just so shallow. How could that be a college-level essay? I'm thinking that's a high school effort, for sure.
wisty 15y ago
It met the word count, has 10 references, and appears to be grammatically correct. In some ways it's actually a reasonably well-written article (the paragraphs are the right length, it uses linking phrases for structure, and it seems to have an adult vocabulary), so if you don't actually read it it looks pretty good.
- philwelch 15y ago
  It turns out actually reading is surprisingly going out of fashion. Perhaps not so surprisingly for grad students tasked with grading these by the hundred.
impendia 15y ago
The website for the course, linked in the article, see here http://dimensionsofhistory.homestead.com/2008L.html http://dimensionsofhistory.homestead.com/2008L.html is written just as poorly.
- kevinchen 15y ago
  Ironically, the class is taught by Professor Mulligan. Heh.
- stfu 15y ago
  Internet tutorials. We'll be doing two of them: The Internet Detective

xefer 15y ago

'"Discipulus tuus hunc tractatum non scripsit." Loosely translated to: “No taxation without representation.”' It actually means: "Your student did not write this essay"

Semiapies 15y ago
And it's amusing to google that phrase.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

grandalf 15y ago

The more I reflect on it, it seems that honeypots are the optimal way to conduct any sort of intelligence gathering.

eru 15y ago
I doubt the universal optimality, but various works contain fictitious entries. Like trap streets or phantom settlements in maps, or ghosts in telephone books.
- grandalf 15y ago
  One might think that just b/c entrapment is forbidden by US law that honepots are not used. All the law means is that the evidence directly gathered via entrapment can't be used. Unregulated things like Craigslist and Tor likely offer law enforcement and intelligence agencies more "honeypot value" than they "cost" in terms of petty illegal behavior.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    Besides, not all stings are entrapment, as many men discover upon soliciting the wrong hooker.

mekoka 15y ago

Disclaimer: this is by no mean an endorsement of plagiarism in any of its forms. It is one thing to catch someone plagiarizing an already fake essay. In my opinion though, exposing the cheater on the Internet by name is a punishment with far more severe consequences, that does not exactly fit the crime. Furthermore, we're not even assured that the student managed to get a passing grade for his version of the paper. If he did, maybe his teacher was also part of the problem. This type of insensitive public lynching is so reminiscent of primary school. Fortunately, we grow up, develop a conscience and learn to regret some of the stupid acts we took, just because we could, that still reverberate in others in present days. Before blowing your horn, please make sure that you're actually righting a wrong and are not causing more damage than you're repairing.

adnam 15y ago
I disagree: the embarrassment of being publicly outed is entirely justified for a plagiarist. It's not a lynching if you tied your own noose!
- granfalloon 15y ago
  maybe announcing it to the rest of his class would be a justified "public outting." or announcing it in a campus publication. but this goes way, way beyond that. i think it's kind of scary how quick people are nowadays to froth at the mouth and go crazy with the big-scale internet public shaming. one of the downsides of the rise of social-media, i guess
  - InclinedPlane 15y ago
    Are you being serious? That's just a slap on the wrist, for what appears to be academic fraud. I would cancel his degree and send a notice to his current employers.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
  - 15y ago

mathattack 15y ago

This whole exercise confirms that schools are rapidly becoming sorting institutions rather than learning institutions.

tcarney 15y ago

Forget the essay, he listed the course as "Hist203L:Dimentions of History Lab"...

theorique 15y ago

"they held a climactic battle in the forest of Runnymede, near the village of Bloor West" Toronto joke?

tokenadult 15y ago

When I was in high school, in an English class unit on journalism, I learned how the United Press caught a competing news organization (Hearst, as I recall) faking stories about the eastern front in World War I. The United Press reporters inserted details about a Russian government official named Nelotsky in their news stories, and watched the statements about Nelotsky get copied into Heart reports. There was just one problem with Hearst's journalistic procedure: there wasn't any such Russian official. The name "Nelotsky" came from reversing the spelling of the English word "stolen" and adding a Russian-looking "ky" ending. http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/246-dgb-uneasy-legacy.pdf http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/246-dgb-uneasy-legac... http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30D16FF3B5B11738DDDAC0A94D9405B888DF1D3 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30D16FF3B5B1... Similarly, in the 1990s I noticed that a popular page on my personal website was being copied diligently by a college student for his personal website. I inserted a fake entry, based on the Greek word for "steal." I also put a link at that entry leading to the copyright notice page on my personal website, which has a distinctive filename unique to my site. When the student copied the page again, I was able to show the site administrator of his site that the student had plainly violated the site user agreement at that academic institution, which specifically required students not to plagiarize for their postings on the university site. I didn't do a lot of public outing of that student--but you had better believe I still remember who he was. Teachers do well to teach students early and often to use their own noggins and to do their own writing, giving proper credit with correct citation form to sources they rely on. That's a better education than just letting students copy whatever they happen to see, without any analysis or thought at all.

oconnor0 15y ago

An interesting observation about this is that there's just enough "truth" in the essay to make it a somewhat believable source: like John was titled/surnamed Lackland, the Magna Carta was signed at Runnymede - assuming the Wikipedia article isn't lying. But that is, of course, different than plagiarism.

