Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture

Volume 5, Number 2, 2005 Duke University Press

275
Calling Off the Hounds:
Technology and the Visibility
of Plagiarism
James P. Purdy
Harvards much publicized decision in summer 2003 to deny admission to
Blair Hornstine because of allegations of plagiarism (Green and Russell 2003;
Kantrowitz and Scelfo 2003) reminds those of us in English studies not only
of the negative social stigma accompanying accusations of plagiarism, but also
of the drastic actions academic institutions will take to avoid being labeled
as tolerating plagiarismor any behavior closely akin to it. Hornstine, who
had already been accepted to Harvard, was accused of having information
from sources that was not properly attributed in fve articles published
in Cherry Hill, New Jerseys Courier-Post, including sections copied from
President Bill Clinton and Supreme Court justices William Brennan and
Potter Stewart (Osenenko 2003: n.p.). Harvard revoked admission because
Hornstines actions were viewed as behavior that brings into question . . .
honesty, maturity, or moral character (Green and Russell 2003).
1
Without a
doubt, plagiarism continues to be fraught with concerns ethical and moral.
Now we must add technological. New technologies, such as the Inter-
net, heralded simultaneously as promoting (e.g., see Kitalong 1998; DeVoss
and Rosati 2002; Laird 2003) and thwarting (e.g., see Culwin and Lancaster
2000; Braumoeller and Gaines 2001) plagiarism, continue to keep concerns
surrounding plagiarism in the forefront of the collective academic psyche.
While plagiarism has arguably always been a function of technologythat
276 Pedagogy
is, plagiarizers could plagiarize only in ways the available technologies per-
mittedthese new technologies increase the visibility of plagiarism, allow-
ing interested parties to quickly and easily trace documents to those using
similar language. As a result, writing teachers are more aware of plagiarism.
In other words, if plagiarism is easier to commit because of the Internet, it
is also easier to catch because of the Internet. We in English studies must,
therefore, now think about plagiarism in light of technology. Just as Lisa
Gitelman (1999: 119) argues that the phonograph and associated record-
ing technology troubled nineteenth-century visual norms of intellectual
property, so too do new media technologies trouble the existing standards
of plagiarism and intellectual property that rely on visual evidence. Treat-
ment of intellectual property and plagiarism, however, does not necessarily
evolve with this changing technology. As Gitelman notes, typing and related
nineteenth-century literacy practices facilitated by new technologies, such
as the typewriter and phonograph, were characterized by anxiety about
visuality and textual evidence (211). Typewriters were thought to make
writingand error, because typewriters did not initially allow for mistakes
to be correctedmore visible. They substantiated the presence of error and
their own status as writing machines through the text they produced, that is,
what people could see (211). New-media technology is still surrounded by
this anxietylargely because our standards of evidence still depend on visual
proof. Little seems to have changed.
Plagiarism detection services that rely on the Internet allow instruc-
tors to search for this visual proof, to test their students papers to determine
if they include language copied directly from other sources. As Rebecca
Moore Howard (forthcoming: 5) explains, the logic of these services is if
unethical writers have access to text online and plagiarize from it, then gate-
keeping teachers can also access the plagiarized text and catch the ofenders.
Undoubtedly, many diferent services exist for instructors to tailor to their
individual needs. In his 2001 report for Britains Joint Information Systems
Committee (JISC), Gill Chester (2003) identifes three types of plagiarism
tested by detection services: cut and paste, paper mills, and collusion. Pla-
giarism detection services, in other words, can test if students copied text
from Web sites, purchased papers from online paper mills, or copied text
from other students. These services test for the frst two types of plagiarism
by comparing submitted papers against texts available via the Internet and
test for the latter by comparing submitted papers against a database of student
papers established by the instructor. Examples of the former services include
EduTie,
2
Essay Verifcation Engine (EVE2), and Turnitin. Examples of the
Purdy Calling Of the Hounds 277
latter services include CopyCatch, Glatt, and WordCHECK. Some services,
such as EVE2 and CopyCatch, download onto the users computer, while
others, such as EduTie and Turnitin, operate from remote servers. This
distinction becomes signifcant when considering the accessibility of student
papers submitted to be tested.
These technologies arguably have increased the fervor to eradicate
plagiarismor at least to capture and punish those who plagiarize. A 29 April
2004 Primetime Thursday special (Cheaters Amok) largely devoted to the
use of plagiarism detection services, specifcally TurnItIn, to stop plagiarism
serves as a case in point. The ability to detect plagiarism remains a priority
for academic institutions, and the advent of plagiarism detection software
seemingly provides the solution that many are seeking.
Sleuthing and Hunting: Caught in the Discourse of Plagiarism
The lead article in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaigns College
of Liberal Arts and Sciences newsletter (LAS News, Spring 2003) exempli-
fes this heightened desire to apprehend plagiarists. The article, by Andrea
Lynn, advances the importance of combating plagiarism in the classroom
and advocates the use of plagiarism detection software, specifcally EVE2, as
one of the new weapons to parry plagiarism (1). At the outset the articles
discussion of plagiarism is couched in terms of violence and struggle, and the
work of the instructor is framed as combative and aggressive.
Such discourse about plagiarism, considered along with that mobi-
lized by plagiarism detection software, makes it unclear whether the classroom
is a United Nations summit or a nineteenth-century crime novel. EVE2, for
instance, has a settable search function named Call of the hounds when. . . .
The word choice here conjures images of the classic fox huntmobs of hunt-
ers on horseback galloping after dogs hot on the trail of their next kill. The
use of plagiarism detection software, in other words, becomes a hunt for prey.
This phrasing also positions the student as a wily and cunning trickster (the
mythological image of the fox) and the instructor as a hunter out for the kill.
