Archives for University Diaries

For further thoughts on plagiarism from the NYTimes, check out the column by Henry Alford on Regrets Only (published Sunday, October 14, 2007.

I know that I will be bringing this piece into my writing courses for student discussion.

sudy, at 11:45 am EDT on October 15, 2007

Beale vs Fenton

There is no way in hell anyone will convince me that the wives did not know about the fake credentials, fraud, etc. How could a spouse not be aware of these things????

Logical Thinking, at 10:25 am EST on November 29, 2007

Corrections

Here I am, commenting on my own post.

Two corrections:

1.) My subtitle didn’t show up. It was: How All My Writing Informs Against Me.

2.) The word ’skillful’ is spelled incorrectly in a quotation from one of the writers I mention.

ud, at 4:50 pm EDT on October 23, 2007

It looks to me like “Brad” has been taking his Prozac, but “Non-Brad” hasn’t.

BTW, I threw in the quotation marks just for you. Justified or not?

veblen, at 4:10 am EDT on October 26, 2007

I’ve added this comment in order to get rid of the distracting line that shows up at the end of the Hughes poem, telling readers that no comments have yet been added to my post...

ud, at 6:05 am EDT on November 1, 2007

Or how about this...

This is an interesting phenomenon, infact they have become a highly accepted of our cultural makeup and character. When you have leaders such as the ones we have, celebrities hurting themselves or others, they garner the attention they need and are somehow rewarded and idolized by the respective communities they belong to.

On the one hand the response and call to action by the universities and community, and this is much admired. However, the problem does lie when sociopaths such as those identified in the column go unpunished or are able to flee with little retribution.

Perhaps, we as a society need to stop sparing the rod a bit more for we have obviously spoiled the children into thinking that decency, honesty, integrity, and compassion for our common man/woman are not worthy values/character traits to hold on high.

What is needed is a firm punishment system in place to deter such behavior. For the case of the student writer, perhaps a suitable punishment would be to have her pay for the expenses incurred by the university in its attempt to address the issue, or perhaps have her pay the cost of any lost attendance revenue because of her stunt, and perhaps on top of these measures spending 10 years in a maximum security prison.

I think some accountability and sanction system in place will be a start to curing this problem. Sadly, the more we leave these sociopaths to continue to enagage in this behavior without any means of deterance, which works to reward and fuel their behavior, we will continue to fall prey to their destructive means.

J

John DeLong, at 12:10 pm EST on November 16, 2007

the joys of rectitude

I think the critical pieces are also a relief for many people. Someone writes an essay on why a writer was a despicable figure and half of the responses are, “Well! Now I’m glad I never read any of his books!”

rufus, at 12:55 pm EST on November 16, 2007