thanks guys, I'm addicted to the saga now. FWIW, I hope she's learned her lesson. I'm sure many of us have been tempted when faced with a bland or difficult topic, but this was neither and she actually followed through. For shame.

After 2 non-plagiarized BS degrees, I start my non-plagiarized MS degree in September!

This is the first press I've seen on this whole thing...

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/03/31/plagiarize

I'm ambivalently in the this-is-a-hoax crowd.

If it turns out to be a hoax, it's a real beaut, and that's why I check in for updates.

Some aspects of the case just don't feel right, and some of my skepticism can't get around the fact this is all being played out on a sketch-comedy group's site so close to a near-holiday dedicated to pranks.

At any rate -- whether I'm right or wrong -- the process has certainly revealed interesting perspectives on plagiarism, ethics, and culture.

Cheers,

greville

It's not a hoax. I've talked to her. Repeatedly, in fact. Bitch won't go out with me, and now she's not answering her phone.

Nate,

I'm not usually inclined to post comments on these things, but I wanted to tell you that I believe you handled the situation admirably. I felt slightly sick when I read that, apparently, a fair number of people on this thread want to see "Ms. Krishna" expelled, publicly flayed, drawn and quartered, et cetera. As a college student working my ass off for an English degree, I have no respect for this girl, who is obviously mentally deficient and completely lacking in ethics and "personal integrity," as one fellow put it, but she is, above all, just a stupid kid who did a stupid thing. And, if she is, in fact, the Antichrist, this whole debacle will probably only compel "Ms. Krishna" to become a better liar, regardless of the severity of the punishment that is ultimately meted out.

Low morals are not adequate justification for public crucifixion beyond (mostly) benign internet infamy and possible course failure and suspension. Besides, this girl is obviously retarded and will have to deal with enough consequential hardship throughout the rest of her life. So, whatever, Internet People, get your panties out of a twist.

To the point, Nate, I commend your decorum (truly classy) and I think it's great that you've been able to provide an exceedingly clever object lesson for all of academia. Good luck with your theatre troupe.

~Joanna

P.S. Your friend Tex is hilarious. The thread just wasn’t complete until someone referenced Deliverance.

By continuing to propagate this, you will go to hell Nate.

Enjoy seeing someone in pain? Go torture some Iraqis in Iraq.

To save space here for serious comments by new posters I put my latest rant here.

http://forwardho.blogspot.com/2005/03/cheater-and-bully.html

LexusNg,

Nowadays compassion is more difficult to channel than arrogance.

But on to my anecdote:

Many years ago, my youngest brother had to do a paper for high school. Our middle brother was home on leave from the Navy and was asked to write the paper for him, as the youngest was ill and had come home from work to sleep til time for school. So middle bro writes it up, all legit until the last sentence, where he wrote the following about the teacher: "Mr. James is ugly and looks like a groundhog with glasses!"

From what I remember, he thought the youngest brother would read it, but he didn't and got suspended for 3 days.

Quick question: See your sketch comedy, is it anything like this? Because I'm not sure I'd want to go and see 30 seconds of light humour followed by 14 and a half minutes of some guy reading out a bullet point list of apologies.

I've been a faculty member for ten years, and I've dealt with my share of cheating and plagiarism in that time.

Mr. Kushner, please put aside any doubts or regrets you may still have about this incident. I (and every other professor) have seen students exactly like Laura - adults (not "kids"!) utterly devoid of any ethics, and completely willing to look you right in the eye and lie repeatedly until confronted with the ironclad evidence of guilt.

Forget Laura's tears and pleading - those are standard tactics for her type. Had those tactics worked, and had she succeeded in somehow making this situation go away, she would now be laughing with her friends about how she got away with it, and what a fool and a pushover you were.

And her claims that this was the first time she ever did something like this? Two chances of that - slim and none. An honest 21-year-old woman doesn't decide out of the blue to solicit a ghost writer for a term paper, lie to that ghost writer, and cheat him out of his promised payment. She's been at this for a long, long time. It may certainly be the first time she's ever been caught at it, which may say something about the laxity of her professors in enforcing the honor code at her university.

I find the comments of pity and sympathy for Laura's plight rather interesting. I'll bet those same people who condemn you for hurting "poor Laura" also condemn people like Ken Lay (Enron) and Bernard Ebbers (Worldcom). People, where do you think people like Lay and Ebbers come from? That's right, they were once college students just like Laura - people who had absolutely no reservations about lying, cheating, or stealing to get what they wanted, and damn the consequences to others.

The spotlight you've turned on Laura's lack of morality might - I say MIGHT - turn her around, but I doubt it. By the age of 21, a person's moral compass is hard to turn. But hopefully this little saga might convince a few other potential cheaters to think twice.

Given that private religious universities typically have very tough honor codes and strict punishments for cheating, I think Laura is in for a very unpleasant semester. Good. If nothing else, perhaps she'll one day do a better job raising her own children than her own mother did raising her.

And by the way, just in case this is all a hoax - kudos!

ASCP: Would you like some salsa with that chip on your shoulder?

You make a lot of grand pronouncements about what "kind of person" Laura is (from this, I would imagine that you study a worthless subject like Psychology or English Lit), yet I think you doth protest a bit too much. (That's an English Lit quote, in case you're a Psychology professor.) Either you plaigarised heavily yourself throughout college, or have gone easy on those who did. Worse yet, you might have failed to notice one of your students doing so!

Either way, you sound like an embittered borderline psycho.

Enough is Enough.

Chris. On April 1, 2005. ("The Fools Day")
Tomorrow. Start another joke.

Make the mirror turn in other directions.

Everybody else should help you by not posting
any more thoughts of inner Buddhist Delights!

I think your behavior was reprehensible and, frankly, disgusting. We have an immature college student who, for whatever reason, is cutting corners. Maybe there is a family tragedy. Maybe she is suffering from depression. And you, to boost your ego and generate material for your ego-boosting blog, go to great lengths to inflict a disproportionate punishment on her. You do not bother to check into her motivations: you assume them. You do not bother to check whether the name given is the right one: you assume so. You act with guile and lure her into a trap.

What she did was wrong, but in no way commensurate with what you did.

As another professor, I too meet so much plagiarism that I wonder sometimes why I bother giving writing assignments in the first place. Student reactions to being caught cheating or plagiarizing seem to follow the famous 5 Stages of Dealing with Death made famous by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross(Kubler-Ross, E, On Death & Dying, (Simon & Schuster/Touchstone),1969. Below is my modified account.
1. Denial - The "No, not me" stage.
This stage is filled with disbelief and denial. The student will swear that it is not true, will assert that they worked very hard on the paper, and/or talk about his honor and work ethic. They may even offer to provide evidence of their research (which will never appear).
2. Anger/Resentment - The "Why me?" stage.
The student will begin to get aggressive, threatening, demanding proof of these claims. She might begin to argue about the vagueness of the assignment, or the difficulty of the task. She may claim to be picked on because of her race, sex, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, fraternity/sorority membership, athletic participation, etc.. Threats of lawsuits, complaints to department heads, provosts, and parents are not uncommon at this stage.
3. Bargaining - The "If I do this, you'll do that" stage.
He will ask for an opportunity to redo the assignment, or correct it, or even find the 'missing' references. These discussions are usually peppered with the lengthy claims about how hard his life was/is in order to create sympathy, or promises of a greater future effort to do well. At the very least he will argue that he should not be penalized beyond a bad grade. Among a certain group, bribes or offers of other payments are not unheard of at this stage.