Turing_Machine 15y ago
Unless you notice the part about him having been Duke of Hazzard. :-)
- oconnor0 15y ago
  Oh, there's certainly junk that should alert someone to its comedic nature, but there's also content isn't entirely fabricated.
- wnewman 15y ago
  Any assignment that expects footnotes probably ought to have graders who scan the footnotes, and I find it particularly funny, in a grim and ghastly way, that no one tripped over the jests concentrated there. Bollock & Maidenhead _The Interminable History of English Law_ was mentioned in the original post. And _From Magna Carta ..._ (i.e., 1215) _... to Domesday Book_ (i.e., 1085)? Or D. Rumsfeld _Killing Will Make You Free_?
mikeash 15y ago
I agree, it's really well done. It's enough like a real essay to withstand a semi-casual scan such as might be done by a student wanting to copy it, but contains enough absurdity to be blindingly obvious to anyone who reads through it thoroughly.

lukejduncan 15y ago

It reminds me of Neal Stephenson's Anathem where the Internet (called something else in the book) essentially became worthless because competing search engines polluted it with misinformation to screw with each others algorithms.

cafard 15y ago

One thinks of Kipling's story "Dayspring Mishandled"...

jobu 15y ago

"Plagiarism Saves Time." http://www.tanga.com/photos/570411/large http://www.tanga.com/photos/570411/large

mkramlich 15y ago

Plagiarism & propaganda: the two evil anti-patterns of the written word. Those who don't understand the strengths, weaknesses and subtle tricks and traps of human language and communication are doomed to be victimized by those who do.

cuu508 15y ago

I remember writing a "trojan horse" essay in secondary school, but in my case the target was my history teacher. I had noticed there's little correlation between the effort I put into my assignments and the grades I got--they were always good-ish. So one time I wrote an essay, not just with factual errors, but filled with blatant nonsense. This passed with a good grade too, so it was time to escalate the issue.

pnmahoney 15y ago

This appears to be the guy's self-description on LinkedIn. He loves software-as-a-service: Intense, energetic, and ambitious professional interested in staying as close to the bleeding edge as I can in the realm of SaaS, social, and mobile commerce. I love fitness, tech, and good food. found on http://www.linkedin.com/pub/aaron-kerzner/1a/b96/3b0 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/aaron-kerzner/1a/b96/3b0 (same school, approx graduation date)

tbsdy 15y ago

It would be amusing to issue the college lecturer with a DMCA takedown order.

philwelch 15y ago

Keep in mind that the essay, as shown in the OP, is not what was finally submitted by Aaron Kerzner to his class. This is: http://dimensionsofhistory.homestead.com/files/2008/londonprojects/Kerzner_London.pdf http://dimensionsofhistory.homestead.com/files/2008/londonpr... For all of you claiming it's unfair to name this chump: he posted the damn thing with his name on it to the public internet. It's even more amusing because what he turned in was even more amateurish than the original. It's titled "Magna Carta's Affect on the Class Structure in London", even though it scarcely discusses the class structure in London; he misspells "dimensions" in the header, even with the aid of a computer; it's white on crimson with gratuitous visual aids; the typesetting changes erratically between double and single spaced; finally, what few sentences of original writing there is to stitch the thing together betrays not so much any actual thought so much as a vague assertion that the plagiarized paper was somehow about the topic he was assigned to write about. That it was even accepted as college level coursework is a stain on the reputation not just of Aaron Kerzner, but of Drs. Michael Swanson and Debra Mulligan (who, even put together, couldn't catch this clown) and Roger Williams University. By the way, this guy is in our industry: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/aaron-kerzner/1a/b96/3b0 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/aaron-kerzner/1a/b96/3b0. And he majored in history.

ugh 15y ago
I think what you are doing is wrong. You shouldn't judge a person based on a single essay. Whatever you think about this particular essay, it's not deserving of this witchhunt. Edit: He should have failed the class and received a stern talking to. There is a reason students are told not to quote from homework assignments of other students. The bachelor thesis or master thesis is the first proper scientific work any student does and if you plagarize in those an instant gameover is expected and deserved. But class homework? Certainly not.
- danso 15y ago
  Unbelievable. HN is inundated with threads talking about how useless a college degree is. And now we have people trying to defend what appears to be an incredibly pathetic act of plagiarism. This isn't a case of someone copying and pasting and forgetting to put in quotes. This is an act of apparent extreme brain atrophy...he had to WORK to copy this moronic essay and to alter it in a superficial way from the original, all the while having no ability to tell parody from truth. And you want to give this person a mulligan, as if this kind of act has no bearing on ehat you would consider his puported "real" work? Jesus, our society really is heading towards Idiocracy?