While the former sadly may be true, we hope the latter never is. Moreover,
this word choice also suggests an elite class chasing after lower creatures for
sport. The pursuit of plagiarism becomes a game in which instructors seek
to entrap students with a triumphant Aha! Ive got you! As in the classic
presentation of the private investigator or police of cer at work, the criminal
is caught red-handed in the glare of a fashlight. Instructors using plagiarism
detection technology likewise seek to make visible students acts of transgres-
sion. The goal here is far from pedagogical. Instructors, of course, often do
278 Pedagogy
not use these services with malicious intent, but the services as marketed do
not lend themselves to efective pedagogy.
The aforementioned LAS News article, which ofers recommenda-
tions based on Bear Braumoeller and Brian Gainess 2001 study comparing
simply warning students not to plagiarize with telling them their papers
will be run through a plagiarism detection service, prompted action by the
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). LAS administration asked the Center for Writ-
ing Studies (the center), a cross-disciplinary academic unit devoted to the
research and teaching of composition and rhetoric, to recommend a plagia-
rism detection service for use by instructors in identifying plagiarized work.
The results of the investigation to determine which service would be most
suitable reveal that these fee-based services appear to cause more problems
than they solve. They raise not only ethical concerns, but also questions
about their efectiveness as compared to free and readily available online
search engines. Furthermore, plagiarism detection services direct our atten-
tion to the larger concerns of the role of the instructor and the defnition of
plagiarism in an academic environment where available technology both
changes the writing practices of students and makes some of these practices,
particularly those associated with plagiarism, more visible. In what follows,
I detail the study and its results within the context of plagiarism scholarship
to explore how new technologies afect our understanding of plagiarism and
writing instruction.
Testing the Testers: Evaluating the Performance of Plagiarism
Detection Software
Charged by LAS with the task of studying plagiarism detection services, with
primary concern centering on Internet plagiarism, the center frst established
minimum requirements for any service suggested: the service had to search
Internet sites and paper mills and the service could not maintain submitted
papers in an internal database. Keeping such papers is a violation of students
intellectual property rights because students neither agree that their course
papers be accessible to anyone on the Internet nor, even more disturbing,
consent that their papers be used for proft. (While the former problem might
be resolved by having students sign a waiver granting permission that their
papers be submitted to the Web, the second problem is more complicated
and not so easily solved.) Moreover, in their study of plagiarism detection
services, Braumoeller and Gaines (2001) indicate that UIUC would not allow
Purdy Calling Of the Hounds 279
them to test services that kept copies of papers precisely because students
essays are their own property. In this way, the university itself has taken a
stand against services that retain student papers.
Elsewhere Andrea L. Foster (2002) and Rebecca Moore Howard
(1995, 2000) discuss at greater length these ethical and moral concerns, as
they apply to the use of plagiarism detection services and to the defnition
of plagiarism itself, respectively. Foster (2002: A37) addresses how some
college lawyers now advise institutions that plagiarism detection services
that maintain copies of submitted student papers, specifcally Turnitin, not
only potentially violate students copyrights on their written work, but also
violate their privacy since students often do not grant consent that their work
be copied. She cites Howard as arguing that students can also protest the
submission of their papers to plagiarism detection services under the Family
Educational Rights and Privacy Act because it prohibits institutions of higher
education from disclosing personal information about students without stu-
dents prior consent.
Howard (1995: 793), carrying these concerns to defnitions of pla-
giarism itself, explores how writing studies often construct plagiarism as
immoral or criminal (see also Howard 2000). She contends, however, that
morality is not a necessary component of plagiarism as students may pla-
giarize for positive reasons (79697). She addresses how when students do
what she calls patchwritingwriting passages that are not copied exactly
but that have nevertheless been borrowed from another source, with some
changes, a behavior closely allied with plagiarismthey can come to under-
stand what was previously unfamiliar material (799). In other words, students
who patchwrite do not plagiarize to cheat; they plagiarize because they lack
confdence that they understand the material with which they are working.
She ultimately argues that student writing be treated with the same respect
as professional writing (796). Howard asks us, above all, to regard and value
students as writers.
A 2003 case at McGill University illustrates such concerns regarding
student copyright and privacy as well as another perspective on this issue of
respect. Jesse Rosenfeld, a student at McGill, successfully argued his right
to decline to submit his assignments to Turnitin. Initially, after refusing to
submit his papers to the service for testing, Rosenfeld received zeros for the
assignments. After two months of appeals, however, the professor who origi-
nally failed the papers agreed to grade them without requiring that they be
submitted. Rosenfelds objections to submitting to Turnitin were precisely
280 Pedagogy
how such a process views students and student work. He asserted, frankly
Im ofended that the university is violating students rights by using a device
that presumes students are guilty of plagiarism until proven innocent and is
sponsoring a service that uses students work to boost the companys prof-
its (Brown 2004). Rosenfelds case and his eventual success at having the
original decision of the university reversed underscore the validity and weight
of these objections. It is of note here that these ethical concerns continue to
circulate and invalidated the use of several plagiarism detection services for
the purposes of my study.
For the study, I researched eight plagiarism detection services follow-
ing the requirements established by the center and compared them based on
the following criteria: type of testing, method of testing, treatment of papers,
cost, and timeliness of reports. Only two services from this list, EduTie
3
and
EVE2, met the aforementioned requirements; thus, they were selected to be
tested for how efectively they traced plagiarized documents to their original
sources. (Identifying the tested documents as plagiarized simply indicates
that these documents were copied from online sources to mimic the process
of plagiarizing online. This designation does not necessarily indicate that the
original documents themselves were plagiarized. In fact, only one document
tested was known to have been plagiarized.) Also selected for the study was
the search engine Google to test whether the fee-based services performed
more efectively than a free online search engine. Though Google is not
marketed as a plagiarism detection service, its comprehensive Web search
capabilities allow it to function as one. Other search engines might serve the
same function.
