Plagiarism: Getting in trouble for something you didn’t do.

Plagiarism in all departments has always been taken seriously. If caught, your grade is likely to suffer and you are liable to receive a referral. For honors and Advanced Placement students however, the English department’s spring semester crackdown on plagiarism has upped the ante for students who are thinking about misrepresenting their assignments.

In response to an increase in school-wide plagiarism, and especially academic dishonesty amongst honors and AP students, the English department voted unanimously to implement a stricter plagiarism policy this semester. The new policy states that if a student in an honors or AP class is caught plagiarizing, that student will be removed from the course and placed in a regular English course for the remainder of the year, according to English department head Bryan Ritter.

Students who are removed from the course may reapply for honors or AP placement the following year, provided the course does not require students to have taken the previous year of honors or AP, according to Ritter. Because of the necessary prerequisites, sophomores who are removed from the 10th grade English honors course will not be eligible to take AP English Language and Composition as juniors. However, they can enroll in English teacher Cathy Innis’s AP English Language and Composition, an open class, as seniors. Juniors who are penalized for plagiarism may rejoin the AP Literature track as seniors. However, their access will be dependent on how they perform on the English honors placement exam, as if they were first applying for English honors, according to Ritter.

The policy also affects regular English students, who if caught plagiarizing in their classes, will not be allowed to apply for the honors and AP English track. The ban will be in addition to the established penalties for plagiarism in all classes, which include parent contact and a visit to the dean.

Ritter, who has taught at Lowell since 1998, says that while the new penalty has been long due, it was sparked by a rise in instances of plagiarism during the fall 2011 semester. “From last year to this year, there’s been a marked increase,” he said. “We had 14 confirmed cases, five of which came from honors and AP students.” All 14 students received F’s on the plagiarized assignments, and one student who plagiarized twice was removed from the honors/AP English program after teacher discussion under the past policy, according to Ritter.

At least one English teacher feels that the punishment should be more severe. “I think kids should be kicked out after plagiarizing at Lowell,” English teacher Jennifer Moffitt said. “It is a competitive academic school, and other kids would love to get in.”

Some English teachers have resorted to alternate teaching methods to discourage plagiarism. “I set up my class so students can discuss essays in groups, ask their friends and have time to write in class,” Innis said. “I try to give them time in class so they don’t go home and say ‘I don’t know what to write’ and copy off someone else.”

Innis even changes the structure of her assignments to prevent cheating. “There is tons of stuff on the Internet about the traditional texts we read,” she said. “I try to give assignments with different topics than the standard essay.”

Other teachers, such as English teacher and advisor for The Lowell Sharn Matusek, teach mini-units on plagiarism to convey to students how passing others work as your own can have serious repercussions, and how to work more authentically. “I have students do research about plagiarism in the real world, and it really brings it home that when people plagiarize, there can be serious consequences, such as losing a book contract or a Pulitzer Prize,” Matusek said.

In an effort to discourage and avert plagiarism, the school pays $5,000 annually out of the technology budget for the anti-plagiarism Web service Turnitin. Lowell teachers began to use the resource in 2008 to check students’ work against content available online as well as other writing previously submitted to the site. “With access to billions of Internet source documents, students can cut-and-paste entire written passages in seconds,” according to the website. “Turnitin’s OriginalityCheck helps instructors check students’ work for improper citation or potential plagiarism by comparing it against the world’s most accurate text comparison database.”

Many teachers, particularly from English, social studies and science departments who used to spend time double-checking for sources students might have used to falsify their work, welcome the help. “It’s hard to hide from this program,” Ritter said. “Plagiarizing in a way to make it look clean would be more work than just writing the piece on your own.”

Besides searching the Internet for sites that students may have plagiarized from, Turnitin keeps track of all essays ever submitted to its database, so work from other students or from Lowell graduates can also be flagged for dishonesty.

Although the school pays for a school-wide license, not all teachers use Turnitin, and so plagiarism may still go undetected in some cases, according to Ritter. He hopes to work toward integrating the Web service into all English classes at Lowell, and that more teachers schoolwide incorporate it into their practice.

Ritter acknowledged the possible use of in-class essays as a method to discourage dishonesty, but said that while they are valuable exercises, the standard take-home analytical essay is a skill that all students must learn. The new plagiarism policy and Turnitin, he says, make him confident that students will submit their own work, regardless of the availability of online analysis.

