I haven't read the whole thing yet, but YOU DIDN'T ACTUALLY TURN HER IN?!

Pfft.

Plagiarism is next to Murder and Treason in that they are high crimes. It sounds dramatic, but the very definition of a crime is the breaking of a rule of some group, and a high crime is a crime considered so heinous it can lead to expulsion from that group. Murder is a high crime in society, Treason of nationality, and Plagiarism of academy.

One might say that surely plagiarism is worse than murder or treason, but it's not true, because all crimes are relevant only to the groups whose rules they break. Committing treason might make you unpopular to your countrymen, but one country's traitors are another country's heroes. Murder will get you locked up pretty quickly, but they won't revoke your nationality for it.

Similarly, you can commit murder and treason in one fell swoop, but you'll maintain your degrees. Unless, of course, you're a plagiarist. Plagiarism is worse than murder to an academic, and the punishment administered for committing it—expulsion—is in line with other groups' high crimes.

That raises the question of whether you should entrap someone who tries to get you to help them cheat, and the answer is simple. If I asked you to help me kill someone, or to help me betray my country, you know two things. First, you know if you don't help me, I will probably get someone else to help me. Second, unless you are a murderer or a traitor as well, you know I have to be stopped.

Or maybe I'm just draconian.

Hunh. Well, that's that. Sounds like she failed to take the right course at the end there anyhow - full disclosure with the dean almost certainly would be met with more clemency than she'll get pretending she didn't know what was going on.

Thanks for the update. Now I guess I can stop checking this thing. ;)

You don't think that if she lied to the Dean about the paper she wasn't lying to you about never having done it? She completely deserves getting expelled, and the thought that she might not depresses me and makes me feel like my own education is a little more worthless.

Nate... You didn't seek her out to become a plagiarist, and it wasn't your job to force her to 'do the right thing' once the fat was in the fire.

If everything you've said is true (and we have no reason to think otherwise), then you gave her every opportunity to make good decisions throughout this long ugly affair... and she has invariably chosen the wrong path each time.

Not. Your. Fault.

I would not be surprised if she was a serial plagiarist, and I wouldn't be surprised if this was the first time. Let's just say that. She sure went about this like an amateur, anyway.

I don't know if plagiarism is a high crime, but BoingBoing says you're liars:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/29/plagiarismseeking_im.html

i hope that the series of events will not haunt you nate. i believe you sincerely tried to help the poor girl. but in the end, she just have to live with this. maybe she's really a good student but she made a very stupid mistake.

the mother factor made me sympathized her plight. i'm actually glad no blood was spilled in the end. i hope students out there will learn something from this. don't plagiarise or something even worse like this might happen to you.

Oh, well if Boing Boing says...

*Shrug* I posted it to digg.com, and I'm not a fake name of anybody. I've never even seen Nate's comedy troupe, though I acted in shows with all those guys in college, and they were pretty funny then, so they probably still are.

Bullshit on the hoax. I was talking to Nate on IM when she first IMed him and he was pasting the conversation to me with her IM name and everything.

And I got kind of turned on when I read that she cried. I bet she's got a pretty mouth.

I'm sure that you could research the Dean's contact information. Just to ensure that he sees all of the blog entries and gets the whole picture, of course.

Let's face it, what has gone on here is the Scarlet Letter of the 21st Century.

I have no sympathy for plagierizers and feel she deserved every bit of laughter at her expense, and her public exposure.

I also tip my hat to you for trying to help her afterwards. Its what I would have done as well. Public embarrassment is all well and good, but afterwards, it takes a more gentle and compassionate touch to send them down the right path.

Good job, Nate.

And I just have to add: do BoingBoing know which month it is? I could have sworn that we're still in March...

Right, Scheme, but please don't. And I say that with the expectation that probably you or someone else will disregard my plea to stop harassing the school. She's caught, and she's under investigation, and if she doesn't get expelled, then I am about 99.9% sure she will never even think about plagiarising again. And she won't get the chance either, what with the scrutiny that will be applied to everything she ever hands in from now on.

Yeah, I love how when people "expose" this thing they like, "Oh, what a giveaway, it's March 28, that's like, THREE DAYS before April Fool's Day. Must be a hoax." Right.

Nate,

Glad she is going to get what she deserves. Obviously she is highly intelligent for going to a community college. If you are in need of advice for future issues like this, drop me a line (I run an advice website).

Morris
http://www.crazypromofun.com

I find it completely unbelievable when she and her mother claim that she has never done anything like this before. Um. . . .right. She has clearly demonstrated that she is willing to lie and cheat when it will benefit her (not only the plagarism, but lying about telling the dean as well). If she's wiling to lie about those things to save her, OF COURSE she'd be willing to lie about not having done it in the past. She probably has done it every time her paper writing assignments got a little too hard to handle (and judging from her ability to make good decisions, this is probably often).

Cheers, Nate. The public humiliation is probably over the top punishment that you never intended, but exposing this student for the serial liar and cheat she probably is, is completey reasonable.

The "I'm just a good little student who made a bad decision" act is tiresome. I've heard it before. She's another student who is willing to lie, cheat, and take the easy way out whenever the going gets tough.

Pfft. Who cares if her mom is nice. Be an asshole.

Wait. I think that boing boing's claim of this being a hoax is a hoax. boing boing is just trying to lure away readers to its site in hopes that, um, people may read it. (or something and besides wouldn't this just be a really LAME april fool's joke? I think that members of a comedy troupe would come up with something really grand.)

Nate, I applaud your efforts. The fact that you did it and tried to help her afterwards. Nice work.

For people saying she ought to be expelled, or that she will be expelled over this, it's probably trickier than that. Usually it depends on the university and whether she's done it before.

The three I've been at (undergrad, grad, and now working) say that the penalties go up to expulsion. That doesn't mean expulsion is the first option. Where I am now, there are a few factors:

1) What level the course is. Plagiarizing in a first- or second-year course is less of an offence than plagiarizing in an upper-year course.

2) What year the student is in. Freshmen are expected to be dumber than other students.

3) How much the paper counted towards the final mark. Plagiarizing on a response paper worth five percent of the final mark isn't as bad as plagiarizing a major paper worth thirty percent.

4) Whether the student had done it before. If the student has already plagiarized before, then the offence is more serious.

5) The degree of plagiarism. Plagiarism goes all the way from a few lines to copying a whole paper.

Penalties here go like this: flunk the paper, flunk the course, flunk the course with a note on the transcript stating that the F was due to plagiarism, suspension and F and note on the transcript, and finally expulsion. (No, this doesn't mean that you get to plagiarize four times before you get kicked out, just that expulsion is the last resort.)

I didn't see what level the course is or what year the student was or how important the paper was to the course. I assume, given the topic, that it's a first- or second-year course. I assume, given this time of year and the length of the paper, that it's a moderately important assignment, but not the final paper. If she was being honest when she said she'd never done this before, and if my assumptions are reasonable, I'm guessing she's not going to be expelled, probably just flunked in the course and yelled at a lot. The school will probably keep an internal document about the incident, but no mark will go on her transcript.

She'll get yelled at more than usual if she's on the dean's list, if it's any comfort.

So it really was Laura that you talked to the second time... when she denied it. Hmm, somehow, I don't have much sympathy. Let's reiterate what the wrongs here:
1. She paid someone to write a paper for her
2. She then lied when said person contacted her about payment
3. She lied to the Dean.

Yep, no sympathy here.

truly, you are an arrogant, self righteous, sadistic son of a bitch. i take great delight in the knowledge that life will deal with you accordingly.

When we choose a course of action, we choose a set of potential consequences; intended or unintended; foreseen or unforeseen. We don't get to decide. When Laura chose her course of action, she assumed certain risks. So did Nate when he chose his.

I personally do not disapprove of Nate's actions.

Assuming the class is course 19-298 on the university's online catalog, it doesn't look like an intro course. Is there another likely candidate for which course it is that I'm missing?

As a university employee, I applaud the way this was handled by you, Nate.

Is anyone else disturbed by the fact that not only did Ms. Laura plagiarize, but she didn't even send Nate money? For some reason that bothers me more than the service solicitation…

She is third-year. She did say that, but it didn't occur to me that anyone would want to know.

Damn, she didn't hang herself. What a wimpy ending. She deserved nothing less than death.