In June 2003 I ran fve documents through each plagiarism detection
service, as well as segments of these documents through Google. These doc-
uments comprise a variety of subject areas and document types to represent
the range of sources from which writers might plagiarize. To test the types of
documents students might hand in as part of their academic course work, the
frst two documents include examples of texts representative of the various
discourse communities in the university environment. Documents for tests
3, 4, and 5 are examples of texts published by professionals to test how the
plagiarism detection services and Google respond to such documents. The
tested documents are described in table 1.
The methodology used for testing each of these documents difered
slightly with each service, based on the services diferent technical capabili-
ties. The procedures followed are summarized in table 2.
The following discussion of results centers on whether the tested ser-
Purdy Calling Of the Hounds 281
vices traced the submitted documents to their online sources and, for EVE2
and EduTie, to what extent (i.e., what percentage of ) these documents were
considered plagiarizednoting that all, except the student paper in test 2 that
had only slight variations from its online source, were exact copies of online
sources. In what follows I also address what online sources the submitted
documents were traced to and consider the time required for each test. The
report submitted to LAS not only outlined the performance of each service
and compared the results across services, but also included an annotated list
of resources on plagiarism for instructors interested in learning more about
plagiarism.
Table 1. Tested Documents
Test Document Description
1 Plagiarized document A document, created specifcally for the purposes of this
compilation study, with four sections, each copied from an online
document in a diferent subject area:
section 1, the social sciences: a paper from the
Electronic References online paper mill about the
relationship between media and violence
section 2, the biological sciences: a scientifc report on
the relationship between hypothyroidism and prolactin
levels
section 3, engineering: an article published in the
International Journal of Applied Electromagnetics
section 4, literature: an analysis of book 1 of Homers
The Iliad provided by GradeSaver
2 Sexual harassment The frst paragraph of a paper on sexual harassment
paper from online turned in by a student in a frst-year composition course.
paper mill The student presumably bought the paper from the
Electronic References online paper mill. The student
version used for the test difers slightly from the Electronic
References version (i.e., the student added and deleted a
few words).
3 President letter A letter from the president of the University of Illinois
4 Braumoeller and The introduction, background, and conclusions sections
Gaines article from Braumoeller and Gainess article Actions Do Speak
Louder than Words: Deterring Plagiarism with the Use of
Plagiarism-Detection Software
5 UIUC plagiarism policy UIUCs Academic Integrity Policy for All Students,
the universitys of cial policy on plagiarism (without
endnotes)
282 Pedagogy
Free versus Fee: Googles Capabilities as a Plagiarism Detection Service
Based on the results of the tests, I suggested the center not recommend that
LAS advocate the purchase of EduTie, EVE2, or any such plagiarism detec-
tion service. While EduTie performed the best of all services tested, neither
it nor EVE2 performed appreciably better than Google. Because Google, a
free service for end users, generally performed on par with these fee-based
services, there is no obvious advantage in purchasing them. Moreover, these
fee-based services appear to cause more problems than they solve. The results
of the tests are summarized in table 3.
Table 2. Test Methodology
Service Procedure Reason
EduTie Each document was run once. Searches are not customizable.
EVE2 Each document was run twice: In EVE2 there are several user options.
For the frst run, the default Users can set the search type to quick,
options were used: search medium, or full strength and can set the
type was set as medium option Call of the hounds when . . . to any
and Call of the hounds whole number from 0100 percent. The
when . . . was set at 80 former determines the rigor of the test; that
percent.
4
is, how many Web sites are examined and in
For the second run, what depth, and the latter determines at what
documents for tests 1, 2, 3, percentage of plagiarism the search stops;
and 5 were rerun (EVE2 that is, when the selected percentage of a
traced the document for submitted document is determined to be
test 4 directly to its online plagiarized, the search ceases.
source and designated it as
100 percent plagiarized on
medium), upgrading the
search type to full strength
to check whether EVE2
would determine the
documents to be 100
percent plagiarized on a
stronger setting.
Google The frst ten words of a section of Google allows a user to type in only ten
a plagiarized document were words for a search; thus, the entire
entered for a search. For tests 1, 4, documents were not searched.
and 5, the frst ten words of the
multiple sections of each of the
documents were tested.
Purdy Calling Of the Hounds 283
When Google found source sites, it found them within its frst ten
results fve out of seven times, challenging the notion that using an online
search engine is necessarily a more time-consuming endeavor than using pla-
giarism detection software. For the other two, section 4 of the test 1 document
and the test 4 document, Google found the sources on the thirtieth and ff-
teenth entries, respectively. Although these results indicate that users would
have to read through many search results before fnding the correct source, it
is worth noting that results from the medium-strength test and full-strength
test runs on EVE2 were available after approximately ffty minutes and two
hours and ffteen minutes, respectively, and results for EduTie were available
after approximately twenty-four hours. Searches on Google provide nearly
instantaneous results; thus, using Google can ultimately yield faster results,
as instructors can begin checking sites within seconds. For this study Google
traced plagiarized documents to their online sources more quickly for the
tests, even counting the time it took to read through the search result entries.
In the end, all services require instructors to check the Web sites provided as
results to ensure they match the paper submitted for the test.
