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September 20, 2006

Turnitoff

Today's Journal-World of Lawrence, Kansas, carries an admonitory story about KU's dropping its Turnitin subscription. Unfortunately, the KU official who made that decision did not comment for the media story, leaving the Journal-World reporter to conclude that it was an economic decision (as well it might be, given the annual price tag of $22,000). I know one of the people who advocated for dropping that subscription, for all the well-established reasons, none of which (except the IP issue) are, unfortunately, discussed in this story.

So while the data is different from the usual media coverage—here the story is about dropping a Turnitin subscription rather than buying one—the content is the same, viz:

  1. Plagiarism is the same everywhere at all times;
  2. Plagiarists must be caught and punished;
  3. PDSs like Turnitin do catch plagiarists, whereupon right-minded faculty can punish them;
  4. Plagiarists are therefore deterred from committing their crimes (which in this particular story are compared to bank robbery);
  5. Without a PDS, there will be a crime wave among students.
And the metaphors are of war, tools for war, and robbery.

Sept. 21 update: The Wichita Eagle provides the headline "Welcome to Plagiarism U" for an interactive text. All the commenters obligingly pile on. See item 5 above. Verily.

Posted by senioritis at September 20, 2006 08:21 PM

Comments

Touche. I've said it before on CCE and I'll say it here--even the name of the company, "TurnitIn" sounds slightly sinister--replace "it" with "them" and it connotes arresting someone in the middle of a criminal act.

Posted by: joanna at September 22, 2006 06:14 AM