Nate, What did she say about trying to stiff you for the cheque? Did she admit that she wasn't intending to pay you at all? Did she express guilt about it? What did her mom say about that? Cus not only did she break the academic code by plagarising, but broke business code by stiffing you.

You have caused hurt and anguish to another person. How does that feel? Good? The secret service is looking for people who love causing pain to others. Might be an ideal career move for you.

And please change the name of your blog. "A Week of Kindness" my ass. Nothing kind about causing unlimited anguish and pain to another human being.

And on top of all this, she planned never to pay Nate the $75 they agreed to. So she's a plagiarizer and a cheat (and she made a doody).

Never done something like this before my a55.

I'm commenting again?! geez.

Anyway, where do people get in their head this idea that Christian schools don't teach about other religions??

1) They have to compete in a college market; they can't just disregard large parts of the world in their entire curriculum.
2) Most students in a Christian college will have their beliefs affirmed and validated by testing them with new knowledge. If an argument must shut out all criticism or alternate views to thrive, it's pretty worthless.

one more...
I don't get why everyone called her and her Dean. Do they think they're going to say something different than the 50 people before them, or get some kind of fame from it??

Great work, Nate. And it makes for a very compelling story. When can we expect to see the mini-series?

Good job Nate. You did what was right, so don't second guess yourself.

I've been reading the posts and comments with great interest. I'm disappointed that you didn't turn her in, Nate. I taught college English and hope to again, and I am 100% certain that one of my students plagiarized her paper, but I had 0 proof and could do nothing about it. I wish that someone had sent me a copy of the proof.

I realize you feel there were mitigating circumstances in the mom, here, but I have to say that, when push comes to shove, mom will side with her kid every day of the week. Laura was probably lying to you about never doing it again, and Mom was probably covering her daughter's ass.

I hope Laura gets thrown out of school for this indiscretion, but at the minimum, I hope she flunks the class.

As a writer and an educator, plagiarism really pisses me off.

re: boingboing: I have no idea if this is a hoax, though the claim that it's a "Christian university" and that they don't teach courses on other religions strikes me as somewhat foolish. But then, I've been taken in by Internet hoaxes in the past, and think either way the Laura Krishna posts can be great fodder for an academic study on classism and the Internet. I find it fascinating that the comments have shown that, had Ms. Krishna not said "money is no object," that there might have been more sympathy for her. We all have sympathy for someone who is working two jobs and going to school and just *this once* can't get her paper in on time. But we have no sympathy for a checkbook student.

This is just wonderfully entartaining, even though that was not your intention!

I hope she's learned a lesson.

Keep it real!

-Stig, Norway

Of course, to reply to Tullia, every institution differs a little bit.

To all the profs reading this (and I know there are a bunch of you out there--that's how I found this, after all), the question of whether or not she is a serial plagiarist is why we need to report real plagiarism any time it happens. We need centralized reporting in our institutions (at my current one, everything goes through the Provost's office) so that there is a record. At big schools this is particularly necessary, because I don't know anyone in Religious Studies, and I'm in English, but people could plagiarize in both our courses.

Punishment in academics is supposed to be first about preventing the transgressions. Only when it fails to prevent does the punishment actually occur. Teachers are justified in punishing students for failing to do their own work, because that indicates a failure (or perhaps unwillingness) to learn. So we give them an F, either way.

For more on my take on plagiarism, see my blog:
http:\\rcross126.blogspot.com

If it's not there yet, it will be later this afternoon.

Well, its technically not over. Her school still has to investigate and decide on punishment. Personally, I hope she gets a failing grade on the paper itself. I think with that, and with all the public humiliation already out there, she'll have the appropriate punishment. Perhaps from this incedent, she'll go on to be a great student. Maybe she will learn to study harder and become a great academic.

For those people out for some major blood, please, calm down. What she did was wrong but she's just a stupid college kid who made a bad judgement call. Equating her act to treason and murder is nothing more than overkill, the screams for death from a blood thirsty crowd. There are much worse acts in the world at large than some dumb kid trying to cheat past one paper.

Nate, you could have handled this better, but at least you tried to help with damage control.You get points back for that.

Good story. Portugal is already expecting the motion picture. It's a tricky situation for both the characters. Well, but the end was lovely, tears and all... Suggestion: Nate, you could try it on some journalists...

First off, I just want to say that I showed up quite late to this trainwreck, and after reading over quite a bit of the comments I'm gonna have to pull the hoax card on this one.

Decent. :golfclap:

If this whole thing does turn out to be true, then surely you understand you have generated so much bad karma from this you will undoubtedly suffer the same, if not worse from your actions.

First, you published her real name for all to see on the internet saying she is a plagiarist. I mean how stupid are you here Nate.. she lied about her school at the beginning of this, what makes you think that she didn't lie about her name, and what if the she in question was actually a he this whole time. If this turned out to be a real person who was completely uninvolved with this whole fiasco and innocent (and very unlucky), then you should definetly be sued for libel and have the same done with your name. I mean it is just so appauling to me to think that someone with a college degree and educators all throughout his family, would make such a colossal fark up as this. Did you not even think for a second that the real name could be of an innocent farking person. Just for doing this act alone (posting a real name which you have never been completely positive of, not exposing a plagerist), which stems from sheer wickedness and nothing else, will reverse this all on you one day or another.

If it turns out to be true, I am glad you caught this plagiarist red handed, and I'm glad you informed the proper authorities to deal with her. I also hope she gets whatever punishment is in store by her university for what she has done. But it should have all been done so much more discreetly, not this public hanging it has turned into. At least then if it turned out to be a fake name pinned to a real person, you could have walked away knowing you still tried to do the right thing, but were just misled and wrong. This new punishment you have enacted upon her, far outweighs her crime. There is a reason scarlet letters are a thing of the past, there is always a chance for error.

The only other thing I would like to comment on, is the sad usage of 'bitch' to constantly degrade her and other women. I love how people keep using this word so regularly when referring to her, especially when attempting to sound so much more educated and more upstanding in our society. Are you that much better than her and women in general that you can call her a bitch. She may be contibuting to the degradation of our education system, but you are contributing to the degredation of society as a whole. Same goes for the comments on the fact that she appears to be rich (or her parents are for that matter). Due to the fact she is rich does that make her deserve this anymore that a poor person, if so then you are participating in a very very ignorant and unlogical social system. Does her being rich, make her more of a bitch? Please indulge me, show me how your bigoted brain works.

If anything this is a glimpse into the human mind, showing the crowds clear clamoring for a public execution and total disrespect (by some) for women in general.

Here is my prediction...Laura will seek you out at some point in the future. You will become friends, date, marry and eventually have babies. She will become a very successful whatever it is she is going to school for, and you will ride her coattails hoping life doesn't pass you by. You will become a raging alcoholic. She will leave. You will die alone on a moldy mattress.

But seriously...I think you handled this very well. I hope *she* doesn't fuck it up.

I did not turn her in right away, but that doesn't mean I wasn't going to. Had this thing not exploded on the internet, I might have turned her in today, as was my original timeline. As it is, though, lots of people beat me to it, way before I was ready to start making that decision.

I say might have because I just don't know. There's just too many variables for me to accurately predict what my attitude would be in that hypothetical.

"And I got kind of turned on when I read that she cried. I bet she's got a pretty mouth."

At least someone is finally honest about why so many people are getting such a charge out of attaching some "little rich college girl".

Gwannnnn, you two are going to tie the knot, aren't you?

Maybe I have a twisted sense of morality. Cheating (including plagiarism) is ass but what Nate did was, in my opinion, worse. Laura came to him asking for help and if he had simply refused to write the paper, then maybe she would have buckled down and written it. The fact that she approached a stranger on the internet to help her in her assignment shows that she was pretty desperate, and not everyone is sensitive to virtual sarcasm. If I were the Dean I would take into consideration that although she made a cardinal academic sin, she was also a victim of someone who could have just minded his own business.

"I had the right person, without a doubt, and she's caught. No more or less caught than she would be right now if all I had done was write her a paper. No more or less caught than she would be if this page hadn't been a phenomenon, and she's no more or less caught than she would be if none of you had called her home."

You get an A for bullshit. Take some responsibility for participating in this whole mess. You clearly did it out of spite, nothing more noble like "trying to get her to see the light". If you were really concerned with her doing what is right, then there are hundreds of better ways you could have taught her.

"Nate: how about you do what I ask you, and let me give you some generous help in the way that I want?"