4. Depression- The "It’s really happened" stage.
The student may cry, send lengthy confessions, perhaps invoke religious proverbs. She may begin to dramatize the effect of this accusation on her self esteem. She may begin to complain about 'stupid' she is, or how much she regrets this error in judgment. She may suddenly find religion at this time.

5. Acceptance - The "This is what happened" stage.
The student accepts the fact that he did something wrong. The good ones see this as a learning experience, the bad ones quit school, or believe they can get away with it again if they just do it better. I am not really sure how many people actually get to this stage, they are usually gone from my view by then, but presumably it must happen, eventually.

To nk:

Laura had proven exactly what "kind of person" she is - a liar, a cheat, and a plagiarist. Her words and actions, not mine. It's interesting how you condemn me for judging Laura with such ample evidence, yet turn around and judge me while knowing almost nothing about me. Hypocrisy much?

Try sitting behind my desk for ten years, and deal with these cases like I have. Your perspective will change. If you think I'm being a bastard, or being cruel, boo hoo. "Embittered borderline psycho"? I've been called much worse by the students I've caught, believe me. But I did what I had to do, because otherwise a grade in my class would mean nothing to the students who worked for it. Not to mention the fact that it's my JOB, and my RESPONSIBILITY. Do those words have any meaning to you?

And by the way, I teach engineeering. Funny thing about engineering - when people cheat, or lie, or cut corners, buildings sometimes collapse, or planes crash, or cars flip over. Innocents get hurt, or die, because people like Laura lack the ethics to do the right thing.

It sounds to me like a professor may have once caught YOU doing the wrong thing. Maybe that's why you're so bitter and angry about my comments towards plagiarism, hmm?

To Another Prof:

Your "5 stages" are excellent. I shall definitely have to share them with my colleagues.

ASCP:

Rock on! You tell 'im!

nk:

You're stupid and impudent. I don't know which is worse.

A Somewhat Weird Professor:

I don't need to plaigarise. My degree course is easy, and the coursework load is moderate. Plus, I get good grades anyway, being relatively responsible and of a decent level of intelligence.

Perhaps the reason you have such a problem with plaigarism is that you launch witchunts against students, not unlike the one you tried to deflect onto me in your last reply.

Product Free Cruelty: What does impudent mean? I realise I should know this, but sadly I am stupid.

About eighteen months ago, I caught a plagiarist red-handed when he had an article published in a respected online journal. I read it thinking that it felt strangely familiar, but it wasn't until I got to the end that I realised what his source must have been, because he committed the classic plagiarist's mistake of copying a factual error without double-checking.

So I dug out the piece I thought he'd cribbed from, and my instincts were entirely correct - there'd been a token attempt at rewriting, but it was so superficial that at least 75% of it had simply been copied word for word.

Unlike Nate, I didn't have a blog, and I'm not sure I'd have gone down the name'n'shame route anyway (I think Nate's biggest mistake in this whole affair - the only really serious one, to be fair - was naming Laura from the off), so I simply sent a copy of the original piece to the site editor and suggested he compare it with what he'd published. He replied within the hour, genuinely shocked, having withdrawn every piece by that author pending further investigation.

He was also kind enough to forward me the plagiarist's reply a few days later:

"I have checked through the article and the paragraphs you sent me. The sections in question did not come from [the source I cited] but from two newspaper obituaries that I used in my research and from which I had taken notes. When I returned to the original newspaper sources, I have to agree that my notes were close to the original."

Both the editor and I agreed that "close" was a bit of an understatement - and the pieces weren't reinstated.

The really shocking thing was that this wasn't some wet-behind-the-ears college kid, but someone with a PhD (allegedly) who clearly had ambitions towards being taken seriously as a writer. I occasionally google the name to see if there's any sign of his writing career taking off - though I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do if he's ever commissioned by someone I know and/or respect.

What's particularly outrageous about all this isn't just the fact that he ripped off another writer for personal gain but the fact that in so doing he also opened his editor up to a plagiarism suit. And had I e-mailed the original author instead of the editor, that might well have happened - it was only sheer laziness on my part in that the editor's e-mail was much easier to track down that ensured it didn't!

The really sad part about this is that academia must be rife with plaigarism. I'm about to finish my BA, and I've had it drummed into me constantly since day one that plaigarism will not be at all tolerated at my uni. But it seems to be a massive problem.

One of my lecturers last year told me that there is a section in a rather popular volume written by an ex-colleague of his, that basiclly copies sentence-for-sentence an article he himself wrote a couple of years prior. Apparently this was a mistake, and the guy was in "writers mist" and thus didn't even know he was remembering and writing out someone else's work. But how many more people will do things like that deliberatley?

Sorry, I should have mentioned that I also checked out these newspaper obituaries, which were also sourced from the original article (which was a biographical piece that could easily be reworked as an obituary).

There was one crucial difference, though - they were edited by, and of course credited to, the original author.

"The really sad part about this is that academia must be rife with plaigarism. I'm about to finish my BA, and I've had it drummed into me constantly since day one that plaigarism will not be at all tolerated at my uni. But it seems to be a massive problem."

The problem is that it's just too damn easy to find, cut and paste pieces on just about any subject - I simply didn't have that kind of freedom when I was a student in the 1980s. If I was that way inclined, at the very least I'd have to sit down and physically copy out the text I wanted to plagiarise, word by word. Which is one of many reasons why it wasn't worth doing: the amount of effort saved would have been pretty minimal when set against the potential problems of getting caught.

"One of my lecturers last year told me that there is a section in a rather popular volume written by an ex-colleague of his, that basiclly copies sentence-for-sentence an article he himself wrote a couple of years prior. Apparently this was a mistake, and the guy was in "writers mist" and thus didn't even know he was remembering and writing out someone else's work. But how many more people will do things like that deliberatley?"

It's a tricky one, and I do sympathise - I myself have an excellent memory for phrases, sentences and paragraphs, and it's not at all implausible that I might inadvertently have recycled the work of another writer without attribution in my own work.

But we'd be talking phrases or sentences at most - I can't believe someone's recall would be so good that it would permit them to recycle whole paragraphs from memory without having at least a vague idea of their source, even if it's only along the lines of there being a source in the first place.

You Sir, are a cunt!

Your in America, your all retarded anyway!

Weatherby Pond makes an important point about referencing -- you can use other people's work as long as you attribute it properly. And this makes me wonder if it's really possible to do completely original writing?

In many subject areas, it seems to me that all has already been said (and then some). Kind of like this blog on plagarism, and the perspectives about ethics and morality it has generated.

I think it's unlikely that any of the opinions and views expressed here are truly original in the sense of never having been conceived of before; I'm pretty sure that other thinkers have had and expressed identical views, although not likely in identical words.

So.... when seeking originality -- what are we really looking for? New wordings for old ideas.... or totally new ideas? The former seems almost trivial in comparison to the latter. Even though new wordings may have value -- perhaps they communicate the idea more clearly or elegantly. I can also see the value for students in terms of gaining mastery over a subject area -- becoming familiar with what's already been said so that you are in a position to actually judge whether your perspective is truly something original.

The value of true originality, by contrast, strikes me as breathrough brilliance of a totally different order. Maybe we can't expect it from student essays but maybe it is what we should be looking for when we assess the value of cholarship.

Not-an-original

In response to nirvarly...

WTF???

nirvarly:

Take a lesson. Your=your as in "Your brain must be made of dog poo." You're=you are as in "You're an idiot."

nk: Its pretty clear from your attitude that you have never created anything or done anything of value. Hope you enjoy bending over when the Lauras of the world come to rip you off.

cheers.

I suppose it depends how you define "value."

I'm tremendously impressed that, even though this is on the internet, some people still have useful things to say. Repetetive as hell after 3 days worth of comments, but at least there are some slight variations on themes.

