Last Wednesday night, moments before Syracuse University tipped off against the University of Connecticut, ESPN’s Andy Katz dropped a bomb.

From Jan. 9 to Feb. 10, James Southerland was unable to play in the men’s basketball games due to an academic issue. It was reported that the academic issue was related to two paragraphs of a term paper written last spring. After appealing to the judicial review board, Southerland was declared eligible again on Feb. 10.

But the situation still drags a contentious issue into the public forum. Academic dishonesty and plagiarism regarding written work is a rampant epidemic on college campuses.

With the proliferation of the Internet, it’s become uncontrollable. The best way to combat the issueis severe deterrence, not a domineering database like Turnitin.com.

In 1996, four University of California-Berkeley graduate students created a peer review application that detected unoriginal content in student-written work. A few years later, iParadigms bought the application and created Turnitin.com, a full-scale “plagiarism prevention service.”

Here’s the skinny: Submitted papers are stored in a database on Turnitin.com. Internally, the site uses a proprietary algorithm to scan its database and check for duplicated content. Publicly, it uses a WebCrawler to do the same on the Internet.

In 2009, the upgraded Turnitin2 allowed professors to digitally grade and make comments in red font.

The service took off.

In 2011, Turnitin processed more than 60 million papers, peaking at 300,000 on a single day in December. Presently, 69 of the top 100 colleges in America are Turnitin customers, according to U.S. News and World Report. Globally, it has a presence in 126 countries.

In fairness, students are most dishonest with written work. Writing essays is strenuous, time-consuming and open-ended. For students who do not care about their writing skills, the prospect of expediting the process and a high grade is tantalizing.

Essay entrepreneurs are capitalizing. On any campus, it’s almost harder to find a dining hall than a fellow student who will write your paper for a cash fee.

Incredulously, the concept has legitimized into a network. Google “free essays” and hundreds of services will be at your fingertips.

Few are actually free. With a credit card or PayPal account, you can either buy an existing paper or hire a “professional” to write a new one.

The sites don’t conceal their practices. Most have conspicuous names like FreeEssays.com, EssayMania.com or 123HelpMe.com.

Because the dishonesty contagion has taken to the Internet, Turnitin seems like a logical antidote.

But use of the site in classrooms is mandatory for students. Therefore, it’s arguably unconstitutional.

The Fourth Amendment prohibits “unnecessary search and seizure.” Because Turnitin is a policing service, students are guilty until proven innocent.

Turnitin is also commercial enterprise. It charges schools and professors for the ability to confiscate creative and original work. The site made almost $350,000 in 2012, according to FreeWebsiteReport.org.

Even with a machine, it’s impossible to expunge an uncontrollable problem. But it can be contained with a more democratic alternative: crushingly severe punishments for plagiarism or dishonesty.

At SU, under the present academic integrity policy, an undergraduate first-time offender gets an F in the class. A subsequent offender gets suspended or expelled.

Raise the stakes. Hold undergraduates to the same standard as graduate students: Expel them on the first offense. There would still be cheaters, but a lot more would-be offenders would blink before selling their souls.

The presumption of guilt is feudalistic. Most students still do their own work. In the end, freeloaders are only hurting themselves.

Jarrad Saffren is a junior political science and television, radio, and film major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at jdsaffre@syr.edu and followed on Twitter at @JarradSaff. 

Published on February 20, 2013 at 2:00 am