Plagiarism

Directions: Drawing from the information presented below, set out an argument
that conveys your attitude about plagiarism. Use a minimum of two of the pieces
of information as part of your argument. Feel free to add other premises, as
needed to bolster your argument:

For $136 [and going to one of the many Web sites selling term papers] a frantic high
school or college student can download a 19-page paper on “Woodrow Wilson and
Franklin Roosevelt.” It can be faxed for $9.50 or delivered overnight for $15. Some
sites, however, are free of charge. Schoolsucks.com, for example, serves as a type of portal
for the disgruntled student, offering games, chats, and daily e-mails of free jokes. Visitors
are encouraged to post a paper of their own when they download one from the site.
Kenny Sahr—who started the site in 1996—says it now gets 10,000 hits per day with
600,000 people signed up for the daily e-mails.

Mr. Sahr insists he has no qualms about what he does, and calls it the students’ responsibility
to use the papers for research only, especially because he gives no guarantee of quality.
“Those papers are written by students; then we put them there. But we’re not rating
them, we’re not telling you these are good papers. In other words, if someone turns in a
bad paper, well, it’s not our problem.” (Kimberly Chase, “Teachers Fight against Internet
Plagiarism,” Christian Science Monitor, www.csmonitor.com, 2 Mar 2004)