Let's remind everybody at this point who can't be bothered to read that "Krishna" is not her real name, and there is therefore no point in saying, "C'mon, it's a hoax, her name is Krishna!"

Okay, carry on.

Ignore the trolls. They're not worth your mental energy.

Nate, as someone who has been falsely accused of plagiarism during my undergraduate career, can I just say...you obviously have WAY too much time on your hands and/or a really small dick.

You need to get laid. And no, that's not an offer.

It's interesting to me that my 10 and 12 year old daughters felt that Laura deserved Nate's treatment, yet many of the posters to this blog are quick to defend her.

"If Laura was in elementary school, then she might have an excuse for doing something that stupid. If she's old enough to be in college and still thinks cheating is okay, then maybe it will take a serious punishment to teach her a lesson." My ten year old daughter Ashley, 2005.

Good for you, Nate. The only thing I would have done differently is to have refused to remove her real name from the site. My daughters are both college students, and I would be incredibly disappointed if either of them had cheated as Laura did. I'd have helped them deal with any fall-out of their actions, but I sure would not have tried to minimize the fall-out. Yes, I'm a nice lady. But when you're a parent, natural consequences are your friend.

By the way, my lovely and talented daughter Johanna is also in a comedy sketch troupe in St. Louis, the NonProphets, who just finished a two-year run of their show, The Miliatant Propaganda Bingo Machine. I suggest that everyone here who supports Nate (and therefore, by some logical process which I cannot describe here, supports comedy sketch artists), plan to take a trip to St. Louis and see the NonProphets perform.

Thank you

Nate,

Dude, you're totally breaking your promise by leaving the "P" word in the links to some of the previous entries on this blog. Looks like you're going to need to fire up phpmyadmin and get on down to brass tacks with some database editing. Good luck!

Cheers,

10 and 12 year old children should believe that she deserved what she got. They are children. Adults, even adult comedy blog writers should understand that we all have responsibilities to those that are less wise, less experienced, less capable then ourselves. That responsibility does not include the kind of behavior that has been demonstrated here.

It is my duty to Nate and all those who do not understand the grievious nature of both the girl's and Nate's actions. She was wrong. Nate was wrong. They both knew better. The old saying two wrongs do not make a right is painfully apparent here.

If we are to expose our lives and society 'Jerry Springer' style. Let's at least chose to listen to people that make good choices and try to help people before that person is buried under a pile of doo-doo that we helped them create. In short a little maturity and compassion are needed. It might not be funny, but it is right.

This site is all about's Nate's ego

From the reading of this saga, I observe that Laura knew enough to avoid giving the name of her school. To me this suggests that she's done this before.

I can't say I'd do anything like Nate has done, but I do hold honor high on my list of personal virtues. I dropped out of college, twice in fact, before I finally got my life on track well enough to tough it out. Not once did I consider cheating as a means to an end.

Cheating & bitchin' are easy. Any asshole can do them. Doing stuff, THAT takes character.

If it were the middle ages I'm sure Nate and his supporters would have strung her up and ripped out her sweatbreads -- it's comforting to know that even today, any one fuck-up will not go unpunished. Everyone cast their stones at Laura! Burn her, we're the virtuous ones!

Umm, maybe you can close comments on this now? I mean really. You've gotten your 15 minutes of fame, as well as a few other (arguably more deserving) people's 15 minutes; call it a day and move on.

OK, so I just read the two updates, and I've got to say: Nate, you really wimped out at the end. Let's recap:

1.) Laura IMs a total stranger to write a college paper for her, for money.
2.) Laura accepts the paper & says she is sending payment.
3.) Later, Laura denies ever talking to Nate or emailing him, claims never to have made the request. Also, it becomes clear that Laura is not going to send any payment for the paper.

Let's pause here for a moment. Ignoring everything else for the moment, Laura's actions have been to cheat(1), lie(2), and steal.(3)

4.) Someone reading the blog emails the Dean, doing what all the readers already thought Nate did, and emailed the dean, who now has the website. The dean now gets to investigate Laura.
5.) Nate gets back in contact with Laura, who admits she lied at point #2, but then lies again about what she's told the Dean. So her credibility isn't so great.
6.) Both Laura and her mother say this is the first time Laura has ever done anything like this. Bearing in mind points #2 & #5, this claim looks especially doubtful.

Now, in some idealized world, the college would be able to review Laura's OTHER work, and check it for plagarism, to determine if #6 is a lie as well. But that's probably never going to happen, so let's move on to some more reality-based considerations.

She could be expelled. With a black mark on her transcripts. Yup. She "bought" a paper on-line, (without actually paying for it) and handed it in without actually reading it, knowing that all colleges have an Academic Code of Honesty. If you decide to drive through a red light at an intersection, you have to know that its possible you could get a traffic ticket, be in an accident, or both.

If Nate wanted to expose her as a plagarist, he could have very easily written "By the way, I paid a person to write this paper for me" instead of "I made a doody".

Could Laura get expelled? That's one possibility, but not the only one, and if this really is her "first time" plagarising, then it's not a very likely outcome. Other possible outcomes are
1.) She gets a failing grade (0 points) on the paper, and cannot redo the paper. This will hurt her grade for the class, but that's not the end of the world.
2.) She gets a failing grade in the CLASS, but can retake the class again to replace the grade. This could hurt her scholarships, if they're merit-based awards, but then, if she has merit-based scholarships & she cheats...
3.) She gets a failing grade in the class, as above, and is placed on Academic probation, meaning another failing class grade means explusion from the university.

In any event, Laura's schoolwork MAY be subject to higher scrutiny for the next school term. Then again, given the possible size of the college and the workload of the staff, she might not be too.

As for her name being on the internet, look, somewhere out there "Libby Hoeller" is getting on with her life. The Star Wars kid is still alive, well, and moving on. The internet has replaced TV for providing 15 minutes of Fame, and this is Laura's 15 minutes.

nk,
As a prof for only a couple of years, I have to tell you that I do not go on "witch-hunts" for plagiarism; I typically assume that most students would be like you and understand that this is not acceptable. This leads to an even greater sadness when I uncover plagiarism, and go through exactly what the profs you so angrily derided have described. Denial typically comes followed by tears and pleading. I have had students note that the word for word replay of online texts (and not even good ones at that-- couldn't they at least be selective?) must be due to those paragraphs sticking in their heads. Unfortunately, this skill rarely plagues them in quizzes and exams.
Expulsion or suspension? I wish. The administration has grown excessively lax as the students have become customers. Why kick out a paying guest? Excuses are made consistently, and sadly, no one even sits and talks to the students about these consequences and the reasons why plagiarism is a problem.
For those who fret about Laura K., be comforted that many profs, at least me, do approach students not with accusation but first with a query about personal tragedies, illnesses, etc. "Is everything OK?" is typically a first question, followed by "Is there anything you'd like to talk about?" And please, this is already a kindness for a student for whom "money is no object" although in retrospect, that must have been due to her intention to dodge the bill. But tragedies or traumas may be a reason, but they are not an excuse. I have students going through all kinds of troubles all the time and yet they do not cheat. It takes a special kind of person to do that.
Anyway, care is not Nate's obligation; he was solicited on the web in order to be cheated out of a paper a student would use for cheating. I don't see anything wrong with what he did as he laid bare the actions of a student that are probably all too typical. This opens an interesting question of ethical obligations on the web, but I have to admit that for the life of me, I see nothing wrong with what Nate did. I almost wish I did, but this wouldn't have happened had this girl never started up-- and had she even read his profile carefully. "Eating Hindu Sculpture"-- please. And isn't this kind of posting an "it takes a village" method of socializing a youngster? She was not only set on cheating, she was careless and thoughtless to boot. Seems to me that she should be taking some responsibility here. This "precious children" approach is really taking us all down.