Especially notable in considering the results of this study is that
other studies of plagiarism detection services do not consider online search
engines. Sources that argue for the value of plagiarism detection software
Table 3. Comparison of Results across Services
Test EduTie EVE2 Google
1 Sources found for Sources found for Sources found for sections 1,
sections 1, 2, and 4, not sections 1, 2, and 4, not 2, and 4, not for section 3
for section 3; plagiarism for section 3; plagiarism
score 100 percent score 100 percent
2 Source found; plagiarism Paper found at paper Source found
score 84 percent mills other than the
source suspected to be
copied from; plagiarism
score 18.85 percent
3 Source found; plagiarism Source not found Source found
score 100 percent
4 Source found; plagiarism Source found; plagiarism Source found on search of
score 100 percent score 100 percent conclusions section
5 Source found; plagiarism Closely related sites Closely related sites found,
score 100 percent found, but not the but not the original source
original source
284 Pedagogy
(e.g., Culwin and Lancaster 2000; Braumoeller and Gaines 2001; Gillis and
Rockwell-Kincanon 2002) typically do not consider the potential of free
search engines to provide comparable benefts to plagiarism detection soft-
ware. Based on this study, such search engines, namely Google, yield benefts
similar to the fee-based services. Even Braumoeller and Gaines (2001) turned
to an Internet search engine to track down an article that was particularly
dif cult to fnd in their study of EVE2, suggesting that the Internet search
engine proved more efective than EVE2 in this instance. Why, then, has
scholarship advocating the use of plagiarism detection services not addressed
free search engines?
Serving the Hand that Feeds You: A Potential Link between Plagiarism
Detection Services and Online Paper Mills
After completing the tests I discovered that EduTie maintains copies of
submitted papers on their server, whichthough they claim these papers
are accessible only to the submitting institutionis an intellectual property
concern. An even greater concern, however, is elaborated in Jefrey Youngs
March 2002 Chronicle of Higher Education article, which raises questions
about EduTies relationship with online paper mills. Young alleges that Edu-
Tie and PlagiServe, at the time a less comprehensive version of EduTie with
the same parent company, have a business relationship with some online
paper mills, which he suggests indicates these services are secretly selling
the very papers that they claim to check (2002). Young traced the name of
Oleksiy Shevchenko, a prominent of cial with EduTie and PlagiServe, to
Cyber Breeze Networks, a company that operates several online paper mills:
www.mightystudents.com, www.essaymill.com, and www.essaysonfle.com.
While EduTie vehemently denies the charge that it is connected to any online
paper mills, the possibility of such a connection is still troubling. This alle-
gation raises additional questions about the appropriateness of EduTie as
a plagiarism detection service, reinforcing that an endorsement of such a
service would potentially risk, even if indirectly, supporting the existence of
such paper-selling services.
The Weakness of Full Strength: Concerns over Consistency and
Functionality of Multiple Runs of EVE2
While EVE2 does not raise the same ethical concerns as EduTie, EVE2s
performance raises other functional concerns. EVE2s performance across
multiple runs, though consistent overall, still shows disconcerting inconsis-
tencies in the Web sites identifed as potential sources. Although the results
Purdy Calling Of the Hounds 285
of the medium- and full-strength runs of EVE2 were not markedly difer-
ent, the program nevertheless computed difering percentages of plagiarism
and referenced additional and/or diferent Web sites. For the frst two tests,
the percentages of the documents determined to be plagiarized on the full-
strength test are lower than those from the medium test (92.18 percent and
15.78 percent versus 100 percent and 18.85 percent, respectively); thus, when
run at full strength EVE2 found a lesser percentage of these documents to be
plagiarized, even though all (except the test 2 document) were copied word
for word from their online sources. In other words, they were 100 percent pla-
giarized. So on full strength, EVE2 became less accurate in its determination
of the amount of the documents that was plagiarized. The 100-percent value
returned on the medium test, however, is also problematic. EVE2 (like Edu-
Tie) labeled the document from test 1 as 100 percent plagiarized, though it
did not trace the third section to any Web sites. The amount of the document
labeled as plagiarized, therefore, does not refect the actual results provided
by EVE2. EVE2 did not fnd the third section to be plagiarized: it did not
trace this section to its online source, so its designation of the document as
100 percent plagiarized does not coincide with EVE2s actual performance.
The Web sites EVE2 returned as results were also sometimes quite
diferent on multiple runs, particularly for the test 5 document. On full
strength EVE2 traced the UIUC plagiarism policy to seven Web sites, only
one the same as on the medium test (see below for more details). Addition-
ally, on full strength EVE2 traced the test 2 document to one of the same Web
sites as on medium, but to only that source, while medium traced it to three
potential sources. What remained consistent, however, was that EVE2 was
still unable to trace to their online sources section 3 of the test 1 document
(the section on electromagnetics) and the University of Illinois president letter
for test 3. More surprising, on the full-strength test EVE2 actually performed
worse than on the medium test. On full strength EVE2 did not trace section
1 of the test 1 document to any Web site, whereas it did trace this section to
the Academic Library online paper mill on medium. For the purposes of this
study, then, increasing EVE2s testing strength did not yield more accurate
results.
Also of particular note, both in terms of difering performance on
multiple tests and in terms of the content of the test 5 document, on the full-
strength test EVE2 traced UIUCs plagiarism policy to the plagiarism or
academic integrity policies of several other universities, including Elmhurst
College; California State University at Northridge; and Rutgers University at
New Brunswick, which acknowledges that some of its material is drawn from
286 Pedagogy
Northwestern University. On the medium test, EVE2 traced UIUCs plagia-
rism policy to Rogers State University in Oklahoma. Even more fascinating,
EVE2 determined the amount of UIUCs plagiarism policy to be plagiarized
as 100 percent, which means that, according to EVE2, this document on
plagiarism is itself 100 percent plagiarized. In his May 2003 Chronicle of
Higher Education article, Dan Carnevale addresses a similarly provocative
discovery: an article from Syllabus magazine written about online plagia-
rism appears to have been plagiarized from an online journal article, even if
inadvertently. I am not arguing that UIUCs plagiarism policy is plagiarized.
Instead I wish to point out that EVE2 suggests this possibility, which both
draws attention to the potential for unintentional and perhaps inevitable
borrowing of language,
6
especially at the institutional level, and, even more
important, calls into question the veracity of the results of plagiarism detec-
tion services.