Ohhh, now Nate is being ever so kind! Laura should be grateful. Umm, yeah.

Note that I have witnessed or heard of many types of academic cheating, such as the sharing of problem set answers, people using cheatsheets hidden in their calculators and test supervisors not doing their job, people SHARING calculators during tests and exchanging answers, and plagiarism probably is rampant in my arts courses. It makes me angry that there are people who take advantage of those things, often without a conscience and devalue my own genuine work. If I were to see someone cheating during a test, I'd probably point it out to a supervisor. However, if someone asked me to help them in a dishonest way, I would tell them no, not wait for the opportune moment to expose them. It's conniving and dirty.

I just wanted to add that my comment was started before this new update, and I just posted it anyway because I had already typed it before and during his new update.

Nate, you've acted like a complete dick and you're starting to realize it, hence your failed attempt at self-justification in the final paragraphs of this post. Is plagiarism bad? Yeah, sure it is. Does it warrant the extent of public humiliation you've subjected this young fool to? Not by a long way.

I called both Laura and the Dean. But not really for any reason; just cause I was lonely.

I think you handled this very well, Nate. I work at a college with a strict plagiarism policy where getting the boot is usually what happens. The fact that she lied about who she was in that second conversation and that she wasn't going to pay you makes me think that she's pulled this before.

She deserves what ever she gets. And I'm not saying that to be mean, but, you play with fire...

Nate, honestly, forgive yourself. It's good that you took down her name, but the fact that she's now a scared kid who cried shouldn't manipulate you. Believe me, plagiarists ALWAYS:

CRY

SWEAR IT's THE FIRST TIME

EXPRESS PHONY REMORSE WHILE TRYING TO EVADE THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR ACTIONS

Oh, yes, and they usually do have nice parents who are aghast to discover how their kids are pissing away the education that's costing them a second mortgage.

Funny how things get blown up and the links spread so fast. I found the link to this blog on a nerdy computer tech webstie.

It saddens me that you had no sincere intention of actually turning her in. You should learn to me more of an asshole, it's fun. She has to learn she can't be a rich priss that can pay her way through life.

And come on. She's a third-year student at a univeristy and she can't write a measly 5 page paper on Hinduism? That's a joke, she should just quit now. They should kick her out of school. The school policy likely states it, I'm sure it's in the syllabus (it is in my university classes) plagarism is a BIG deal and when schools don't follow though with the punishment they threaten, they just open the door for even more plagarism.

No matter how terrible the subject or how long the paper, I have always managed to find info and come up with my own ideas with the most minimal effort. It's not likley this was her first attempt at plagarism or just "one little mistake" that's not how these people operate.

I'll be coming back just in case someone finds out what happens to her in the end. I hope they stick it to her. /rant

Oh, come now, LexusNG, and all the rest of the respondants who moan about Laura's discomfiture and shame!

"...unlimited anguish and pain to another human being?"

How about the ulcerous pain that comes from being a successful plagiarist?

I've been on both ends of this issue: I substantially copied a paper from someone else when I was in junior high school, and I wrote three or four papers for friends in college, in all instances successfully, i.e. "getting away with it."

But...

I am forever ashamed of myself for not doing my own work, and for cheapening the meaning of education by doing others' work for money. Me with two educators for parents. I cheated myself out of learning something, and cheated others out of their opportunity to learn as well. For convenience. For a few dollars.

I have since made a contribution to the college equal to many times the amount I made, but my shame, though somewhat eased, is intact.

Now, if someone had blown the whistle on me in junior high, I would have felt the blow then and there. It would have been painful, but I would have had the chance to repent (yes, I know, it seems an obsolete concept), learn something, and substantially redeem myself. And if someone had caught me in college, I may have paid a steep price then, but--and this is key--would have paid it THEN. Today, I have lost that opportunity. Even if I were to make a full confession, I couldn't make it to the affected parties, because I don't even remember who they were. The people who know me know what I did, because I tell them, and I tell them that I'm ashamed of myself. And that's the best I can do now.

Laura has been given an opportunity to keep the secuctive addiction to moral plasticity and convenience from becoming a part of her. It may be very painful to yank a parasite from your body, but how much more painful to let it burrow deep inside you and become a part of you?

Someday, I hope, Laura will, in part at least, feel some gratitude to Nate. At least he has provided her with such an opportunity for healing and for growth.

You were nicer than I would have been.

Sorry, but I woke up at 4 AM and wrote a lot of papers that were due that day and back when I went to college, we only had Lynx and Gopher so you try to use either of those as a shortcut to research. Nope, you still had to go to the library (and walk there, uphill both ways in a foot of snow...well, it was Wisconsin so I'm not sure I'm exaggerating!)

Hell, it's so easy now to do research that I seriously do not understand why someone would STILL try to cheat!

Come on, people! It's a hoax!!

Kudos to you for standing up for academic integrity!

Namaste

Hannuman

Mike, I couldn't turn her in until I'd gotten some indication that she'd handed in my paper.

When she made it her business to shrug off the payment part of the deal, I knew that I'd never get that information without showing her the link.

In the meantime, she had gotten turned in by someone else.

One thing I find odd is that you chose not to turn her in because her mother whined to you. When I was in school, people's whining parents securing them special treatment seemed to be itself a drain on academic meritocracy - yet you somehow let this whining mitigate your outrage at her initial more serious drain on it. Would it be more infuriating if this had been done by someone without a parent who was willing to fight her battles for her? I would have found it less so. The mother stuff just highlighted how spoiled this girl is, and how unwilling she is to accept consequences to her own actions.

damn. i can't believe all of your heartless bastards who said he should have turned her in right away! i mean, come on now! like you're all so perfect. get off your freakin' dorky high holy horses.

I fail to see the point of the righteous indignation from the people wishing death and doom on Nate. This girl fucked up, short and simple. And Nate didn't intend for it to reach this magnitude...we made it this big, not him.

Yes, this girl made a (big) mistake. Yes, this girl was embarrassed. Yes, she will probably be punished. Yes, it's very sad for her. But the people who defend her and criticize Nate...what the hell are you defending her for? Just because she was made the laughingstock of The Internets makes what she did any less stupid and wrong?

I watched people cheat time and time again in college, and get away with it. I'm pleased she didn't get away with it.

So you purposely allowed a naive little girl's world to come crashing down around her for the sake of your (and your family's) English degree integrity?

Unless your grandparents were beaten to death by an essay copied from Sparknotes, there is no possible way that this justification could not sound a) pretentious and b) stupid. You wanted to do the right thing? Then you should have declined and been done with it. Instead, you post her full name and university on the Internet in an attempt to teach her the most humiliating lesson you can.

If I am right in my assumptions, I fail to see how your sense of justice is superior to that of a small time cheater's. I'm sure you've heard it before, but this is not on, sir, not on at all.

Alright, you're misreading what I wrote, eli.

By the time her mother whined to me, she had been turned in.

There was nothing I could do to stop her from being caught, and there was no sense turning her in yet again.

What she asked me was a favor that she maybe thought could take the heat off of her, which is taking her name off the site. I did that because of the whining, yes, but we can all agree that changing the name is futile, so why not do the only thing she's begging for?

Sure becky, we may not be high and holy but I've never paid anyone to write an essay for me. I do my own work and earn the grades I get.

Maybe publishing the ordeal online isn't the nicest thing to do but she deserved to get caught and deserves to be punished. This is just the way it happened.

And I question the rest of you who think this is "too harsh". Waaah, cry me a river. Perhaps you don't know what it's like to work hard on something and have someone rip it off and claim it as their own without even a second thought. Try that on for size.

She didn't pay you, never meant to, and then asked you to help her? What a rotten apple! I can't believe you helped her! While I realise you figured she would never pay you and so weren't factoring in any payment, she was trying to scam you. Rip you off. Steal from you. I know you feel badly that things got out of your control, but you are not responsible for the acts of others. You have kindness in your heart, mister. Sigh, I guess that's a good thing. But Laura's a thief and a liar. I hope that her future employers google her from now until the day she dies. I'm working on being a better person but it hurts to know that she might not learn a lesson from this other than: rely on the goodness of others and don't bother being good yourself.

Well done, Nate. Your plagarism project has elicited more ethical/philosophical/moral observations than I could possibly have imagined. I bet it gets turned into a TV movie or at the very least, course material by professorial lurkers (with attribution, of course!) I am proud to be related to you.

