Information Age sloppiness

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Apr 1, 2008 | by Deseret Morning News editorial

The irony is, of course, what made last weekend's story about the honor code at the University of Texas at San Antonio so interesting. The students who drafted it lifted some of the wording verbatim from Brigham Young University's honor code.

An honor code should not be dishonorable.

The Texas students say it was all an oversight facilitated by one student inheriting a draft from other students who had worked on the project. No doubt, it was indeed a mistake, but oversights such as this are evidence of a much larger problem -- one that goes way beyond the University of Texas at San Antonio.

This is the Information Age. Never before has information been so readily available. Using Google or other search engines, anyone with a computer can quickly locate snippets, articles, quotes and facts. And using a series of simple keystrokes or the dragging functions of a mouse, a person can quickly lift the information and place it in a personal file.

The Associated Press quoted John Barrie, co-founder of a plagiarism-checking Web site called Turnitin.com, who said his site regularly exposes unattributed thefts of material in about 30 percent of papers. For several years now, many professors nationwide have regularly used the Web site to check the originality of the work their students turn in.

The San Francisco Chronicle recently cited a Duke University study that found 75 percent of students applying to college have cheated in some form to get there. Some students feel they are at a decided disadvantage if they don't cheat -- kind of the way some athletes may feel pressure to use performance-enhancing drugs because everyone else does so.

This problem is by no means confined to young students. In recent years, several journalists have lost their jobs nationwide for plagiarism.

The Information Age, at the very least, has spread a sort of careless sloppiness that, even without malicious intent, can lead to embarrassment, expulsions, firings and even lawsuits.

The answer, getting back to the subject at hand, is a return to honor. The University of Texas at San Antonio has the right idea. It should by all means continue its work on a code, complete with attribution. And schools from coast-to-coast, beginning at the earliest grade levels, should strongly emphasize the importance of not using words without proper citations.

That will take the united efforts of teachers, their administrators and, most of all, parents. When push comes to shove and discipline is warranted, parents often can be impediments.

It should be obvious to all that a nation can't survive long if its people lose all regard for honesty and integrity.