7
Before we advocate the use of plagiarism detection technology to
check if our students papers are plagiarized, we should consider how these
services treat the very policies that compel some people to use them. Their
results should not be considered ironclad proof for accusation. We must pay
careful attention to what these services designate as plagiarized because the
technology is fallible. As with any technology, plagiarism detection technol-
ogy requires human application and interpretation. As Gail E. Hawisher
and Cynthia L. Selfe (1991: 64) remind us, positive change in the classroom
requires human efort, not new technology. Plagiarism detection technology
is not the solution to eradicating plagiarism. Thoughtful pedagogy address-
ing plagiarism is.
Implications for Dening Plagiarism and the Role of the Instructor
While blatant and intentional cheating should certainly be prevented and
punished, the above results illustrate a need to revise our notions of plagia-
rism. Concerns of plagiarism are often disproportionately focused on stu-
dents, positing that they are the only group (or at least the group most) guilty
of plagiarism. Brian Martin (1994: 3840) challenges such a view, exploring
how current conceptions of plagiarism ignore what he calls institutionalized
plagiarism, which includes ghostwriting, honorary authorship, and attribu-
tion of authorship to higher of cials in bureaucracies rather than the more
novice workers who actually do the writing. He addresses how discussions
of plagiarism nearly always focus on what he calls competitive plagiarism,
which includes word-for-word plagiarism, paraphrasing plagiarism, plagia-
rism of secondary sources, plagiarism of the form of a source, and plagiarism
Purdy Calling Of the Hounds 287
of authorship (3738)that is, the types of plagiarism of which students
are accused. For Martin such plagiarism is often inadvertent and ultimately
less serious than institutionalized plagiarism, which he argues is pervasive
and accepted (38), even though it is more objectionable since it reinforces
existing problematic power structures and reduces the accountability of sub-
ordinates who actually do the work because their work goes unrecognized
(4042). Andrea Abernethy Lunsford (1999: 532) extends Martins claim here
to address the problems of corporate entities now assum[ing] the mantle
of the author. She expresses alarm that large corporations now claim the
rights of single authorsnot only for the reasons Martin addresses, but also
because such corporations come to reap the fnancial rewards that are due
individuals and this trend has resulted in a kind of gold-rush mentality to
copyright and patent everything under the sun.
The coverage of Blair Hornstines case illustrates Martins point.
Though Hornstine is accused of plagiarizing President Bill Clintons 17
November 2000 Thanksgiving Proclamation, for example, nowhere in arti-
cles covering this allegation is it addressed that Clinton likely did not write
his own Thanksgiving Proclamation; speechwriters prepared it. In Martins
terms, Hornstines commission of competitive plagiarism is seen as more
egregious than Clintons commission of institutionalized plagiarism. For
Martin plagiarism is seemingly above all a hierarchical issue: plagiarism is
acceptable when it harms subordinates or benefts superiors but unaccept-
able when it benefts subordinates or hurts superiors. From this perspective
there exists a double standard surrounding plagiarism, one imbricated in
a hierarchical society that situates students as a subordinate lower class.
Ultimately, Martin proposes less attention be paid to competitive plagiarism
and more attention be paid to institutionalized plagiarism, thus reminding
us that accusations of plagiarism leveled at students might sometimes refect
writing practices espoused by professionals and, therefore, should be cause
for refection.
Gitelmans (1999: 74) rhetorical analysis of what she calls Thomas
Edisons idea letters, letters sent to Edison to ofer suggestions and/or ask
for help in developing an idea into an invention, provides further insight into
current conceptualizations of plagiarism around which students are pun-
ished. She focuses on how authors of these letters treat an idea as a possess-
able entity, something one has or owns: Writers perceived ideas as property,
private and personal, with little sense of collectivity (81). The same might
be said of higher educations treatment of ideas today. This denial of collec-
tivity still exists within academia (especially the humanities), where written
288 Pedagogy
papersparticularly those with the most signifcance (e.g., tenure publica-
tions, dissertations, theses)must have single authors, refecting a belief
that only one person can lay claim to and own the ideas in a paper.
8
Ideas are
framed as necessarily private and personal, the possession of a sole author.
This perspective seems somewhat ironic, if not disjunctive, given that many
of us in our composition and literature classes require students to complete
peer reviews for their papers to help them further develop their ideas. Lisa
Ede and Andrea Lunsford (1990) explore at length the role of collabora-
tive authorship in academia (and elsewhere) in their Singular Texts/Plural
Authors. They conclude their preface by declaring, Our ability to author
anything at all is anchored in our experiences with others (xii). This conclu-
sion is seemingly lost in prominent conceptions of plagiarism.
Such a view of the singular ownership of ideas is clearly illustrated in
the response displayed by clicking on one of the Web sites EduTie returned
as a result for the test 2 document, the plagiarized student paper. EduTie
returned the address lugovkyys@lakeland.edu (though this looks like an
e-mail address, it was returned as a Web link, perhaps another problematic
quirk of the program) as the source for the third sentence of the test 2 docu-
ment, but access to this source was denied. Clicking on this link brought a
page displaying the message You do NOT own this paper! Belief in the
individual ownership of ideas as recorded in written documents clearly con-
tinues to predominate.
Yet the documents advancing and enforcing this belief are themselves
collaboratively authored. Gitelman (1999: 111) addresses the somewhat ironic
fact that a patent document, a foundational document in establishing current
conceptions of plagiarism, does not have just one author. Rather, the inventor,
his or her attorney, and the patent of ce itself all author the patent document.
The actual authorship of the patent document belies the very logic of singular
authorship on which it is based. Plagiarism detection software operates in
much the same way. While purportedly seeking to combat collaborative
authorship, plagiarism detection software itself depends on such collabora-
tive authorship. In fact, for those services that maintain submitted student
papers on a remote server, the very textual foundation that allows these ser-
vices to operate has multiple authors. Thus, in practice, these services engage
in a version of the very behavior they claim to abhor and combat.