I loved the parts where people pontificated about whether Nate was too full of himself, while fluffing themselves up in an attempt to come off as an important person about whose opinion any of the rest of us should give a crap.

p.s. We don't.

I also love the fact that a combination of quick reading style and skepticism developed through heavy use of the internet has led so many people to skim the details and come out with the declaration that this is all a hoax or viral marketing. Yes, the A Week of Kindness put in a few plugs for their upcoming show. Why shouldn't they? It's their site. It's their bandwidth that this whole issue has hogged. It's their name on the top of the page. They didn't ask you to come here and read this story, did they? Viral advertising just doesn't fit. Think about it. They are a local New York City based sketch comedy group. We are not talking about a national product like Saturday Night Live here, but a few people who occasionally perform comedy in a theater. What in the hell would be the point in advertising this to people all over the internet? If even .02% of you went to the show, most of you probably wouldn't be able to fit in the venue. Aside from that, it strikes me as totally obvious that anyone in a sketch comedy group who was trying to advertise the group OR pull a great April Fool's Day prank (even several days early) would at least TRY to be funny about it. So now you've read the end of the story. Do you think that was funny enough to be a big prank? Do you feel pranked? I don't. Skepticism is a good thing when it comes to the internet, but come on people, sometimes a rose is just a rose.

Also, what IS it with people calling any number that's posted on the internet? I bet those of you who called are the same sad weirdoes who called all those numbers from Paris Hilton's sidekick. My friend's name and number was in there, and he got hundreds of calls and text messages because if it. Why? Even if he was famous - which he's not - what in the hell do you gain from calling? Is there some shitty little sort of life in which having called every telephone number ever posted in any hot-topic internet page gives a person bragging rights? Who are you bragging to anyway? If you had any friends, you wouldn't need to fill your time doing something so stupid, meaningless and unoriginal in the first place.

So there, now I've added my pontifications. Please proceed to ignore them, because I am no expert, and won't pretend to be by listing some fictitious career, hobby or degree that I purport hold.

She lied to the Dean, she lied to you, she's only sad because she got caught. She deserves to be expelled, but she won't, so the fools here who think that academic dishonesty is totally okay will be satiated.

You have caused hurt and anguish to another person. How does that feel? Good?

Have you ever participated in the raising of a child, out of curiousity? Because that involves the causing of hurt and anguish, too, as they break rules set for their own good and you are required to enforce them.

She lied, cheated and other assorted things - stone her! Give her a real lesson in Truth - Truth be told, lest ye die! Drag her thru St. Marks! Crucify! Crucify!

What I was responding to was when she appeared to be at a point where she could still protect herself, and admitted that she hadn't come clean to the dean. You said "And nothing would have stopped me from turning her in right then, except one thing...her mom turned out to be a nice lady"

But regardless, you are right that it wouldn't likely have mattered. Even if she thought she still had a sliver of hope of getting away with the plagiarism, she didn't. So in that sense, yeah, my criticism was probably silly. Though I imagine that the dean will likely seek you out, as that seems like the kind of thing that would be standard operating procedure.

Whatever people may think about this, I don't envy you suddenly having to juggle all the angry people and attention out of the blue when your initial thing was pretty understandable and genuinely really funny.

Anyone who acts and then talks about it in public will be mobbed by folks who would have done different.

I think you did the right thing, Nate, but you might have been a little naive when it comes to the Internet -- there are a billion people out there, all of them itching for a good story, some of whom want to BE the story. I know that my first reaction to your tale was to start Googling the girl's name. But I lost interest after five minutes. Other people didn't stop until they had her dental records.

Next time, use fake names from the start, and remember that anything you post online can (and probably will) end up in the hands of people you never even imagined would read it.

My employer has gone through my website, for example. Yes, even the dirty stories hidden way down at the bottom of the page. Thank god my employer has a sense of humour.

Nik

The post by George about feeling ashamed about cheating touchs on something I wanted to say. I'm not sure where I sit on the spectrum of arguments about the rightness of Nate's actions and the appropriate level of punishment for plagiarism - but the ground has been pretty well covered by all the other comments. I also don't care if this is a hoax or not - the story is interesting regardless of whether or not it's true, and the discussions doubly so.

Whilst accepting that plagiarism is wrong and institutions should do all they can to stop it (for all the reasons that people have already outlined), I'm not sure how worried people should be if others "get away with it".

By studying and working hard you have had a learning experience that a plagiarist has avoided. To me, what you learn on degree course is at least as important as the actual degree itself - both in terms of your personal fulfillment and the qualities you'll bring to a job interview (and the job itself).

Yes, plagiarists should be formally punished by the institution but, if they escape that, they've effectively punished themselves by not learning anything or developing any skills. At worst, they'll spend their entire lives painfully aware that they are a fraud and painfully stuggling to cover their own incompetence. And I don't believe most of them will get through life without being found out at some point.

From that, you could argue that it's in the plagiarist's own interest to get caught and punished.

The terrible thing, though, is that these people may well be denying opportunities to the genuinely talented.

On the whole though, if you're tempted to feel aggreived that the cheats have got the same piece of paper as you when you did the work: you've got the piece of paper plus everything you've learned.

The idea that people are their own punishment is much more interesting than karma, I think. It pops up in Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus Logico Philosphicus' towards the end, in a brief entry, about morality, but I haven't seen it much discussed elsewhere.

Yea, dude you are the baddest ass I have ever seen on the internet. Your family must be be proud of your incredible standards. I love what you did, if anyone has her number, post it and let us call her. "whatssup dumb bitch?" Let us scare the shit out of her and pester till she becomes a better student. Because we only want the best for her. Yea right!

I also think we should have several other people who should reveal all their fuck ups, cheating, lying they have done and then you guys should go about embarrassing them. Now that is some funny shit. The younger the better. If it is a girl, great. Because we have a lot of things to protect besides academia, we can change the world one laugh at a time.

Nate you are the funniest, most compassionate, most moral human being in the world. Don't sell out now.

Yeah, maybe a little naive. This time last week, we were getting about 30 visits a day. We would have been surprised to see a spike at all, let along a million zillion percent spike. Someday soon, I'll post a graph of our traffic for the whole month for some perspective on what came at us.

Quonsar -

I have been reading your bile and bitterness for years, on mefi and blort so on, and I can't believe you have anything but adoration and admiration for this guy. What bug crawled up your butt over this topic? Were YOU at one point on the wrong end of social justice?

I don't care about the moral implications of any of this (ok, well, I do.. but it's all been written dry).

The best thing, though, is that she turned in a paper that said, "I made a doody". Come on, that act in and of itself is comedic gold.

I was once, falsly accused of plagiarism as a sophomore in high school, on a poem (as my teacher was a bit.. crazy), and her reaction just kills me.

I made a doody.

Bwhahahahahaha.

The thing that fascinates me most about this story is that she did absolutely everything she should not have done, yet there are people condemning you as being too harsh. Some of her actions were dishonest, some were stupid, many were both.

1. She didn't even try to write the paper herself.

Stupid
To begin with, she had more than enough time to write the paper herself. Hell, I know nothing about Hinduism, but I could sure pull off a last-minute "C" paper if I had to. She could have even asked for some references from you if she didn't know where to start.

2. She asked a total stranger based on a silly user profile to write her paper for her.

Really stupid and really dishonest
This act of stupidity alone shows that she probably isn't smart enough to be in college at all. She must have had someone fill out her college application for her.

3. She sends a photo of a personal check to this stranger

Really, really stupid and dishonest
Even with the intention of cheating you later, she reveals her name and address.

4. She denies her identity when asked for payment

Dishonest and stupid
Did she really think that you would believe her? Or did she hope you would just go away?

5. She didn't review the paper you sent.

Really, really, really stupid
The whole paper was obviously a joke. All it would have taken was three minutes to actually read it.

6. She doesn't fess up to the Dean.

Stupid and dishonest
This might be the final straw. If I were her school King, I would kick her out immediately.

I have an immediate distrust of anyone that says you were too harsh. It shows the lack of depth of their character.

This is updating every three minutes, on average. Pretty impressive, might I add.

It still didn't get me to look too hard at anything else here. Marketing sometimes is done less obtrusively. But like most people, I too am fascinated with the car crash story that is Mrs. Whatever her "real" name is, the hysterically titled Ms. Krishna.

Too funny.

