Plagiarism: Is plagiarism grounds for automatic expulsion?

By Pat Mackay

Plagiarism is a fast growing problem in today's competetive school environment. Many kids are falling into the trap of passing off other's work as their own as a means to save time in a very fast pace world. In the past, plagiarism was basically limited to copying out of encyclopedias, textbooks, and perhaps a fellow student's, friend's, or family member's paper. These days most students are plagiarizing by downloading papers off the internet. The internet has raised the plagiarism rate enumerably because of its convenience and easy access. Some schools are dealing with this by tranferring all the students' papers through a website that highlites possible plagiarized passages. Some say this is taking it too far because it's following the "guilty before proven innocent" mentality, yet many educators feel it's the only way to deal with such an prevalent issue. What do you think?

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