Val seems to suggest there were threats and blackmail involved. Is that so? I must have missed those. That would change things, but still, there is a lesson to be learned. Don't cheat and read carefully. That apparently goes for me too.

People were looking her up and calling her? What fucktards. Comedy good, harassment bad.

Hey man, can I get you to write a paper for me? Ha, just kidding.

The professor is correct, and all you apologists for Laura are just like her. You think this is no bid deal, because you probably are as guilty as she.

And for the loser who has to attack the professor on what he might teach, you are particulary pathetic. Such attacks are classic tactics of people like Laura.

Note that once Laura contacted our now famous comedian, she at first did NOT want him to talk to the Dean. Why? Because she had fed him another lie. She said "Hm, let me check into this." Or something like that. A blatant avoiding of the truth. She contiues to try to maintain the lie, because she knows it will destroy her academically to admit to her plagiarism.

When I went to graduate school, journalism at the University of Missouri - Columbia, the penalty for plagiarism was simple. You were out. Period. No second chance. Why should this be true for only some schools? The penalty has to be stiff, because so many people seem to be practicing it on a large scale regardless of the price of getting caught.

These are the people who are going to run our world some day. Ken Lay being the perfect example by the professor. He destroyed a pension plan for many people. He put businesses out of commission in California (indirectly through his employees who were following orders from the top) and he cost many people much too much money to satisfy his greed. He should live in poverty for the rest of his life for what he did.

And Laura should pay the price for what she did. And then get on with her life. She'll do just fine. But unless she pays the price she. and others, will think that it's easy to skate by. Do you want the person running the nuclear plant near your home to be one who skated by?

I didn't think so.

Get of your hypocritical high horses, you Laura apologists, and give the professor a break. He knows what he's talking about, unlike so many whiney cry-baby girley men who think Laura should be allowed to get away with it "just this once."

When we all now it's just a plea for yourselves deep down. Come on, you lazy fatty people. Pump yourselves up!

It would be very easy for this to be proved a hoax. All it takes is for Lewis University to say, it didn't happen here. When given the opportunity to do that, they didn't. They simply cited student confidentiality rules.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/03/31/plagiarize

Here's another story, about another cheater, for those who'd like to see a bloodier ending:

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/292646p-250502c.html

Nate, you ought to IM this to Ms. Krishna.

Rt

I can understand someone having sympathy for Laura. Although some feel plagiarism is a terrible crime. Others do not. Reasonable minds can differ.

But I just can't get over the fact that she wasn't going to pay for the paper. What kind of person does that to someone else. She might be able to rationalize her plagiarism as a victimless crime, but not the stiff. She knows how much work you did on that paper (since she did not want to do it herself). How infuriating that she would not pay.

Although it is a small crime, to me it is one of those crimes that just shows something about someone's true character. I have no sympathy for her at all.

As a lawyer (and not just a comments sections lawyer, I really went to law school), I have small tip to all the readers regarding legal advice: if someone is trying to give you legal advice about a subject (such as plagiarism), it is generally wise to avoid the opinions of those who can't spell the word they are giving legal advice about.

Incidentally, how many of the people defending plagiarism have ever been plagiarised themselves?

A couple of years ago, I was doing some idle Googling with the aim of writing a follow-up piece to an online article I'd written the previous year. I turned up something that looked quite promising and started to read it... and gradually realised (it's always a gradual realisation in these situations, which is why plagiarism is so damnably hard to detect) that I was substantially reading my own work, which had been cut and pasted with virtually no changes onto someone else's site and passed off under his name.

To add insult to injury, when I did a Google search on the name of my plagiarist, I discovered that he'd submitted this very same piece to another site, which had accepted and published it. This was easily resolved - its editor was very helpful (they usually are in these situations, since they're usually innocent third parties in a hugely embarrassing and reputation-affecting situation) and agreed that the evidence was cast-iron, namely that:

1. The original date of publication predated his by several weeks;
2. The writing style was so different from this guy's usual semi-literate scrawl that it was inconceivable that it had come from him;
3. The plagiarist had helpfully appended a comment to the original piece, dated long before "his" version was published.

So that was easily dealt with. Getting the piece off the plagiarist's own site was a fair bit tougher, as he refused to reply to any of the numerous e-mails sent by both myself and my editor. Eventually - after numerous warnings and some entirely reasonable deadlines - we contacted his ISP, pointing out that a site they were hosting was in clear breach of copyright. I don't know whether there was any connection, but a few weeks later the site vanished altogether.

To tell you the truth, I wasn't especially fussed by this - in a way it was weirdly flattering that someone thought my work was so good that it was worth passing off as his own. But there were two crucial factors at play here: firstly, it turned out to be relatively easy to get the plagiarised version out of circulation given that it was only available in electronic form, and secondly, no money changed hands at any stage.

Had this involved paid print journalism, or anything in the academic sector, or had this guy responded with aggression ("fuck you, it's my site and I'm not changing it for nobody") instead of total silence, we would have been talking lawsuits. And believe me, I'm not joking.

For all the people who have defended Laura by saying she might have been depressed, in a tight position, extremely stressed, or any other number of excuses;

I'm an undergrad at an intensely academic and very difficult university in Michigan. Last quarter my baby sister almost killed herself, my grandma almost died, a student committed suicide on my campus, and I was having trouble in a couple of my classes.

Was I depressed? Yes. Was I having trouble concentrating/completing work? Yes. Was I stressed? You'd better believe it, I still have a phobia about answering my phone because for 10 weeks it was just more and more bad news.

I didn't cheat. I didn't plagiarise. My situation was horrible, my sister was two states away going through the hardest time in her life, and all I wanted to do was go home and help her. Yeah, my life could have possibly been easier if I'd faked some of my work. I didn't, and if I had, even if I had used all of those very real and very emotional excuses, I would have still been wrong, and I would have deserved any punishment meted out (up to, and including, online vigilante justice.)

I was just thinking: to all the people who say that the rise of the internet is helping students to plaigarise, with this, I totally agree. But in the same vein, it makes it a lot easier to TRACE plaigarism as well. Wetherby Pond's post above exemplifies this perfectly. It's a two-way street.

Anyway, if Laura ends up being a better person by the end of this scenario, I'll be amazed. I find it very odd how the witchhunt brigade is so eager to dish out mob justice on the internet in the hope that she will no longer coast through life, yet relies heavily on comparing her to total villains like Ken Lay to prove that this "type of person" is simply evil. Maybe I'm interpreting it wrongly, but it seems like the two are not compatible.

Anyone wanna go grab some chinese food?

I'd bloody love to; sadly, I'm still studying for my upcoming finals. (Actually, at this present moment, I'm trying to find why West European Politics 26:2 isn't available online, when every other issue past 1999 is. Not for plaigiarism purposes, you understand :)

i'm amazed at the people defending ms krishna. "i made a doody"? not even reading over the paper you (didn't) pay for? wtf? she's a victim how, exactly? this blog saga is the equivalent of the "thief caught red-handed" segments occasionally provided for your entertainment on the local news.

also, is her name really supposed to be "krishna"? am i missing something?

I can't wait for the Law & Order episode. The Laura character can kill the Nate character!

No, Laura's mom's character will kill the Nate character.

And the Dean won't be able to say anything because of "confidentiality" until Briscoe rises from the grave and slaps the Dean around a bit. "This is a MURDER investigation."

I can't wait to see Ice-T read Laura's paper. "I made a doody??"