Nope. No feelings of guilt. She lied and continued to lie, is probably still lying now. No, I don't believe this is her first time doing this. I really hope she's failed for this; maybe with a permanent mark on her record, she might actually shape up.

oh Nate,

You are so hot!! You would be the perfect father to my child. if she ever did something wrong like that stupid girl, promise me you will make a fool out of her like you did with Laura. Promise.

OH, OH I love the hate and anger, I am turned on.

God, I need to quit refreshing these comments.

My dad did call last night to tell me a story about a conference he was at. This is a story I've heard before, but I let him go with it.

He had the fantastic luck of having gone to see a paper being delivered out loud that had generous chunks of his very own words in it.

So, you know, that part about it hurting my dad's livelihood? That's not even in the metaphorical sense.

Eh, it sounds to me like she was more worried about escaping the consequences of cheating than she was about the having cheated; and I don't see why her mom brought up the point about how much she pays for her daughter's education. Was that along the lines of, "I am disappointed in her because I am supporting her through school," or was it along the lines of "well, she shouldn't cheat, but education costs so much money that she was only trying to make me proud"?

As much as you can feel sorry for a kid who burned her fingers, and badly, sometimes people can't/won't learn until they do.

Even then, occasionally, they need to burn themselves a few times.

I am one of those people, although, as bad of a student as I was (lazy, lazy...learned by osmosis, I swear), I honestly didn't plagarize. Skipped class, didn't do homework, sure, but I hate consequences, so I avoided the really bad ones! Hey, I paid most of my way through school, so I wasted my own money. Never did learn any better, though.

I can't imagine Nate feels great either way. Oh, and I'll certainly be heading to a show to check em out. They provided me with a few hours of amusement on their penny; may as well support the cause!

I've never been more disappointed in my life. People like her should have no mercy (she's a lying stupid sack of shit who does not belong in college in the first place) and had I dealt with this, I would have had her fucking turned into a Walmart Mum; which is what she really should be. She has learned nothing.

First of all, the numnuts who called her home are idiots. You don't give her that type of a warning. Let the school handle her.
Second, I'm inclined to believe that begining plagerists start out by copying sections from books, websites, etc. They don't hire someone to do a whole paper for them. It wouldn't surprise me if she got people to do her homework for her in high school.
And for her mom to defend her? That's called enabling, and a good mom (or dad) doesn't do that.

so she's a serial liar, no? still lying? which might be worse than serially subcontracting?

but you lied too? publicly?
and keep promoting some "tragedy for a week", as if you have some other motive? which makes us think that you are serially lying too...

and you caused other folks to contact her and the dean, even if you didn't mean to and regret that now. you might just have contacted the dean privately and left it at that.

and IF, IF you had somehow gotten the wrong innocent person, you would have been the poster person for irresponsible journalism, total lack of fact-checking.

commercial contracts can be based on verbal agreements, but are better based on when something changes hands. to protect yourself, it would probably be a good idea to refuse any check she sends you. or if you do accept it, you should write a real paper for her, as you agreed.

and a small correction, it's not dharma and greg, it's dharma and grog that will get you and her through times like this...

Nate,

Allah has truly blessed with you with gifts. Where I am from, if someone steals we cut their arms off. I think it is fair punishment. This girl deserves more. Please do not stop this torturous behavior, you have surely found your vocation.

In addition to being a cheat and a liar, she's also cheap. She wanted a 5 page paper before midnight, said money was no object, then only offered $60?

She deserved to be screwed over just for that. And seeing how her real name is topping the charts at Google, I believe she has been.

Well played, Nate.

Nate,
you are no hero in this. Regardless of this young girls actions, you willfully took advantage of her stupidity and created this drama. Someone braver and less attention hungry than you would have asked WHY she needed to do this and helped her realize that she had other options: Deadline extensions, pointers to resources and topics and so on. 5 pages is not a big deal - you could have spent less time on helping her shape an outline and proof reading her paper than you did on posting these selfish "I CAUGHT HER" posts. But it is all about generating traffic to your site, isn't it?

Plagiarizing is clearly wrong, but your blood thirsty sensationalism is a blogger's disgrace.

As the graduate of a school from which the President had to resign over a plagiarism scandal, I love this whole thing.

Nate,

good job kid. She showed through her comments that she's lazy and deceitful. And if she found you on the internet that means she's either too stupid to be in school or she's so dishonest she exhausted all her usual avenues.

This girl does not belong in an institution of higher learning.

I think you were too kind to her.

Don't feel guilty, it's making me sad. Find your inner asshole, boy!

The part about the Boing Boing "hoax" claim led me back to the original boing boing post. Then to the "other blogs commenting" page and OH THE IRONY!! Every single ad down the right side of the page touted an exam paper writing service!

True or not, valuable lesson told.

"global domination"

"you are an arrogant, self righteous, sadistic son of a bitch."

That seems a bit out of proportion for what he did, especially considering how nice he was in the end. Methinks quonsar and anyone posting similar insults doth protest too much. Perhaps they are plagiarists themselves and fear being punished the way our dear Laura was?

NATE, CAN I HAVE SECOND'S?

At first, I felt bad for the girl. To have her academic career, and in effect, yes, her life completely ruined because of one stupid mistake really is pretty harsh. Nobody here is claiming to have ever plagiarized, but you know that not one of us has never lied or cheated in *some* way or other in our entire lives.

But then I realized that, as other people have said, she really hasn't learned anything at all. And as even more people have said, it's extremely unlikely that she'll suffer more than a slap on the wrist for this. She sought out a stranger to write a paper for her, she took the product of his time and effort and denied knowledge of it ever having happened when he requested the agreed upon payment, and then lied to her dean when she did actually get caught. The plagiarism was a sign of laziness and stupidity. Lying to the dean was a sign of panic. But theft? That's contemptible, and crossing the line into an act that certainly *does* affect someone other than herself.

If Nate hadn't posted this, she most likely would have been caught and given a second chance, or gotten away completely scot-free. Since nothing is likely going to happen to her to affect her academic career, I think public humiliation and exposure for the lying thief that she is is a pretty fair alternative.

Bloot Pooner wrote "What bug crawled up your butt over this topic? Were YOU at one point on the wrong end of social justice?"

nope. but as an arrogant, self righteous, sadistic son of a bitch myself, i am quicker than most to recognise another!

Bitch didn’t know she was fucking with a comedy writer…

Nate,
You are a self-righteous moron that turned a poor attempt at humor into a idiotic morality play. Thanks for being the poster boy for miserable fucks who can't get laid and pulling all my prior postings...

At this point, the important thing isn't whether this really happened or who holds the moral high ground, it's who's getting the rights to the screen play. I see the casting as:

Nate: Tobey Maguire
Laura K. "Krishna": Winona Ryder
Laura's Mom: Goldie Hawn
The Dean: Dustin "The Graduate" Hoffman

This is high concept. Nate, let's do lunch. I'll call you.

I say anyone defending this girl is automatically found guilty of plagiarizing. And the rest of us (the good) should punish them in any way that we would like.

I have been following this story with great interest, as an academic and as an ex-student of a school with a very strict honour code, and I can no longer stay silent in the face of the egregiously inane and foolishly sentimental comments that have been left here.

There has been a lot of talk about Nate viciously ruining the life of an 'actual person', and of those of us who express satisfaction with or approval of his actions being 'vultures', 'witch hunters' and generally not-nice, inhuman types, who probably spend our spare time torturing small animals and collecting for the 'Reinstate the Roman Colisseum' Fund.

Let me make something very clear: this 'actual person' you are all so concerned about has ruined her own life because of her doltish laziness. I don't understand why people assume that paying tuition entitles them to a degree and a cushy job. It doesn't. Paying tuition gets you access to certain services and amenities - it is YOUR JOB to make use of them in ways that lead to your degree. And you know what? Your value in the workplace has *every right* to be contingent on your abilities and your ethical standards - and people like this are one of the biggest reasons why degrees don't count for much in determining either of those things anymore.

The kind of person who plagiarises, like this, intentionally and without remorse (unless he or she gets caught, in which case they are plenty sorry) is exactly the kind of person that no society should desire to have within its echelons. It is lazy and dishonest and shows a lack of concern for the time and work of others. It reflects a complete lack of understanding of the work ethic, and a complete buy-in to consumerist culture.