For Karla Saari Kitalong (1998: 255) the uncritical application of
the print-oriented construct of plagiarism to online spaces is particularly
problematic. Following Pierre Bourdieu, she conceptualizes plagiarism as
symbolic violence because it involves the perpetrator falsely appropriating
Purdy Calling Of the Hounds 289
someone elses linguistic capital, which may in turn lead to social and/or cul-
tural capital (25657) (in the example she cites, a journalism student named
Dave copies the home page of Craig to turn in for a course assignmentthat
is, to achieve a certain form of cultural capital: a grade). At the same time,
she stresses that the standard academic notion of plagiarism clashes (253)
with online writing spaces that must allow for uncertainty and change in
conceptions of writing (262). Dnielle DeVoss and Annette C. Rosati (2002:
196) further develop this point that online writing spaces change the defni-
tion of text by emphasizing how online texts include sound and integrate
visuals in ways that allow for more complex and fragmented presentation
of connections, topics, and representations within richly layered systems.
So while new technologies are changing what constitutes text, some people
are employing these new technologies to hold texts to intellectual property
standards that rely on print-based defnitions of text. This changing defni-
tion of textuality does not mean that attributing authorship no longer mat-
ters and that multimedia texts are plunderable at will, but it does mean that
notions of plagiarism and intellectual property need to evolve along with this
technology.
Kitalong (1998: 260) cautions against responding to the violence
of plagiarism with more violence. For her, the unquestioned application of
print-based plagiarism doxa to online spaces (260) and use of the Internet
to quickly, invisibly, and oppressively identify and punish suspected plagia-
rizers (259) enact such violence, as both reinforce polarized student/teacher
relationships that cast teachers as uncoverers and punishers of plagiarism and
place students on the defensive (260). The use of online plagiarism detec-
tion services would seem to be an instance of the latter case. Thus, we might
carry Kitalongs application of symbolic violence not only to plagiarism, but
also to the use of plagiarism detection software.
Such refection on the use of plagiarism detection software to combat
certain constructs of plagiarism should also address how the use of pla-
giarism detection software changes the role of the instructor. To return to
the EVE2 function title Call of the hounds, the instructor becomes a
hunter or, in friendlier terms, a sleuth or private investigator. In their study,
Braumoeller and Gaines (2001) even thank a colleague for her impressive
sleuthing skills in tracking down an article on the Internet to determine that
a student had copied from sources listed in his or her bibliography. In this
way, the instructors goal becomes to fnd the elusive smoking gun. While
the role of sleuth might be appealing when applied to archival research, the
position is not appealing when applied to grading. In this role, instructors
290 Pedagogy
devote their time to fnding what is wrong with students papers, or, if you
will, to fnding the scene of the crime, rather than providing substantive,
constructive feedback. Focus shifts from the writing process to the investiga-
tion of the crime. Howard (2001) cogently addresses this issue in greater
detail. She advocates structuring classes and assignments to prevent plagia-
rism rather than spending time trying to catch it. For her the latter creates a
criminal-police relationship, where students are labeled as either criminals
or not and the complex and multiple meanings of plagiarism are ignored. She
insists the role of a teacher is to be a mentor, not a cop. I agree and would add
that neither is the role of a teacher aristocratic hunter or super sleuthunless
perhaps it is to hunt down the most efective pedagogical approach to issues
of plagiarism.
Clearly, instructors sometimes consult plagiarism detection services
with the best of intentions. They rightly want to make students responsible
writers by discouraging them from improperly using the work of others.
Those who market these fee-based services present them as easy solutions to
a dif cult problem, so it is understandable that teachers might be interested
in using them. As illustrated above, however, these plagiarism detection ser-
vices, when used uncritically and as often marketed, are ultimately damaging
to teaching and learning. Technology, of course, need not be detrimental to
writing instruction. Google and similar Internet search engines can be used
for productive pedagogical purposesfor example, to provide students with
rapid access to a large variety of sources on a particular topic. The number
and type of results Google searches return can also help students work to
narrow or broaden a research topic. Perhaps most germane to the discussion
here, such technology can assist students in learning how to incorporate
source material. For example, search services that provide brief abstracts
of results can provide models of efective (or inefective) summaries against
which students can compare their own summaries.
Conclusion: The (In)Visibility of Technology in Issues of Plagiarism
Hornstines response to the allegations against her is particularly instruc-
tive in emphasizing the now undeniable role of technology in plagiarism.
In responding to the Courier-Post editors note that she had not attributed
others language included in her articles, she explains: When fnalizing
my thoughts, I, like most every teenager who has use of a computer, cut and
pasted my ideas together. I erroneously thought the way I had submitted the
articles was appropriate. I now realize that I was mistaken. I was incorrect
in also thinking that news articles didnt require as strict citation scrutiny
Purdy Calling Of the Hounds 291
as most school assignments because there was no place for footnotes or end
notes (2003). While clearly primary here are issues of genre and appropriate
citation conventions, equally prevalent, I would argue, is the role of technol-
ogy. Hornstine connects her writing practices directly to her use of computer
technology, which allowed her to cut and paste her ideas together. How she
used the available technology played a crucial role in how she prepared her
articles and how she came to use outside sources. In this way, she illuminates
how plagiarism is a problem of technology. And she emphasizes that this
practice is followed by most every teenager who has use of a computer.
Hornstine is not alone in cutting and pasting from source to textprecisely
because word processing and Internet technologies facilitate or, as Hornstine
intimates, encourage this practice.
