Plagiarism and Academic Dishonesty
by Beverly Grose
You can imagine someone asking another person, "Could you go lift weights
for me?" Of course, the person who hires someone else to lift weights for
him or her would not gain any muscle mass. Similarly, the student who buys or
plagiarizes a paper avoids the hard work of building ‘muscles’ in the skills
of research and writing.
The big difference is that it's more difficult to see the lack of undeveloped research and writing 'muscles.' Many universities offer excellent information, suggestions, and training about plagiarism. The UTD Rhetoric department's method of teaching writing by turning in earlier drafts of papers does much to deter plagiarism.This process allows the TA to see the student ‘lifting weights’ and gaining research and writing 'muscles.'
The first place to look for information about plagiarism is at the UTD web site. The following links discuss the specific UTD policies for academic dishonesty