This girl is not a victim. A victim is a stupid freshman who has never been taught how to cite sources, or even a panicked student who copies a chunk of writing off the internet into a paper given on Tuesday for Thursday with an unreasonable minimum word count. This girl solicited, at the last possible minute, someone to WRITE A PAPER FOR HER, and at no point in this process has she shown a shred of integrity. Of course she's hurt. Of course she's upset. BECAUSE SHE GOT CAUGHT.

And it is typical of the corrosive consumerist approach being fostered in colleges across the country that the first thing her mother invokes is the amount of money she's paying for this education. In that case, she ought to have taught her daughter to value the tenets and mores of that educational system accordingly. As it is, Nate is not responsible for Laura's decision to fritter away her mother's money on an education that is obviously doing her no good.

You know what else? Let's stop playing the 'Oh, she's just a dumb kid' card. Because she is a college-age student, a young woman, past puberty and the 'age of reason' (though it seems some of us never get past that hurdle) and would be held responsible for her actions in any court of law.

In conclusion, let me ask all of those who are so concerned about the emotional scarring and dark future of this young con-artist - oh, sorry, I mean this poor innocent lass - how would you feel as a student in that class who had spent their time poring over library books and straining their eyes on the tiny print of online journals, realising that there are people who actually have the temerity to say that this girl has been in some way VICTIMIZED because she was caught out in her dishonesty?

Shame on you. On all of you.

I notice a lot of people saying that Nate caused all this drama. Nobody could have expected this sort of a reaction. I think the best case scenario for publicity on this post would have been for it to make its way to a few friends of friends, and maybe get 10 or 15 comments. A quick look at the previous posts on the blog proves that it's not exactly the most heavily visited site on the Internet.

Of course, this is not to say that the potential wasn't there for this to happen. But I mean, really, what are the chances?

I agree with Sengira. This girl is evil. Please continue torture. Academia needs all the help it can get.

Mike here- AWOK member. I love the idea that this is a hoax. Lord, if we really wanted to make money on this, we would have sold advertising space on our site, which we clearly do not have. And as for promoting our new show in the wake of this sites new-found popularity--Hell yes! Come to the next show! We have the showcase at The Funny, which is being advertised, and then a show of totally new material at Galapagos Arts Space on May 7! Mark it on your calender!

But truly, this unexpected internet infamy isn't going to help our our group's noteriety... our non-Krishna pages have not seen much of a bump, and during this whole time, with tens of thousands of visitors to the site, only seven new people have signed up for our mailing list. So if this was a hoax designed to drum up publicity, it wasn't a good one. Besides, we play small bars in New York City... our capacity is usually around 50 and we usually advertise by throwing fliers everywhere. Internet-wide publicity is a bit of overkill.

I tried to keep up with posting in the beginning, before it truly balloon yesterday morning, and once it started getting insane I backed off, realizing how large it had become. I'm no blogger--I have trouble keeping up with the echo-chamber of the internet. Watching this unfold from behind the scenes, I tip my hat to everyone who runs a good, tight blog.

As for people who are out for Laura's blood-- Comeon'! She's already has joined the ranks of such infamous internet flash-celebrities as Mahir Cahdri (that spelling is probably wrong, but remember the "I like sex" guy?) and that Romanian dancing guy. I can only hope that her 15-seconds of bad fame is almost over--it certainly wasn't my intention for our site to become a place to come and stone Miss Krishna. Personally, I doubt she'll be expelled--I hope she's not expelled. Failure on the paper is good enough for me. Remember, an eye for an eye is about proportionality, not cruelty--everyone should get another chance.

There, that's my addition to all of the moralizing.

I think she got what she deserved. As a prof, I've busted more students than I can list for liberating papers from the shackles of the internet. Every time, unless they have a record, most universites just 'warn' them to never do it again. It's a harsh and embarassing punishment, but I bet many students will think twice (for at least the next week or two) about committing similar offenses

In response to Lexus NG's comment about changing the blogs name from "Week Of Kindness", why the hell should he? HELLOOOO!!!.....This website already existed before this whole drama happened. Obviously this went WAAAY out of control. Like Nate said this was only posted for a few people.And for everyone who's getting all pissy at Nate for "ruining Laura's life",....back off! He handled the situation beautifully before, during AND after.

Imagine a person cruising down the road, listening to music, chillin' out and puffin' on a cigarette. When he's done with his smoke he throws it out the window.He continues on his merry ol' way. 9 times outta 10 it wouldn't be a big deal....the cig would harmlessly burn itself out ( yeah it would be polluting and it's a bad habit, but stick with me will ya?) And then theres the chance that it ignites and starts a wildfire. Meanwhile, the guy in the car is still just puttin' along not knowing how huge a mess his lil' cig has caused. If he knew, he would feel bad and try to help what damage he has done, and feel remorse for the harmless little act that he has done.
That's kinda what happened here.Many of you will argue,....well, he shouldn't have been smoking anyway or he shouldn't have thrown the cig out the window.... true and true,....but that's NOT MY POINT! the point I'm trying to make is that Nate does seem to have compassion for how out of control this thing has gotten. He offered to help her. This wasn't meant to be super-sized. We all got sucked in and fed the flames that turned this into a wildfire. If it's a hoax and an April Fool's Day prank, then it was a damn good one and I can't wait for the next. Congrats on a job well done.
If on the other hand, if all we read here is real....Laura is still a dumbass who got what she deserved. And of course the Mom is gonna be nice and placating. This is her daughter we're talkin about. I bet Charlie Mansons mom said he was a good kid too. That's how parents are.......I'm a parent and I am guilty of turning a blind eye to some things my child does. So what if her mom is nice....the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. hmmmmm...................

"I failed to show you blood when you wanted it."

Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" comes to mind. (http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/887/)

"I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool."

I agree with Professor Join the nose.

Harsh and embarassing punishment is the way to go. Nothing else seems to work.

"If you must write prose and poems the words you use should be your own. Don't Plagurize or take "on loan". There's always someone - somewhere - with big nose, that knows - And will trip you up and laugh when you fall" - Morrisey

wise words.

I agree with dee,

Cigarettes are dangerous in real life and as metaphors.

This blog has really snowballed into it's own living entity. For those of you who continually criticise Nate for his 'lack of compassion' I don't think that you realize that he never thought it would receive this sort of attention. Naive, yes, but not intentionally cruel. He did say that the site (of which the blog is only a subsection) was only getting about 30 hits a day; to think that he accurately predicted the level of publicity and then proceeded with defamous intentions is just ludicrous.

What I really wanted to comment on is the coming repercussions from her school. Many commenters have said that it's likely that nothing will happen, as schools are more likely to let such a transgression go than to open themselves up to litigation. However, with the current popularity of this story, I'm sure the school will feel a lot of pressure to make an example out of Laura. I mean, I keep expecting to see this story pop up on CNN the way it's been popping up everywhere on the internet. As we've learned from the Martha Stewart trial and the majority of the bloodthirsty comments on this blog, people want to see people punished for their bad behavior, even if the punishment doesn't necessarily fit the crime.

Before I get flamed, I'm not in any way saying that Laura doesn't deserve punishment for her stupidity. If she is made into a high profile example of 'why not to behave this way' for other college students, then bravo. I just feel that we've all had our fun, and it's time to let the proper authorities take over. She's (hopefully) learned a hard lesson, and will very likely learn a few more based on what her school decides to do with her. It's time for a bit of compassion.

I agree odpenguin, with the CNN thing. This would make a great news story even if it were a brief one. However I have a feeling the journalist would have a difficult time getting any comments from cheaty mc cheats a lot or her mother. The story would probably be killed.

And in response to one of the wack job commenters up there talking about "poor journalism and lack of fact checking" you have to be joking. This is a blog that doesn't claim to have any journalistic value, it's online, certainly not held to the same standards as a published newspaper or magazine. Lighten up or get off the internet.

I can't believe someone here is defending Laura because the fact that she IM'd some random person shows that she was "desperate"...and so Nate took advantage of her "desperation".

Fuck that. She was lazy. Collossally fucking lazy and with a checkbook that said "money is no object" in terms of getting out of doing actual work.

I don't believe for a second that this is the first time she's done this. And, BTW, unless she started college when she was 14, a third year college student is not a "kid". She's an adult - a young adult, perhaps, but a junior in college is not some innocent 6th grader. Just because she's stupid and her mom is nice doesn't mean she should be treated like a child. She's an irresponsible, dishonest adult.