Computer technology has clearly become an integral part of the writ-
ing process, shaping how students compose and integrate sources. Because
of this foundational role, we must be careful, as Bertram C. Bruce and Mau-
reen P. Hogan (1998: 272) urge, that such technologies do not become so
enmeshed in daily experience that they disappear. Bruce and Hogan further
argue that teachers of literacy must consider how new technologies help to
reconstruct reading and writing processes for their students (271)including,
I would add, how such technologies make visible the practices associated
with plagiarism. So rather than panic that students are now rampantly plagia-
rizing at numbers never known before, we must take a step back to consider
the role the writing technologies they use play in their writing processes
and consider how we as teachersrather than hunters, police of cers, or
super sleuthscan pedagogically address these technologies. After all, isnt
our time better spent in the classroom discussing ways to integrate sources
beyond simply cutting and pasting from them and investigating the reasons
for academic citation conventions, rather than at the computer testing stu-
dent papers for unattributed language? Directing our attentions this way, of
course, is not a magic solution to end plagiarism, but doing so keeps us from
responding to plagiarism as an out-of-control plague
9
and keeps us focused
on its connection to technologyand on our role as teachers.
The Hornstine case once again exemplifes how responses to plagia-
rism rely on ways in which technology makes plagiaristic practices visible.
Hornstines reputed plagiarism was made visible by media coverage of her
lawsuit to protect her status as sole valedictorian of her high school. Thus
she, rather than the potentially many other teenagers who engage in the same
cut-and-paste writing practices and were admitted to Harvard, was punished.
A recent article in the New York Times indicates that 38 percent of undergrad-
292 Pedagogy
uate students from a survey of 18,000 students admitted to engaging in these
same cut-and-paste practices, taking material directly from Internet sources
(Rimer 2003). This statistic reminds us that Hornstine is likely not the only
student admitted to Harvard who cuts and pastes from the Internet. This
is not at all to say that intentional plagiarism should go unpunished or that
students now plagiarize more than in the past; as I am suggesting, available
technology, such as plagiarism detection services, now simply makes cases
of plagiarism more easily traceable and detectable. The larger, more crucial
issue is understanding what writing practices available technology enables
and considering what this technology makes visible so that we in English
studies can frame writing instruction around those practicesnot simply
engage in a quest to use existing technology to punish plagiarizers. We need
to be mindful of why we are unleashing the hounds in the frst place.
Notes
I am grateful to Debra Hawhee, Gail E. Hawisher, Peter Mortensen, and Paul Prior for their
invaluable feedback on the study and drafts of this article. I also wish to thank Amy Wan
and Jody Shipka for pointing me to sources that proved important for this article. Finally, I
am thankful to two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions.
1. It is particularly telling that this issue of plagiarism comes up at all in articles that are
really about a student suing to defend her position as sole valedictorian of her high
school. As Rebecca Moore Howard (2000: 47585) suggests in her discussion of
how plagiarism is constructed as a distinctly female violation, the fact that Hornstine
is a woman undoubtedly played a signifcant role in the media blitz surrounding
Hornstines reputed plagiarism and Harvards reaction to it. Furthermore, the shift
in coverage of Hornstine to accusations of plagiarism speaks to the tabloid appeal of
plagiarism and illustrates how plagiarism is often more about publicity than pedagogy.
Articles about the allegations of plagiarism against Hornstine even appeared in
international newspapers, including Londons Guardian (Sutherland 2003). Would
the story have been this popular had it just been about the valedictorian lawsuit?
2. EduTie no longer exists under this name. The services previously ofered by EduTie
are now (as of summer 2004) ofered by a service titled MyDropBox. Little appears
to have changed other than the name. This change in name is particularly interesting
given the allegations surrounding EduTies connection with online paper mills.
3. At the time the tests were run, it was unclear from its promotional materials whether
EduTie maintains students papers in any internal database. Assuming that it did
not, I tested this service. Correspondence received from EduTie dated 28 June 2003,
however, indicates that papers submitted to the service are maintained, albeit with
reputed limited accessibility: Submitted papers are maintained on the server, but
they are accessible only for the institution (or individual user) that submitted them.
Purdy Calling Of the Hounds 293
Also, documents submitted by an institution are checked against all prior submissions
of this institution (Lytvyn 2003, e-mail correspondence). Given this treatment
of submitted documents, which makes student papers accessible not only to the
submitting institution but also to computer systems administrators and company
personnel, the appropriateness of using EduTie as a plagiarism detection service is
questionable.
4. In practice, selecting this Call of the hounds when . . . value seemed to have no
noticeable efect on the search process. Some documents were still determined to be
100 percent plagiarized.
5. The results provided in table 3 are for the medium-strength test of EVE2 because they
represent the services best performance.
6. After all, Mikhail Bakhtin (1986: 8994) stresses that all utterancesincluding texts
are infuenced by all previous utterances that an author has encountered (and future
utterances that the author anticipates). From this perspective, repetition in future texts
of language from texts previously read is, to a certain extent, inevitable.
7. With all of its results, EVE2 appropriately provides the notice, You should always
check EVEs results carefully to make sure they are accurate. For results where the
amount of the document detected to be plagiarized is below 15 percent, the caveat
is even more emphatic: Because plagiarism on this paper is below 15 percent,
please check these results carefully to make sure plagiarism has in fact occurred.
Particularly interesting, though, is that the threshold for greater concern that a
document has actually been plagiarized is only 15 percent.
8. Andrea Lunsford (Lunsford et al. 1996) eloquently summarizes this issue when she
declares that in the academy, individual ownership of intellectual property is the key
to advancement.
9. See Howards Sexuality, Textuality: The Cultural Work of Plagiarism (2000) for
more on the connection between plagiarism and disease.
Works Cited
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1986. The Problem of Speech Genres. In Speech Genres and Other Late
Essays, ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, trans. Vern W. McGee, 60103.
Austin: University of Texas Press.
Braumoeller, Bear, and Brian Gaines. 2001. Actions Do Speak Louder than Words:
Deterring Plagiarism with the Use of Plagiarism-Detection Software. Political Science
Online, APSANet, December. www.apsanet.org/PS/dec01/braumoeller.cfm (accessed
11 June 2003).
Brown, Louise. 2004. McGill Teen Wins Battle over Online Cheat Check. Toronto Star,
13 February. www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/
Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1074208210446&call_pageid=968332188492
&col=96 (accessed 13 February 2004).