Great example Liz pointed out a few posts up! There is NEVER an excuse to plagerise.

Let me add yet another story to the bunch:

I started college in '99, and in addition to the normal stress of deadlines on a full courseload, I had to contend with social anxiety, panic attacks, depression, and regular psych visits to deal with these problems. I didn't lie and cheat to get through school, and I ended up fluking out, despite the added pressure to excell because I'd entered college as a straight-A "nerd" from which everyone expects sucess. I continued counseling, I put a handle on my problems, went to a crummy community college until I could get back into my previous university, and now I'm almost done with a Bachelors.

I didn't take shortcuts, and I flunked out. But, I still have my integrity, and soon I'll have my degree as well, if a couple of years later than expected. Hopefully, this whole LKK saga lends credence to the idea that cheaters never win.

Only graduate level advanced English and computer science courses teach how to spell the words "you" and "why" correctly (using all three letters) when using IM.

As someone who has been plagerized...I find this whole thing hilarious! I had a paper that was published in a local journal. It was copied and published under someone else's name in a different local journal only about 2 weeks after the original publication. What? Did they think I only read one periodical in the area? I just wrote the editor who printed a nice apology and made the idiot who plagerized me look like a fool.

Exactly what Nat has done with Laura. If this had been a publication rather than a college class, Laura would be in the same and possibly facing a civil lawsuit.

Nat, what you did was great. You gave Laura every chance in the book not to hang herself. First, she could have written her own paper. Second, had she read the paper you wrote, she wouldn't be where she is now. Third, had she paid attention to the internet (because believe me, this story is EVERYWHERE), she would have had forewarning of the coming storm. Fourth, had she been honest with the Dean, she might not be in as much trouble as I imagine she is now. Fifth, had she worked with you and let you talk to the Dean, she (once again) might be in a better situation.

Something I don't see addresses in the comments much: I can't believe her mother didn't agree to let you speak with the Dean and insist that the girl tell the truth. Nice mom, but lacking in morals herself.

"If you can't do the time, don't do the crime" NO SYMPATHY for Laura K. Krishna.

If Nate hadn't done what he did:

1) Laura would have gone to someone else
2) Submitted the dodgey paper, got her grade
3) (probably stiffed the writer for his $75)
4) Repeat 1-3 through the rest of college

Even if Laura was under tremendous pressure, that's something for her to discuss with her Dean when she's facing expulsion.

Maybe she really was in dire straits. That doesn't mean we don't turn her in.

Gosh, Isa, I can honestly say that that's something I never thought of before, that perhaps this is no different than what happens to people who plagiarise in print media.

Great comment. I didn't think there was anything else to be added to this debate, but there you go.

Joe said, with regard to Laura going into the deal meaning to screw over Nate for his check:
"She might be able to rationalize her plagiarism as a victimless crime, but not the stiff."

It would be ironic if she stiffed him in order to teach *him* a lesson about the evils of selling papers on-line.

"But in the same vein, it makes it a lot easier to TRACE plaigarism as well. Wetherby Pond's post above exemplifies this perfectly. It's a two-way street."

Only up to a point. Certainly, without Google I'd almost certainly never have discovered the plagiarism at all - but, by the same token, it was a total coincidence that I happened to stumble across it, just as the other bit of plagiarism that I uncovered was equally coincidental. If I was specifically LOOKING for plagiarism, I'm honestly not sure where I'd start.

Consider: many plagiarists do at least make small changes to the original text, meaning that you'd have to doggedly type in assorted phrases and go on numerous fruitless searches to uncover something that may not have happened. Multiply that by the number of papers that a teacher/professor typically deals with, and you have a workload that they really shouldn't have to deal with. And there's also the strong possibility that plagiarism might have occurred with materials that aren't traceable via Google or other search engines because they've never been scanned and OCRed.

So although technology helps to a certain (to be fair, a very great) extent, gut instinct and a good memory still have a crucial role to play. (Both plagiarism examples I turned up relied on my memory - in one case my memory of someone else's writing style!)

Ok, I've read the prank, and read the first 300 comments, then I got tired because they keep repeating themselves. (by the way I linked here from collegehumor.com so I have no idea about anything Hindu).
First I would just like to say that this person is getting what they deserve. Would you not report a murder or a rape? A crime is a crime. If you don't like the punishment, don't fucking do it. Everyone gets the plagarism speech. Everyone. They know what they're getting into. I pull all nighters whenever I have a paper due, so don't give me bullshit about being under pressure.

Now as to any potential lawsuits, I am currently studying to be a lawyer, and my father is in civil litigation. That being said, verbal contracts are indeed valid in many states. (They can be recorded for proof, dumbasses.) Just as when you sign a contract, and someone tells you the gist of if, but fails to mention an important part, you can indeed break out of the contract because they lied to you about it.
First of all, any contracts for illegal acts are unenforceable by courts. This means for instance, you can go out and hire 20 hookers for a night, charge it to your gold card, and refuse to pay, and legally there isn't shit they can do about it. (Probably not a good idea though... I'm sure they have other means of getting the money out of you)

As for any potential lawsuits filed by Laura against Nate, they wouldn't stand a chance. Nate did nothing wrong except perhaps defamation of character. This wouldn't hold up either, due to the amount of evidence in Nate's possession he could reasonably interpret the facts to the view he has presented. There is no !gross negligence or maliciousness! - key parts of this type of lawsuit. The lawsuit will fail, as most lawsuits of this type do. Now everyone else shut the hell up, cause your wrong.

Self-righteous much? You sir, are an asshole, regardless of any wrongdoing by Laura. Karma is a bitch, and you've made a heavy withdrawal.

"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"

Sounds like me when my parents caught me smoking pot. Well done, Nate.

Jon is completely right. A crime is a crime.

She should be expelled, that's what she deserves. If she had taken a bat to the Dean's car cause she was stressed and hitting things helped her relax, received her punishment, would some of you still feel sorry for her? She makes a mockery of academic honesty, and as someone less than 2 months away from having a degree in Fine Arts I am horrified to think that students in the same boat as me would ever do this. She was an adult, made an adult decision and knew the game. I had a professor that said if he ever heard of us cheating or thefting art, he would make it his job to see us expelled. He is one of my favorite professors at my university.
Now I have to go to class, some of us actually earn our degrees the real way, through hard work.

wow, it is finally settling down, i still want laura by the way...

I am not currently a college professor but I have been one. The profound revulsion I felt toward plagiarizers came not mainly from any feeling that their hard-working classmates were being ripped off (although their hard work and hard-won grades were diluted), but that they were wasting my time and expressing contempt for me. Lying to someone's face (which is, at base, the affront of plagiarism: you lie to your teacher) should not be so easily forgiven. Those of you who feel college is just a degree factory may not believe it, but a lot of people, including those who teach, believe it is actually a place to learn things.

Certainly, without Google I'd almost certainly never have discovered the plagiarism at all - but, by the same token, it was a total coincidence that I happened to stumble across it, just as the other bit of plagiarism that I uncovered was equally coincidental. If I was specifically LOOKING for plagiarism, I'm honestly not sure where I'd start.

There are several Web-based pay services that allow you to search text strings from your students' essays if you suspect plagiarism. Obviously these things are only as good as their databases, so I hope a lot of universities sign up for them and start requiring that their students submit writing assignments in electronic form.

Oops: middle paragraph there was supposed to be italicized. Imagine it in quotes

.

Legally speaking...

There seems to be some confusion between illegality and dishonesty. It's dishonest to turn in a paper that you didn't write. It's legal to hire someone to write a paper for you.

