How (not) to commit academic fraud
This morning I was going through a couple of articles on digg.com and found this one about a University at Buffalo basketball player that is getting suspended for academic fraud. Andy Robinson apparently didn’t feel like writing a paper and posted a message on facebook (my profile if you want to add me) looking to pay for someone to write it.
Here is what his post said:
“I am paying anybody who have read the book ‘there are no children here’ by Alex Kotlowitz $30-40 which in some classes you have to read at UB (even more money if you have to read the book a little more!!) to write a 3-4 page paper, on a couple questions which was assigned.”
I am not one to criticize someone else’s grammar because I am not Hemmingway but um… Apparently Robinson isn’t an English major.
How dumb do you have to be to post something on facebook like this? It would be like “Hey looking for someone to kill my husband for $500 contact me on my MySpace page.” No… that wouldn’t tip anyone off about your plans.
Of course a fellow student blew Robinson in by going to the school newspaper:
Robinson’s action violates UB’s policies regarding academic integrity and he could be charged with academic fraud. The Facebook message was discovered last Thursday by another UB student, who alerted reporters at UB’s student newspaper, the Spectrum.
First off this explains why Buffalo has such a crappy sports program. If this kid went to Miami, Texas, or USC he would have had someone on staff to write this for him while he drove around in a Hummer that his “uncle” bought for him. The poor kids at Buffalo have to resort to posting poorly written facebook ads.
Apparently Robinson went with the facebook ad after dismissing these other ideas:
1)Â Â Â Human billboard: Robinson was going to walk around with a sandwich board on asking for someone to write his paper for him. The plan was about to go into effect until he wasted the paper he bought for the sandwich board by misspelling the book title.
2)Â Â Â An ad in the student newspaper: He was disappointed to find out that there wasn’t a plagiarism for hire section in the classifieds.
3)Â Â Â Blimp rental: Turns out it was rather expensive.
I guess the lesson here is that if you are going to solicit someone to write a paper for you don’t do it on facebook. Next to blimp rental or a radio ad it is probably the most obvious thing you can do on a college campus.
Have you ever cheated in school?
This is going up at humor-blogs.com
that post he wrote reminds me of some of the emails i get at work. i want to correct them in red font and send them back. do people not know what that green squiggly line means? it’s astounding. that being said, i would’ve totally written his paper for him, using his type of wording. he wouldn’t have known the difference, and it would’ve scored him a solid c-.
You could totally pull it off without even reading the book.
Ugh, how do you get into college without knowing basic grammar rules and, of course, we know he’s not too bright for posting the darn thing on Facebook. Good Game. Good game. ::claps inaudibly::
It’s easy, be really good at a sport. They pay your way while people who can put together a coherant sentence are stuck working 3 jobs just to live.
I was a geek cheater. I was going to this charter school in Arizona- and it was all computer. We used a program for our classwork and it had all of our daily work in it. Well, I found a hack in the program and it allowed me to see all of the answers to all of the tests, and I started selling them. My teacher found out, but it was already the end of the year, I just wasn’t permitted to attend again.
I refuse to answer. Infer what you want.
I’ve slept through school a million times but never cheated. My best friend used to always copy my math homework and then change the answers a bit so the teacher wouldn’t know she was cheating. Problem is that there is only one correct answer in math.
People have always cheated off me, I had a fan club in HS that copied my Japanese, Biochem and Physics Homework religiously. I have been known to make some kids some science projects and write a few papers for friends. I figure the lack of learning is their own loss if they don’t want to do the work. Cheaters never win right?
So freaking weird btw!!!! Right as a started a discussion on BC titled “Entertain me” with mindless humor the email for this post came in…so I typed you right in to my discussion. LOL
I should draw the line though that I never allowed people to cheat off me in med school. I had serious ethical issues with that because of the nature of the responsibility that being a doctor entails. I have friends in nursing school that also have asked for BEYOND help with their hw as in they want me to fill in their take home tests for them, which I also refused to do. I had to be a pain in the ass and walk through the whole thing and explain it. Ugh…
Okay what he did was really, really dumb, but what a bunch of sniveling snitches that turned him in. Cheaters may never prosper but either do fucking tattletales. =P And no, I never cheated in school, I just plain didn’t do what I didn’t feel like doing, and my resulting grades were usually a pretty accurate reflection of that.
I smell a darwin award coming for this guy…
I’ve never cheated on papers…it’s too easy to determine whether or not the paper is original. In high school, I may have cheated on an exam or too, but definitely not in college…too much shit is riding on it!
Let me get this straight. He cheats, he’s dumb, and he’s cheap?
Pretty much
I must admit I did cheat at school. Its a long time ago thought and it was less sophisticated as the world was less digitalised at that time
Btw: Nice to meet you Kevin. I can tell you are very active on the net. Invitations are sent to some of your communities.
Have a friend that teaching English comp. She has had students turn in papers that other students have written for other classes. They only change the over sheet, but leave the person’s last name on the running head. Now, that’s stupid!
Only 3-4 pages? Lazy bugger!