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Pre-AP English 2
Ticzon
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Synthesis Essay
Cheating and plagiarism issues are not new in schools. However, with the invention and
proliferation of the internet, plagiarism has become easier. To combat this, many schools are
enforcing strict honor codes that involve expulsion and failures for students caught cheating. But
do these drastic steps work? Are some students unduly punished or is it a necessary step to teach
ethics to our nation's youth?

Write an essay in which you state a position that defends, challenges, or qualifies the claim that
schools should enforce a zero-tolerance honor code to prevent plagiarism.
Be sure to:
synthesize the information from multiple sources
accurately cite a minimum of three of the sources for support
Strategies for the Synthesis Essay
1. Be sure you understand the task.
2. Close read the sources [examine the central argument]
3. Brainstorm
4. Craft a plan
5. Draft
6. Incorporate text evidence citations smoothly.

Source A
Read the following excerpt from a news story printed with permission of The Associated Press.
Piper, Kansas (AP) High school teacher Christine Pelton wasted no time after
discovering that nearly a fifth of her biology students had plagiarized their semester projects
from the Internet.
She had received her rural Kansas districts backing before when she accused students of
cheating, and she expected it again this time after failing the 28 sophomores.
Her principal and superintendent agreed: It was plagiarism and the students should get a
zero for the assignment.
But after parents complained, the Piper School Board ordered her to go easier on the
guilty.
Pelton resigned in protest in an episode that some say reflects a national decline in
integrity.
This kind of thing is happening every day around the country, where people with
integrity are not being backed by their organization, said Michael Josephson, founder and
president of the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Marina del Rey, California.

Source B

U.Va. plagiarism scandal ends with 45 dismissals

Tuesday, November 26, 2002 Posted: 8:20 AM EST (1320 GMT) - CNN
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/EDUCATION/11/26/uva.plagiarism.ap/index.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia (AP) -- A wide-ranging probe of student plagiarism at the
University of Virginia has ended with the dismissal of 45 students and the revocation of three
graduates' degrees.
The Charlottesville school's student-run Honor Committee finished the last plagiarism trial on
Saturday after a 20-month investigation. In all, 109 students were exonerated and 48 others were
either convicted of cheating or left school admitting guilt.
"It's never a happy day when 48 students leave," Honor Committee Chairman Christopher Smith
said Monday. "But it shows the system worked."
The plagiarism scandal began in spring 2001 when physics professor Lou Bloomfield heard that
some students had copied their term papers in his introductory physics class. Bloomfield devised
a computer program to detect duplicated phrases and caught 158 papers during the four previous
semesters.
Two students challenged their dismissal in federal court this year. Smith said those cases were
dismissed.
Founded by Thomas Jefferson, the University of Virginia ranks among the nation's top public
universities and has one of the oldest collegiate honor systems. On every test, students pledge not
to lie, cheat or steal. The only penalty for breaking the code is dismissal from school.

Source C
Jewish World Review June 21, 2002/11 Tamuz, 5762

Leonard Pits, Jr.

Your kids going to pay for cheating --- eventually

Last week, school officials in Piper, Kan., adopted an official policy o plagiarism with
punishments ranging from redoing an assignment to expulsion. Unfortunately, all that comes too
late to help Christine Pelton.
She used to be a teacher. Taught biology at Piper High, to be exact. Then, last fall, she assigned
her students to collect 20 leaves and write a report on them. The kids knew from the classroom
syllabus a document they and their parents both signed that cheating would not be tolerated.
Anyone who plagiarized would receive no credit for the assignment, which counted toward half
their semester grade.
Maybe youve heard what happened next. Twenty-eight of Peltons sophomores tuned in work
that seemed conspicuously similar. It took only a little Web research for her to confirm that they
had indeed cut-and-pasted their papers together.
True to her word, Pelton issued 28 zeroes. What followed was to moral integrity as the Keystone
Kops are to law enforcement. Parents rose in outrage, some even making harassing, postmidnight phone calls to her home. Pelton offered the cheaters make-up assignments that would
have allowed them to pass the class with Ds. They refused. Besieged by angry mothers and
fathers, the school board ordered the teacher to soften the punishment.
She went to school the next day and found the kids celebratory mood, cheering their victory, and
crowing that they no longer had to listen to teachers. By lunchtime, Pelton had quit. The schools
principal and 13 of 32 teachers have also reportedly resigned. In the months since then, the
cheaters have become the target of ridicule and condemnation in media around the world.
In spite of that, the parents of the 28 ethically challenged students continue to rally to their
defense. One says its not plagiarism if you only copy a sentence or two. Another expresses
doubt the kids even know what plagiarism means.
To that, I can only say this: Please shut up. Havent you already done enough damage?
Students have always cheated, yes. Always schemed to see the questions ahead of time, write
notes on sweaty palms, peer over the shoulder of the teachers pet. But whats most troubling
here I not the amorality of adolescents, but the fact that parents are so eagerly complicit, so ready
to look the other way, so willing to rationalize the fact that their children are, in essence, liars
and thieves.

Lying about authorship of the work, thieving the grade that results.
Those students, their parents and the school board that caved in like cardboard in the rain are all
emblematic of a society in which cheating has become not just epidemic but somehow, tolerated,
even at the highest levels. As one senior told CBS News, It probably sounds twisted, but I
would say that in this day and age, cheating is almost not wrong.
Who can blame the kid for thinking that way when the news is full of noted historians cribbing
from one another, Enron cooking the books well done, Merrill Lynch recommending garbage
stock, a Notre Dame football coach falsifying his resume. Whatever works, right? Ours is not to
judge, right?
Wrong.
At the risk of being preachy, Id like to point out the common thread between the historians, the
coach, Enron and Merrill Lynch: They all got caught.
Cheaters almost always do. No, not necessarily in big, splashy stories that make CBS News.
Sometimes, its just in the small quiet corners of inauthentic lives when they are brought up short
by their own inadequacies and force to acknowledge the hollowness of their achievements. To
admit they arent what others believe them to be.
Reputation, it has been said, is about who you are when people are watching. Character is about
who you are when theres nobody in the room but you. Both matter, but of the two, character is
far and away the most important. The former can induce others to think well of you. But only the
latter allows you to think well of yourself.
This is the lesson of Piper High, for those who have ears to hear.
Turns out Christine Pelton is still teaching after all.