Laura and Nate had a valid contract, enforceable by either party. It is true that contracts for illegal actions are not valid, however there was no illegal action. People are often hired to write papers for all kinds of reasons. Nate was contracted to write a five-page paper on Hinduism by a certain date. He did not. He wrote a paper full of intentional innaccuracies and jokes. This goes beyond producing a sub-par product. He intentionally produced work intended to deceive and humiliate his employer, Laura.

Laura, therefore, is perfectly within her rights to collect damages from Nate except for one small thing. She didn't pay him. She might argue that she withheld payment because Nate didn't fulfill his responsibilies. Based on the story told, this is less than convincing, but she could conceivably make the case.

Now, writing a paper under contract for someone does not necessarily give them permission to reprint your work verbatim. It may or may not, depending on the contract. I beleive it can be reasonably inferred that Nate's permission to reprint is implied based on their dialogue.

Having said all this, it has nothing to do with her cheating. Nate had a perfect right to blog the incident and would have had no legal problems whatsoever had he contacted her school.

You are both huge assholes. You for lying and her for lying. Now no one can trust either of you.

Hey Nate....now that this whole Laura thing's wrapped up, let's go eat sushi or something!!!

Wow, everyone's riled up over this. It's rather idiotic to start calling people names and start personal attacks. Just voice your opinion and leave it at that.

As for my two cents, a lot of people cheat in school, some get caught, some don't. Laura just happens to be one of the "unlucky" ones who got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Too bad, oh well. And please don't cry about the whole "maybe she's depressed or had a family emergency". Nothing is ever set in stone, she could've gone to the prof and asked for an extension. Professors are usually fairly understanding. I've started 5-8 page papers the day before it was due, it wasn't too bad. If I (an engineering major) can do that and get a decent grade on an English paper, so can she!

To follow on from Mouthpiece's excellent post, who now owns the copyright in Nate's work? I'm not familiar with US copyright law, but I'd assume that in order for an arrangement like this to be workable, Nate would automatically transfer all rights in the material over to Laura along with the paper itself - this is certainly the case with the authors I edit, and their contracts explicitly spell this out.

But this would be conditional on the contract having been fulfilled - i.e. Laura handing over the money. Since she didn't, does this not mean that Nate still owns all the relevant exploitation rights, and will continue to do so until she coughs up? And, by the same token, does this not mean that Laura is in breach of copyright for printing a copy of Nate's work?

Dear self-appointed spokespeople for Nate's karma:

Do you also stand at the bottom of cliffs and yell "GRAVITY'S GONNA GETCHA!" at people who contemplate jumping?

The universe is perfectly capable of turning on its cogs and wheels without all the cheerleaders trying to smugly (and, perhaps, wrongly) announce predictions of its direction.

(At the very least, let's try to restrain the karma comments to those who actually understand the concept. I mean, come on, JR, does the religion in question actually posit a karmic "bank" from which you make withdrawals? Seriously? Pshh.)

I was wondering when we'd get around to copyright and IP.... only in America would this sad tale of poor judgement, shabby behaviour and loose character (on Laura's part) turn into a legal debate. But I forgot... Laura threatened to sue you didn't she, Nate?... So we've been in law-law land for sometime.

Unless specifically relinquished, copyright is retained by the author. Nate gave her implied permission to reprint the work, but he retains full copyright.

There isn't such a thing as "breach of copyright". Laura simply did not fulfill the contract because she didn't pay.

>> I have to tell you that I do not go on "witch-hunts" for plagiarism;

That's good to know. That's what graduate assistants are for afterall. While I do not necessarily condone Nate's method, as I have already discussed, I do enjoy busting those that commit this crime. As a film master's major, I find them surprisingly easy to bust. Most people simply copy crap straight out of imdb.com sadly.

"only in America would this sad tale of poor judgement, shabby behaviour and loose character (on Laura's part) turn into a legal debate."

Not really - I'm not American and haven't set foot in the US in nearly a decade.

But as a professional writer-editor working for a government-funded organisation with an international reputation for quality, I'm well aware of the legal and copyright implications of plagiarism - in my field, it's not just unethical, it's career-threatening, with no ifs, buts or qualifications.

"Unless specifically relinquished, copyright is retained by the author. Nate gave her implied permission to reprint the work, but he retains full copyright."

That makes sense - the writers' contracts I deal with explicitly relinquish copyright (in considerable detail), which suggests that it's not a given unless spelled out.

I've done quite a bit of writing in my time - papers for school (I have both a music degree and a psychology degree) as well as copy for non-profit organizations I'm a part of.

I work with autistic children and have read enough about autism that I can answer a lot of questions without having to reference any sources. But that ability can be difficult when I'm writing about autism. As a result, my web site (under development) has a "sources" section that people can look at to see where I might have gotten various bits of information. I did that specifically because I don't remember where I learned a lot of what I know about autism.

But... were I to write a paper (or, as I hope to do one day, a text book) about autism, I would thoroughly research each and every point I was making and reference things thoroughly.

I was looking through one of my old music history papers the other day, and the prof kept asking why I had quotes around things. Obviously because I was directly quoting sentences from my research! That prof actually complained that I was referencing my sources too much throughout the paper!

In contrast, I have one psychology paper that has an entire paragraph referenced to one source. I didn't source each point, because the whole paragraph was from the same place, but the prof for *that* course said I didn't reference it enough.

I have never knowingly plagiarized anything, and I am confused that people think it's okay in some circumstances?

Proper ghost writers are paid for their work *and* collaborate closely with the person they are writing for - William Shatner's books are all ghost written.

I don't know that I agree with Nate's actions, but I certainly don't think that Laura should have gotten away with it.

Who has that much trouble writing a 5-page paper, anyway? I've written 20-page term papers without anyone else's help, and done it well and on time.

And I procrastinate.

man you are such a little fucking rat weasel - ratting her out to the school authorities - you little brown nosed authority woshipping rat

Jeez, Cuck, you're not a plagiarst, are you? Don't you know what we do to plagiarsts and plagiarist sympathizers around here?

You know, the thing about Plagiarism is that it's hard to spell... also that it is essentially the first Napster.

I've been Plagiarized before... right in the old corn hole. A comedy monologue I wrote somehow ended up becoming a feature article in a magazine under someone else's name. It hurt. It hurt my ass.

Recently the freakin' Weekly World News took one of our other sketches and reduced it to a headline in their paper... at least they had the common decency to improve it and change enough to make it legal.

Plagiarism sucks balls!

"Immature Artists borrow, Mature Artists steal."
- quote by... ME!

Reading through the many comments, I can't believe how many people are willing to jump to the defense of a young woman who is manifestly nothing less than a pathological liar. You no doubt see yourselves as fair, just, and kind; the Laura Ks of this world see you as their marks and pigeons.

You're such an ass. Nothing better to do than fuck up some kid's life?

People cheat all the time, even in the grown up world, get used to it.

Dear ASDFKD,

I'm going to continue to fight cheaters, and to teach my children to fight them, too.

You get used used to that.

I am so going to use this term paper! Thanks!

Fascinating story. By asking a complete stranger to help her do something dishonest, Laura put herself in an extremely vulnerable position. (She compounded her error by using IM, which logs the conversation.)

Were Nate's actions disproportionate? Did he abuse his power? I think reporting her to the Dean would have been completely appropriate. Same thing with stringing her along by putting together the bogus (and hilarious) essay. If he'd simply turned down her request, he wouldn't have had proof.