As was commented before, if she was so "desperate" she would have buckled down and spent the night writing the damned paper herself. She said herself that the topic was completely broad and could have been about ANYTHING related to Hinduism -- how difficult is *that* for a third-year college student? The fact that she couldn't churn out a decent 5 page paper on anything at all related to Hinduism within 12 hours shows that she likely hasn't written anything substantive at all in her first two years in college.

Besides, if she had some serious situation in her life that truly made her "desperate", she wouldn't have had all that time to seek out Nate's random IM profile or correspond with him about the draft. She could have approached her professor and asked for an extension.

On top of that, to not even take the time to proofread the damned paper before turning it in shows how preposterously lazy she is.

And on top of that, she lied when Nate tried to get payment for his paper.

She's no kid. She's lazy, she's a liar, she's a cheat.

HOAX OR NOT, this is a great litmus test of how we feel about cheating and punishment. It's been a pleasure to read. Thank you, Nate.

Agreeing with jp, the first things any miscreants do when caught are:

(1) deny,

(2) swear it's the first time it's ever happened,

(3) lie some more to evade being caught

Laura, the thing you should have done instead is try being honest with the Dean. Contrition would have shown you off in a much better light.

Disconcerting remains the impression that this student, having used the miracle of IM to hire a ghost writer without a second thought and having intended to scam him the $75 she promised for the work, does not appear to be very unusual.

Whether LKP learns a lesson or not is not the question. The lesson needs to go to the Dean. In all probability LKP fairly accurately reflects the moral leanings of many of her contemporaries at the school, a fact that Lewis (and probably most every college on the planet) really ought to address.

I want to marry Laura, she sounds hot as hell, kinda like a chick that cries. I know your reading this Laura, you should post a link to some pics;)

There are two levels on which you can review this event. On the individual level, the girl was dumb, dumb, dishonest and dumb. Grist for the great Darwinian millstone. Nate was bloodthirsty, and has benefitted greatly from it. Chum for the great white shark of Karma. (I'd start lighting incense if I were you, Nate.)

But on a social level, Nate has provided a great service. The sheer volume of exposure of this event has provided an object lesson not only for stupid college students, but stupid people everywhere who steal ideas. Well, the stupid people won't get it. But the episodically stupid--those who otherwise know better but are tempted from time to time--will get it.

As a person who makes a living writing, I have found, more than once, people stealing articles I've spent hours writing and posting them on their own sites with their own byline. If Nate has prevented one person from ripping off my own livelihood down the road, he can have a tablespoon of whatever good Karma I can offer.

I teach engineering and I get students lying to me about stupid stuff every year. I have not yet found a way to get them to stop doing it. They lie about missing class, they lie about doing homework, they lie about owning the textbook. Some of these kids will just happily lie about anything if they think they can get away with it. I have no recollection of going through a similar phase myself, and I don't know how common it is, but I would say at least 1 out of every 20 students has no personal integrity.

They of course get genuinely upset when caught in a lie or in cheating, and genuinely beg you for forgiveness, but then they continue to lie to you while begging. If a parent gets involved, they don't lie nearly as well, and usually the parent knows full well the kid lies, and has little sympathy for the state they are in. But they still want you to help their kid...

Nate, Nate, Nate. Even if you hadn't stated it plainly at one point in your blog, it would still be obvious that you are only in your early twenties. Throughout this sad tale, at least until you spoke with her on the phone, you showed no self-doubts about your role in meteing out judgement on her for her actions. This is not about Laura Nate. I do not dispute for a moment the wrongness of what she attempted, or whether she deserves to suffer for it. But this whole thread is about you. It reveals more about you than about her, Nate. About your character, and your presumption that you were somehow appointed by history, or by god, or by the internet, or by your by your own intellectual superiority, or by your duty to your family's educational heritage (spare me), to be the policeman, the enforcer, the prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner of this poor dumb shallow girl. In my experience, only twenty-somethings and tv evangelists have so little self-doubt. So what if she plagerized? How does that cheapen my degree? I studied and gained knowledge for it's own sake, not the piece of paper.
Why did you study Nate, so you could despise people who go to community college? The meaningless of her degree does not lessen the meaningfulness of yours. So don't try and shill that crap about your noble motives to me Nate. The fact that you didn't really turn her in is irrelevant. It is your pleasure in toying with her, judging her, that I am addressing. Only people still under the illusion of their own righteousness take such pleasure as you did in exposing another's. You will grow up one day. Hope that you recieve more mercy than you showed Laura.

I hope you aren't going to feel overly guilty about this. I think this girl has far greater screw-ups in her future, because it's pretty obvious that she doesn't listen, she doesn't think, and she doesn't learn. The saddest thing is that her mother has a lot more heart-break in store for her over the years, what with being a well-meaning enabler and all.

It's interesting that it was Laura's statement "money is no object" that precipitated so little sympathy for her from so many people, as they dubbed her a little rich-girl bitch. Ironically, the reason it was no object wasn't that she was a rich-girl bitch with a big bank account, it was because she apparently never intended to pay you in the first place.

Plus, she didn't just (as you wrote in a post, earlier) whine to you to take her name off your site -- useless, as you pointed out -- she also asked you to lie and publish a retraction. I assume she wanted you to publish that you'd made it all up? That would have taken the heat off her and onto you, as you would then be dubbed a liar and a meanie, attacking an innocent girl this way. Or maybe she expected a retraction would magically make it all go away as if it never happened. Which is nuts, because this girl turned in a paper with the words "I made a doody" in it and you don't just walk away from that.

She's no mere plagiarist; she's a thief, a coward, and a chisler, too. And a moron, because even a plagiarizing, chisling, thieving coward with more than a single brain cell in her head would have read the paper she'd just purchased from a complete stranger on the internet before turning it in. Also? She apparently doesn't handle stress all that well. So maybe she should stop putting herself into potentially stressful situations, like soliciting strangers on the internet to write her papers for her.

There are kids who screw up and deserve sympathy and a second chance, and there are people like this dim young woman, who pick the wrong and easy answer every single step of the way, over and over, without remorse (unless they get caught. Then, remorse a-plenty. About getting caught.)

I agree with "No pity for Laura"
1) We cannot accept laziness. It has to be punshed. Even acts such as responding to blogs should go unpunished.

2) Liars and cheats lose rights to privacy or justice. Just my opinion, if you have problem, feel free to waste your time and respond to me.

I also agree with Mike
Nate is not a journalist and should not be accountable for anything, ever.

In brief response to Elaine (Biome!):

You said: Maybe I have a twisted sense of morality. Cheating (including plagiarism) is ass but what Nate did was, in my opinion, worse. Laura came to him asking for help and if he had simply refused to write the paper, then maybe she would have buckled down and written it.

Laura did NOT come asking for help. She came asking for someone to do the work that she was responsible for doing herself. 'Help' would be more in the nature of asking someone to proof-read your paper. 'Help' would be asking to bounce ideas off of someone so you can better put them into words. 'Help' is not paying someone to do all that for you.

You also said: The fact that she approached a stranger on the internet to help her in her assignment shows that she was pretty desperate, and not everyone is sensitive to virtual sarcasm.

Did it show desperation, or did it show laziness? An act of desperation is meeting your professor in his office and begging for an extension. Contacting someone and offering to pay them is not desperation; its stupidity based on the assumption that you can pay to get out of your responsibilites. That should have died with scuttage in Medieval Europe, yet somehow it always makes it back in, and people wrongly assume that it is justifiable.

Note also that I to have seen cheating in various forms, and have been asked to 'help' people to cheat. I turned them down, with a stern lecture. I even offered to help them learn or do their assignments in legitimate ways, just as you suggest. And in EVERY case, the person found someone else to help them cheat. Some things require a less gentle touch, that is nevertheless meant to teach.

Yay, another two cents.

I've seen a couple people complain that using the word "bitch" is horribly sexist. I don't understand that, since the word is generally used as a generic insult against a female, much as "bastard" tends to be used with regards to men. If it was being used in a situation where its connotations involved "oh, she's too independent and not womanly/feminine enough, blah blah," then yeah, I can see how it would have been seen as sexist, but after reading through every comment on the issue at hand, I only noticed one that struck me as particularly sexist -- and that one didn't even use the word in question.