Source D
Alex P. Kellogg. Students Plagiarize Less Than Many Think, a New Study Finds.
The Chronicles of Higher Education: Information Technology. 2002 February 1.

A new study by two professors at the Rochester Institute of Technology concludes that online
plagiarism is not nearly as widespread as has frequently been suggested.
The study, to be published in the May/June issue of the Journal of College Student Development,
draws on a survey of 698 undergraduates at nine colleges and universities, eight in the United
States and one in the Middle East. Among other things, the students were asked how much
plagiarism they had engaged infrom books or from online sourcesand the amount of
plagiarizing they believed their peers had committed. Patrick M. Scanlon, an associate professor
of communications, and David R. Neumann, a professor of communications, wrote a paper
reporting the studys findings.
The professors found that students think much more plagiarizing is taking place than they
actually report doing. While 16.5 percent of students reported having sometimes cut and
pasted text into a paper without a citation, only 8 percent of students reported having done so
often or very frequently. Yet 50.4 percent of students reported that their peers often or
very frequently cut and pasted text from the Internet into their papers without proper citation.
The study also found that the amount of online plagiarism students reported engaging in is
comparable to the amount of conventional plagiarismfrom books or other printed sources
thats been reported for years. While 24.5 percent of students reported often, very
frequently, or sometimes having cut and pasted text from the Internet without proper citation,
27.6 percent reported having done the same with conventional texts. Meanwhile, more than 90
percent of students reported that their peers often, very frequently, or sometimes copied
text without citation from conventional sources.
The reports authors also conclude that the growth in Internet plagiarism has not necessarily led
to an overall increase in the amount of plagiarism taking place.
Theres been a lot of media hype over the last couple of years, assuming that the Internet is
going to cause a rash of academic dishonesty, says Mr. Scanlon. While the number of students
we found using the Internet to plagiarize is still troublingit isnt the epidemic thats been
trumpeted. At least, not yet.
Mr. Scanlon says he believes the problem is likely to get worse as more and more students reared
on the Internet enter college. There may be more troubling things down the road for us that we
need to think about carefully.
Donald L. McCabe, a professor of organization management at Rutgers University at Neward,
who has done his own studies on Internet plagiarism, says the amount that the new study found
seems accurate to him. But he says the picture is changing rapidly.

High-school students who are growing up with the Internet, theyre having real difficulty
distinguishing what is and is not plagiarism, he says. Many of them are developing an attitude
that anything on the Internet is public domain, and theyre not seeing copying it as cheating.
John M. Barrie, the founder and chairman of Turnitin.com, which sells software to detect online
plagiarism to thousands of institutions around the globe (including the Rochester Institute of
Technology), says the most accurate way to measure student plagiarism is to use software like
his, not to distribute surveys.
I dont think that their figures are that off,: he says. What I disagree with is their conclusion
that the Internet doesnt significantly contribute to the problem.

Source E
Bushweller, Kevin. Generation of Cheaters. The American School Board Journal, April
1999
Perhaps she shouldnt be: In a national survey of 356 high school teachers conducted in 1998 by
The American School Board Journal, nine out of 10 said cheating is a problem in their schools,
and half said they encounter students cheating in most of their classes. A nationwide poll of
20,000 middle and high school students released last year by the Josephson Institute of Ethics in
Marina del Rey, Calif., suggests the magnitude of the problem: Seven out of 10 high schoolers
admitted to having cheated on an exam.
Many educators say the rise in cheating is due to an erosion of ethics in a self-centered culture.
Some point to habits ingrained in students through years of working together in cooperative
learning situations. Others pin the blame on teachers who dont care if kids cheat or who would
rather avoid the hassle of disciplining those who do. Still others bemoan growing numbers of
indulgent parents who refuse to hold their kids accountable.
The real cause of the cheating epidemic is all of the above, says Michael Josephson, president of
the Josephson Institute of Ethics. Whats more, he says there has been a shifting of worries. In
recent years, people are so much more concerned aout drugs and violence. Cheating is getting
worse, but its getting less attention.
High achieversthe nations future business and political leaderscould be the worst offenders.
According to a 1998 survey of 3,123 teenagers by Whos Who Among American High School
Students in Lake Forest, Ill., 80 percent of the nations best students admit to cheating on an
exam, a 10-point increase since the question was first asked 15 years ago.

Source F
224

McCabe, Trevino, Butterfield

Table 2
Self-Admitted Cheating Summary Statistics (%)
1990-1991
1995-1996
Variable
1963
No Code Code
1993
No Code Code
Copied on test or exam
26
30
14
52
32
20
Used unauthorized crib notes 16
21
9
27
17
11
Helped other on test
23
28
9
37
23
11
Plagiarism
30
18
7
26
20
10
Copied one or two sentences
without footnoting
49
41
23
54
43
32
Unpermitted collaboration on
assignments
11
39
21
49
49
27

These data suggest that honor codes are an important phenomenon, and we have studied the
relation between honor codes and cheating has been studied in greater depth, along three major
themes: (a) implementation of honor codes, (b) faculty views of academic integrity policies
including honor codes, and (c) honor codes effect on students.