But Nate made a mistake by posting the story on his blog, although he didn't realize it at the time, because his blog didn't have a wide audience at the time. He didn't count on the Internet flash-mob effect--everyone loves a story (I found the story via MetaFilter). Once you get a large enough crowd, there's going to be at least a few people who will start looking up phone numbers. Dishonesty is grounds for getting kicked out of school, but it isn't grounds for getting harassing phone calls from strangers. And it's a lot easier to summon a mob (which is what Nate did inadvertently) than to control it.

Moreover, once information is broadcast onto the Internet, it's irrevocable. There's no way to get it back, even if you have a change of heart (as Nate did). Changing Laura's last name on this site to "Krishna" is locking the barn door after the horse has bolted. It's obvious to anyone who knows how to use Google what Laura's real last name is.

Fortunately, there's one thing Laura can do to escape the Google effect: change her last name.

Regarding the issue of academic dishonesty, Hans Morgenthau's comments on the "Quiz Show" scandal are worth reading:
http://tinyurl.com/3nxys

Russil, you're right about not being able to really change what was written, but Nate made sure Laura was aware of that. It was really just a nice thing he did for her after all the morons started calling her and her school.

It's sort of interesting to note that plenty of sites out there have picked up on the new last name. It's actually added fuel to the debate over whether this is a hoax (it's not), since Laura K. Krishna at India Community College sounds incredibly made up.

I have not read through every comment carefully, so if I'm repeating something already uttered, forgive me. It seems the issue here is due process - was Laura afforded the opportunity to defend herself against the "charge," manufactured by Nate, that she committed plagiarism? Is her payment proof of guilt, or is her submission of Nate's paper? This process of "citizen's arrest" (use your own Barney Fife impression here, if you wish) is probably more aptly defined as "citizen's entrapment." Nate saw a solicitation for unsavory services and helped her turn it into a wrong deed. Do we find such services offered freely by anonymous fellow citizens a comforting regulator or a slippery slope? Should we all take on the mantle of defenders of law-and-order and begin aggressively, publicly and even clandestinely "outing" underage drinkers, speeders, shoplifters, and other miscreants? I guess I side with our forefathers (not many American's these days seem to) and err on the side of everyone (even the most self-evidently guilty) being afforded the privilege of having their day in "court," being presumed innocent until proven guitly, being able to face their accuser, etc... Sure, it's not as funny, and it doesn't make for good blogging, but it is certainly the fairest way to accuse, try and punish people for their wrong deeds. This episode illustrated many things - justice was most definitely NOT one of them.

Perhaps this caper, and the posts in support of it, is a preview of things to come.

Reading over some of the comments I am shocked and appalled that there are certain people who don't share my extremist opinion. I formed this opinion to cover all bases. Therefore I know that the facts of this particular instance do not matter and need not affect the application of my overgeneralized standard. Anyone who does not agree my exact standard is an asshole, a fuck wit, and eats his or her babies without even seasoning them properly. In short, I am right and you are wrong. I'm not even giong to waste anymore time talking to you people, so only expect 7 or 8 more posts from me saying exactly the same thing.

If she never sends the IM asking for someone else to do her work, none of this- not the punishment, not the saga, not the ire of some posters, not the defense of either Nate or Laura- ever happens.

With all the analysis, opinions, moral bickering, let's not lose sight of the fact that this whole thing starts with a singular action that didn't need to be taken.

You killed Terri Shiavo, Nate. Yes, you. By this nonsense with Laura K you have diverted media attention away from the dying Terri Shiavo just when she needed it, just when it might have saved her. Now she's dead. Happy now?

"Mrs. Schiavo’s death is a moral poverty and a legal tragedy. This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change. The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today. Today we grieve, we pray, and we hope to God this fate never befalls another. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Schindlers and with Terri Schiavo’s friends in this time of deep sorrow."-- Speaker DeLay

He's talking about YOU, Nate. You, and you alone. He's coming for you Nate.

Now I've read it all and had my faith in humanity virtually destroyed (feel for Laura, I'm a weak-willed cheater-lover; feel for Nate, I'm a sadist). What is it about nuance that the internet obscures so utterly? The subtlety, duh.

Meanwhile, I'm left with two questions. Well, two that I'm willing to ask...

1. Why didn't she just go to one of the gazillion research paper writing "services" so widely available?

2. Why is that legal? I think I'll pose this question to my political representatives. Maybe we can get a Nate and Laura bill passed (I think of them as a couple now) that cracks down on the service that feeds the dishonorable practice of not doing your own damn work.

The third question that I'm not willing to ask because it's not the kind of thing that gets a thoughtful answer is, what if Laura does learn a lesson? What good would that do? By virtue of the timelessness of the digital/virtual world, this moment of idiocy will always be playing. Might as well etch a big scarlet C in her forehead.

Laura's last name is still included in the url. I'd suggest changing that, if no one else has noticed... I was directed here from collegehumor.com, by the way.

You know, I have little sympathy for Laura - like so many others, I did my work and passed or failed based on that. I got through college in six years (including one taken off in the middle involuntarily due to low grades), and did all of my own work. Was I a saint? No. I know that I forgot to cite references and a few times liberally adopted someone else's logic and ideas in my own paper (but in my words, not theirs). Of course, that was back in the days before the internet (my modem was 400 baud then (0.4k for those who think that 56 k is slow) - so internet shoppng for papers wasn't an option.

I also remember times when I had to pull all-nighters to turn in papers and prepare for an exam in the morning - but I set that up by procrastinating. My last night of school I did just that. I pulled an all-nighter to study and write a five page paper for Art History and then took the 3 hour final for that course, and then drank a soda on my fast walk to take my last exam. Hell, that wasn't even as bad as the time midway through a semester I realized that I was taking two courses that scheduled their 3 hour final exams at the same time and date. I begged both Professors to give me an exam at another time and both refused, telling me to talk the other guy into it. So having no choice I took both exams in the single three hour period, one after the other. The expressions on my classmates faces when I explained later on why I showed up 90 minutes late to the final were precious (got Bs on both exams).

Was Nate cruel, sure. Did his intended lesson get blown way, way out of proportion due to his injudicious posting of too much information - yes. But after reading many of the comments, his follow ups and his replies, I don't think that he intended for quite so much to happen. It is pretty obvious that Nate has learned a lesson too, and has expressed remorse at his own mistakes. But as is typical, is too harsh on himself because he couldn't convince "Laura Krisha" to turn herself in.

As for Laura - if she's read any of this, she's got to realize that her best hope is to admit the plagiarism and try to explain the mitigating circumstances that caused her to break this cardinal rule. Sure it could cost her a failing grade in that course, or she might have to withdraw for the semester. But life goes on and hopefully she'll have learned from this experience. I have a feeling that if she lies or evades responsibility, then there's enough evidence for the school to impose whatever maximum punishment they allow.

Every paper and test that I ever turned in at my little college had a signature block for me to sign. On the printed test booklets it stated that I was attesting that all of the work was my own and that I submitted it under the standards of the schools honor code. That honor code was enforced and I even saw athletes get caught and suspended why they tried to cheat (one example from my sophomore year was 4 guys sharing answers during an exam).

Terry, at like day four and 1000 comments later, yes we've noticed that the URL still contains a dirty word.

I'm sorry, but anyone who devoted more than a paragraph of their time to this whole thing except Nate and anyone who is actually part of his life needs to get some things going in their lives to keep them busy. So much time wasted blabbermouthing about legal issues, large world issues, and other such nonsense about one stupid little twit too stupid to make it through in the 'tough rough real world' of college (LOLOLOL)and how one hilarious man happened to be the ONE she singled out...Too damn funny.

ps-If this turns out to be a hoax, BRAVO!

You know, I'm glad that you do have a heart, even if I approved of what you did to the girl when she plagiarized.

Terry, Sherlock, and whoever else...try now.