Bruce, Bertram C., and Maureen P. Hogan. 1998. The Disappearance of Technology:
Toward an Ecological Model of Literacy. In Handbook of Literacy and Technology:
Transformations in a Post-Typographic World, ed. David Reinking, Michael C.
294 Pedagogy
McKenna, Linda D. Labbo, and Ronald D. Kifer, 26981. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
Carnevale, Dan. 2003. Magazines Essay on Plagiarism Appears to Have Copied Parts
of Another. Chronicle of Higher Education, 28 May. chronicle.com/daily/2003/05/
2003052801t.htm (accessed 1 July 2003).
Cheaters Amok: A Crisis in Americas SchoolsHow Its Done and Why Its Happening.
2004. Primetime Thursday, 29 April. Narr. Charles Gibson, dir. George Paul, prod.
Shelley Ross, writ. Charles Gibson and Chris Whipple. ABC, WAND. Champaign,
IL.
Chester, Gill. 2003. Detection Technology. Joint Information Systems Committee. online
.northumbria.ac.uk/faculties/art/information_studies/Imri/JISCPAS/site/pubs_
detect_pilot.asp (accessed 10 June 2003).
Culwin, Fintan, and Thomas Lancaster. 2000. A Review of Electronic Services for
Plagiarism Detection in Student Submissions. www.ics.ltsn.ac.uk/pub/conf2000/
Papers/culwin.htm (accessed 11 June 2003).
DeVoss, Dnielle, and Annette C. Rosati. 2002. It Wasnt Me, Was It? Plagiarism and the
Web. Computers and Composition 19: 191203.
Ede, Lisa, and Andrea Lunsford. 1990. Singular Texts/Plural Authors: Perspectives on
Collaborative Writing. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Foster, Andrea L. 2002. Plagiarism-Detection Tool Creates Legal Quandary: When
Professors Send Students Papers to a Database, Are Copyrights Violated? Chronicle
of Higher Education, 17 May, A37.
Gillis, Theresa, and Janeanne Rockwell-Kincanon. 2002. From Download Your Workload
to the Evil House of Cheat: Cybercheating, Plagiarism, and Intellectual Property
Theft. Cybercheating: Online Northwest: Comparison of Detection Services, 29
August. www.wou.edu/provost/library/staf/kincanon/plagiarism/chart.htm (accessed
11 June 2003).
Gitelman, Lisa. 1999. Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in
the Edison Era. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Green, Elizabeth W., and J. Hale Russell. 2003. Harvard Takes Back Hornstine Admission
Ofer: Decision Follows Allegations of Plagiarism by Controversial Admit. Harvard
Crimson Online, 11 July. www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=348498 (accessed 29
August 2003).
Hawisher, Gail E., and Cynthia L. Selfe. 1991. The Rhetoric of Technology and the
Electronic Writing Class. College Composition and Communication 42: 5565.
Hornstine, Blair. 2003. [Untitled.] Courier-Post, 3 June. www.courierpostonline.com/
static/st060303g.html (accessed 29 August 2003).
Howard, Rebecca Moore. 1995. Plagiarisms, Authorships, and the Academic Death
Penalty. College English 57: 788806.
. 2000. Sexuality, Textuality: The Cultural Work of Plagiarism. College English 62:
47391.
. 2001. Forget about Policing Plagiarism. Just Teach. Chronicle of Higher Education,
16 November. chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i12/12b02401.htm (accessed 1 July 2003).
. Forthcoming. Understanding Internet Plagiarism. Computers and Composition.
Purdy Calling Of the Hounds 295
Kantrowitz, Barbara, and Julie Scelfo. 2003. Harvard to Hornstine: No Way. Newsweek,
21 July, 50.
Kitalong, Karla Saari. 1998. A Web of Symbolic Violence. Computers and Composition 15:
25364.
Laird, Ellen. 2001. Internet Plagiarism: We All Pay the Price. Chronicle of Higher
Education, 13 July. chronicle.com/weekly/v47/i44/44b00501.htm (accessed 1 July
2003).
Lunsford, Andrea Abernethy. 1999. Rhetoric, Feminism, and the Politics of Textual
Ownership. College English 61: 52944.
Lunsford, Andrea, Rebecca Rickly, Michael J. Salvo, and Susan West. 1996. What Matters
Who Writes? What Matters Who Responds? Issues of Ownership in the Writing
Classroom. Kairos: A Journal for Teachers of Writing in Webbed Environments 1.1.
english.tta.edu/kairos/1.1/features/lunsford.html (accessed 12 July 2004).
Lynn, Andrea. 2003. Parrying Plagiarism: Professors Show How New Weapons Can
Curb Cheating. LAS News (Spring): 1.
Lytvyn, Max. 2003. RE: question. E-mail to the author, 28 June.
Martin, Brian. 1994. Plagiarism: A Misplaced Emphasis. Journal of Information Ethics
3.2: 3647.
Osenenko, Derek. 2003. Stories, Essays Lacked Attribution. Courier-Post, 3 June. www
.courierpostonline.com/static/st060303g.html (accessed 29 August 2003).
Rimer, Sara. 2003. A Campus Fad Thats Being Copied: Internet Plagiarism. New York
Times, 3 Sept. nytimes.com/2003/09/03/education/03CHEA.html (accessed 3
September 2003).
Sutherland, John. 2003. Clever Girl Destroyed: Blair Hornstine Was the Pride of
Moorestown HighBut Her Brilliant Career Was Too Good to Be True. Guardian,
21 July. www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1002231,00.html (accessed 29 August 2003).
Young, Jefrey R. 2002. Anti-Plagiarism Experts Raise Questions about Services with
Links to Sites Selling Papers. Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 March. chronicle
.com/free/2002/03/2002031201t.htm (accessed 28 June 2003).