The funny thing is, LKK was being the OPPOSITE of the "sexist" meaning of bitch. She was showing an incredible degree of dependence on a strange man. And, uh, honestly I don't think any of us know what her relative degree of femininity is, so that's pretty well irrelevant.

Of course, it kind of gets at me when people whine about how things should always be perfectly politically correct, because that's just veiling nonsense and idiocy under the guise of progress.

On a similar note, I doubt everyone talking about the "paying your way through college" thing is saying "OMG, she's rich, persecute her!" Personally, I'd be even more pissed off if she was poor and pulled something like that, because poor people generally do not have cushy lives in which mommy and daddy come and save their sorry asses from the evils of honest work -- they don't expect that shit, so it's even dumber if they do something like that without the expectation of someone pulling them out of it. This is not about sympathy for social classes, and I find it hard to believe that anyone is trying to turn it into something regarding that.

It's not like the rest of us don't get the opportunity to cheat, and sometimes by accident.. ex., my school's chemistry department has the unfortunate habit of occasionally posting the answers to a test before the test. I've never used 'em, because that would fuck with my conscience pretty horribly. Luckily, I don't think any large number of people have caught on to that, or that would screw the curve all to hell.

Nate, quit defending yourself. Whether it is a hoax or not, it's a darned funny story to read. No arguing by you is going to change any nay-sayers minds.

Let people enjoy the ride.

And if it is true......Laura? Good luck when you fail at life and "mommy" can't bail you out anymore. You can probably get by as a $5 blowjob whore once your top teeth fall out.

My first reaction (well, after laughing at poor, dumb Luara) was that Nate was an ass for fucking with someone's life he didn't even know. But in light his posited intentions, I find it funny and ironic. That's what I would have wanted to accomplish.

As for all of you out for blood: get real. Take a step back. How important is this, really? Its bullshit, like any other youthful indiscretion. My advice to you: get over yourselves.
To those invested too heavily in acedemia to have a useful perspective: suckers! Y'all drank the Kool-aid.

I agree with Telzey-

She is not just plagiarist, she stands against all that is good and sweet. Dumb girls are to be stripped and spanked in public like what you have just done.

Again, Telzey is great but Nate is greater!!

Even wading through the pompous, self-righteous who-ha, it's been interesting and a hell of a ride, thank you Nate.

Laura, it could have been a lot worse. You're lucky.

Peupty peupty pants. It'll all be o.k. in the morning. Laura will live on, and have kids, and grandkids, and teach them all about the evils of the internet, and plagiarism, and the birds and the bees.

While even I feel a wee twang of sympathy for the girl since I've pulled my share of stupid human stunts in the past...
I can't help but feel bad for you, Nate.
You seem pretty genuinely upset that this got so out of hand and here you are STILL getting flamed for it.

Me, personally? Well I'm obnoxious. I would have eaten her alive and enjoyed the hell out of myself...esp. with such an impressive audience.
It really says a lot about you that you didn't.

The Nate haters screaming "karma this and karma that" are prodiving a great laugh, thanks guys.

Oh and lighten up a bit, get the stick out of your ass, have a drink, something. You must be the most boring people around, do you have friends?

Alright, Nate. Fess up. How much are they paying you to keep quiet and to tell the Dean it was all a huge hoax?

I agree with i love laura. Can you post some pictures Laura?

Heh. You're a damn cynic, cynic. If they're paying me, it's obviously not enough, because nobody has retracted.

I just hope that one day, Nate, smeone goes all vigilante on you because they discover something about you that offends their personal sense of justice, then goes all out to humiliate you in a public fashion. After all, people who violate parking laws or smoke dope or whatever the hell you do deserve what's coming to them, right? Never mind that they sold you the weed, told you to park in that spot, etc. You'll never know if your refusal to do this paper for her would have resulted in her doing it herself or not. But of course you're totally blameless right? I mean even considering plagiarism is surely just as bad.

The lack of compassion and general cruelty expressed in most of these comments frankly shocks me, too. I thought higher of humanity in general, but here you leeches are gathering and cheering on this retarded vigilante justice and even harassing the author that he wasn't as much of an asshole to her as she 'deserved'. Life is tough indeed, eh? Maybe life wouldn't be such an asshole in general if people like you didn't use that as an excuse to act like fucking dicks all the time just to get your jollies.

I agree with Mike (he truly is brilliant),

Please people, please, try to get the stick out your ass. I am trying to laugh at someone's expense, please do not bring up Karma. Not fun. Go somewhere else.

One MEEEEEELLLLYON dollars?

Don't torture yourself. The kid knew what a kettle of crap she was putting on to boil when she chose plagiarism.

She may have a nice mom, but so did Darth Vader.

We love you Laura!! Simply for the fact that you have put some substance into our day. Nate, we love you too, for the same reason. Nate and Laura rock!

nate, i adore you. i worked my ass off to get two degrees and i didn't cheat. ever. i can't understand the teeming throngs who are attempting to castigate you for doing something just and thought-provoking. focus on the positive; a lot of us think you rock. ignore anyone who doesn't.

As a grad student TA who caught two plagiarists in my Intro into Women's Studies class last year I have to say I'm pretty much in support if Nate's actions. Women's Studies is all about understanding outside circumstances, hardships, blah blah blah. However these women, both seniors, denied any wrongdoing until I plopped the Goggled results in front of them.

One of the seniors was only four days away from graduation. I pointed out my plagiarism policy in my syllabus (F for the course, letter to Dean). She said she hadn'r seen it before. I reminded her I had read the syllabus in its entirity on the first day. She told my (in a quite a snitty voice) that she hadn't been there, she had been on a cruise with her family. She then said she would be "willing" to redo the paper. When I said no, she started screaming, saying I had "ruined" her life because she would now "have to go to summer school."

I did feel bad. My F would substancially effect her GPA. The mark on her transcript would be there for possible grad school applications. But as a fellow TA poined out, I wasn't doing this to her, she had done it to herself. She never expressed any remorse, only outrage that I wasn't going to let her get away with it. I agree wholeheartedly with sengria. Laura was not victimized. she knew very well what she was doing. While I'm not 100% Nate's actions (90% maybe)it is nice to know that he (and a good number of posters) have not forgotten academic integrity.

"So what if she plagerized? How does that cheapen my degree? I studied and gained knowledge for it's own sake, not the piece of paper. Why did you study Nate, so you could despise people who go to community college?"

Cheapening your degree and cheapening your education are two different things. Your education is what you made of it and it's "value" is up to you. Your DEGREE has very tangible social and monetary value, regardless of whether you use it for those things.

That people like Laura can attain degrees by cheating their way into academic success cheapens them. This is not some subjective myth, it's a very simple fact. Degrees are supposed to be symbols that those who attain them are deserving of them.

Your argument is like saying that somebody becoming a high-ranking judge because their daddy got them the job doesn't cheapen the judicial system. It damn well does.

*Shrug* Maybe only 20-somethings trying to go get jobs with those degrees are in a position to realize that, though they certainly shouldn't be the only ones who see it.

I live in Chicago and I'm going to go to Illinois Lewis University with picket signs and start a movement to free Laura!!

Who thinks Nate's family is a bunch of raging maniacs?
Poor, poor family. Please somebody think about the cushioners.
If anyone knows this moron or his family, please make sure to make their life is a living hell!!

I think Laura is just representative of where society is at now. The liars, the cheaters, the assholes, the dicks..they are the ones who make it. They are the ones that get ahead in life. It makes you wish there really is a God, so that one day in the afterlife, all those who cheated their way to the top and put the honest man down will get some kind of grand punishment.

I truelly hope Laura's mother chewed her ass for what she did. I hope that good old Mom didn't teach her to do such things.

Dear Blah:

May our guilt eat away at our souls like kharmatic battery acid.

I agree with Gillyfield (She is so wise, I think she is the Virgin Mary),

Nate's actions are on the same level as a teacher displining their students. Same level!! Damn it!!

"Nathan is so brown, and Laura is so gray, kharmatic dreaming, on such a plagiaristic day."

-the mommas and the poppas

Nate,
You did the right thing... too many cheaters sail through college (and through life) undetected. By the time they get caught, years upon years later, they have have not only harmed themselves but everyone around them. Just ask any employee of a company which went under because someone cooked the books, or any researcher who spent has wasted years of his life because of someone faking the data.

As for the rest of you who are condemning Nate, GROW UP! You might as well complain about the police because they punish criminals!