Cheating: An Underside of School Culture

While new technologies have recently uncovered high levels of plagiarism, cheating has been an issue impacting the school’s academic atmosphere for much longer. Students, faced with pressure to perform well and the temptation of quick and easy ways to cheat, may turn to academic dishonesty as a way to stay afloat.

According to the results of January 2011’s Student Body Council survey on stress and its impact on students, Lowell students are no exception. Only a slim 7 percent of seniors, 15 percent of juniors, 20 percent of sophomores and 37 percent of freshmen said they had never copied homework or cheated on tests. SBC gave the survey to all students during their English classes and based its results on 100 randomly selected from each grade.

Currently, instances of academic dishonesty are dealt with according to the official academic honesty policy, which is attached to a packet on student behavior that incoming freshmen sign. The policy outlines the consequences of cheating on a test or homework. The severity of punishment depends on the student’s past record, and with each successive instance of academic dishonesty the repercussions become more serious.

One student believes that the problem results from a lack of enforcement on the part of teachers. “All teachers say that they’ll give you a zero and a parent conference if you get caught, but most teachers just give you a warning or do nothing at all,” a student who requested anonymity said.

Another student spoke of how the pressure at Lowell changed the student’s views on acceptable behavior. “In middle school I was totally against cheating,” the student, who requested anonymity, said. “But at Lowell, I work so hard but I’m still in danger of getting B’s, because of those few assignments I just couldn’t get done or a couple of unfair tests. So now I copy some work and occasionally cheat because I have to get an A.”

A third student agrees that the high pressure at Lowell exacerbates the problem. “Lowell has created an atmosphere in which students have lost their passion for learning and replaced it for a perfect-grades-no-matter-how-I-get-them mentality,” sophomore Mia Kalo said.

While math teacher Wilson Sinn acknowledged that the competitive atmosphere at Lowell might accentuate the problem, he attributed the levels of academic dishonesty to an overall decline in ethics. “It’s not just a teenage phenomenon, but part of an entirely new culture,” he said. “We cheat from the bankers all the way down to the students.”

Some students assert they cheat in selected classes because they feel that the morality of cheating depends on their commitment to the subject or assignment. “I will never be a chemist, nor will I ever develop a sudden love for the subject. So I don’t feel guilty copying the homework,” a fourth student, who requested anonymity, said.

The same student who opined that there was little teacher enforcement also felt that being dishonest in less enjoyable classes was more acceptable. “I do so much busy work that is completely useless, so I have no problem cheating in classes that have no value to me,” a student who requested anonymity said. The student explained that more involved assignments would impact the inclination to falsify work. “I’d prefer more projects and interactive learning.”

In addition to academic pressure, the modern student must constantly compete with the temptation that, in today’s world of spontaneous information transfer, the answer could be just a couple of clicks, texts or taps away. According to a May 2010 survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 82 percent of Americans 13 and over have a cell phone, and 38 percent of mobile phone users use their phones to access the Internet. The survey also stated that 54 percent of teens text daily on their phones.

A different student spoke of a scenario where a group of students decided to take advantage of being allowed to use cell phones, in place of calculators, on a final exam. “We were set up in rows and beforehand about 15 people agreed to text each other the answers,” the student who requested anonymity said. “The teacher walked by my desk several times, and failed to see the ‘one new message’ sign flashing on my ‘calculator’. It was basically a group final.”

Some may have heard of the saying “When you cheat you are only cheating yourself.” In reality, dishonest students also negatively impact their teachers due to their difficulty of dealing with students who break the academic honesty contract. Honest students also suffer side effects.

Some teachers may make changes to their classes that have unfortunate unintended consequences. “I don’t give take-home tests anymore, because I gave one two years ago where at least 30 percent of my students had the answers from the other test version,” physics teacher Bryan Cooley said. “All students have now lost the opportunity for that kind of test.”

Many teachers attempt to discourage students from sharing information about tests with classmates in later periods by penalizing the whole class if there is a discrepancy between its average score and that of the later class. “I always curve to the higher score,” Sinn said. “So if the later class scores much higher, the kids in the earlier class do not get as much benefit from the curve.”

Biology teacher Theodore Johnson said that although he sometimes catches students cheating, he tries not to let it affect his classes. “It can be a huge stress for the teacher to try and figure out which students are cheating, and it’s unfair to honest students to have the teacher not trust you,” he said. “I just figure that you will be caught and pay the price eventually. You can’t cheat your whole life.”

A version of this article first appeared in the Jan. 27, 2012 print edition of The Lowell.