"It's a tricky one, and I do sympathise - I myself have an excellent memory for phrases, sentences and paragraphs, and it's not at all implausible that I might inadvertently have recycled the work of another writer without attribution in my own work."

I admit, I have a tendency to do that, but I usually catch myself. For example, sometimes I think I'm paraphrasing something, but I read it back over and go, "Wait now. Didn't the person say it almost exactly the same way I am?" And, of course, they did, so then I have to change it. I've never not caught it yet, though, I don't think. I hope not. :/

It seems that this girl tried to screw Nate over, not the other way around. She made excuses about why she could not pay via paypal, wrote a check with NO INTENTION of sending it to him, yet expected to get a free paper. I have zero sympathy for this "Laura," as she tried to get something for nothing. There are the posters who say "oh, poor girl, she was in a tough situation" or "maybe she felt like she had no other options." Yeah, try cracking open a book and not waiting until Easter Sunday to troll the internet for individuals who might be able to do your work for you. Spend that time writing your own damn paper. Bottom Line: She doesn't deserve to be in college. Her matriculating is taking a spot away from another potential student who might've been waitlisted for this girl. I say if this isn't a hoax, then this girl got what she deserved. Nate sent up several red herrings in his IMs that went unnoticed and she did not even bother to proof-read the paper! Also, anyone in college who types like a 13-year-old with "u" and "y" in the place of the actual word deserves whatever they get, even if it's on an IM.

pla·gia·rism n
1. copying what somebody else has written (FOR THEIR COMMENT) or taking somebody’s else’s idea and trying to pass it off as original...AGAIN, AGAIN AND AGAIN.
2. something copied from somebody else’s work, or somebody else’s idea that somebody presents as his or her own (COMMENT)
3. SEE ALL PREVIOUS COMMENTS IN THIS BLOG.

Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Well, I feel confident that this is not a hoax because there was a Laura **** on the Dean's List for ***** University from O***** Park (and by Googling certain words, you can find the cache of the very page).

As far as Nate's handling of the situation, I think the fact that Laura didn't 'fess up to the Dean is just another EXAMPLE of her character. She's sitting there crying to Nate when on the other end of things, she's STILL not being completely honest. Frankly, if I were Nate, I would have left things as they were, perhaps with the continued requests that there be no further calls to Laura or to her University.

Even though this was a stupid kid who did a stupid thing, what stops me from having ANY compassion whatsoever is that once she was "discovered," she apparently STILL wasn't honest with the Dean. My mom always taught me, you mess up, you fess up. You're that much better off by being honest when you get caught in a situation like this, rather than give only half-truths. If this was a criminal case, well that's another matter we won't get into. In this case, however, she should have laid herself at the mercy of the Dean and made the same emotional plea to him that her and her mother made to Nate. If the Dean didn't go along with it, that's tough and that's the lesson you learn. If you end up having to go to JJC, tough.

One thing to add which was mentioned at some point but not really picked up: It seems a lot of the comments have circled around plagiarism being a crime and wrong (which it is), the question of whether Laura was lazy and dishonest (I tend to aggree) or the victim of unknown outside pressures (unlikely unless you want to make a "not guilty by reason of insanity" argument, and the question of whether Nate gave her what she deserved (yes) or is an arrogant, self-righteous prick (I think not - he's making peanuts in a comedy troupe. I doubt that feeds an inflated ego).

I know that a number of professors and educators have weighed in, but I think that Laura's defenders need to be reminded of something: When a student plagiarizes, it not only demonstrates an intent to cheat the system, but a profound disrepsect for the instructor as well. If you've never dealt with plagiarists (I have on several occasions), put yourself in this position:

You receive a paper that, for whatever reason, you think is plagiarized. You do some searching (Thank you Google!) and track down the source. You confront the student about it, though "confront" usually means you do your best to set up an appointment without sounding sinister. The student usually tries to avoid you. When he does come in, you lay out the evidence. If he denies it, you're essentially faced with someone who is telling you that it's raining while there isn't a cloud outside your window. You can lay out the penalties for plagiarism (failing grade, failed course, academic probation, etc.), but the bottom line is that you probably have to give an incomplete and lodge a formal protest, which the student may fight, thus dragging on the drama for months.

As you imagine yourself in that situation, think about how insulted it feels to have a kid sit across from you and communicate, in so many words, that:
a) your class and your assignment aren't worth his time.
b) He thinks you're so stupid that you won't catch him.
c) He thinks you're so stupid, lazy, powerless, or whatever that he'll be able to talk you out of punishing him once he's caught.
d) Even when he is caught, he thinks so little of you, the college, and the whole school that he keeps trying to get out of any accountability.

Of course, some kids you sit down and show them the evidence, and they fess up immediately. If it's early in the semester, they're the ones that take a zero grade on the assignment but still go on to be some of your best students because they have some ethical fiber and want to make up for doing something stupid. It's the ones who keep trying to avoid accountability (like Laura) who make you angry. They're at a developmental stage where their actions are OK as long as they get away with them. At a certain point, they don't need any sympathy; they need a kick in the ass. Professors don't get their jollies doing this. They freakin' hate it, but it's their job, and they have to stand up for themselves.

On a side note, I think Nate could have done much more with the assignment. Only one "I made a doody," is kind of light. You should have spread a lot more poop throughout for fun.

Does anyone else find high irony in the fact that the fact that this is an example of karma for the student... which, was, after all, one of the key topics of the paper and the course?

I'd say Nate did much better on the irony front than many seem to think.

When I read the first posting about this gal, I laughed so hard.
I am currently attending a Christian college in Minnesota, and have made the Dean's list... but that was all my own doing. I have worked my butt off to get there and when I see undeserving people get the same praise I have worked so hard for, it angers me some.
After reading the latest posting with the "truth" revealed, I feel rather bad for this gal. I guess I just hope she learned from her mistake and hopefullly this does not screw up the rest of her life.

Laura could always work for Talon News, what with their position of staff plagiarist having been vacated by Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert.

http://rawstory.com/exclusives/byrne/gannon_accused_of_plagiarism_331.htm

No comments for 20 minutes?!!?!?!?

I am disappointed in you all! :(

Of couse this web site is a blast. Vigilante "justice" is highly entertaining, as the large audiences public executions and lynchings draw have illustrated for hundreds of years.

Nate's continued a tradition humankind has had since societies began. He's taken our collective outrage at the millions of tiny injustices heaped on each of us throughout our lives, and poured them out on one person whome he can "blame."

Combine "blame" and "suffering" and voila, you have "justice."

This is all "justice" really is -- an expression of our collective anger at the generally arbitrary, unfair treatment of man toward his fellow man (which we all participate in every day) onto a particular individual, sacrificing them that we all may feel the world is more fair than it is.

oh no... "nate told on us to the teacher. wah~"

bad nate. shame on you.

we're still in grade school, after all.

Nate, I saw the story on BoingBoing and had to read more about it. Great job, I hope the shortcut-taking twits that try this in the future read it as a cautionary tale.

if I ever become a teacher, I will ask my students to give me a short (5-minute) presentation on the topic to show how well they understand it, rather than a paper that they might plagiarize. Though I bet that will be harder to grade in my underwear.

Dear readers, hasn't it occurred to anyone....

Mom's in on the scam!
Laura lies, cheats and steals, and Mom supports her in her practices. Where do you think Laura learned her behavior? Reads like a budding sociopath to me.

Let's get back to the idea of putting Ms. K on Jerry Springer. I love it. Maybe he'd give her a shovel so she could continue to dig deeper and pile it higher. As for Nate--I'm right there with you, Chris Coleman. I think he went above and beyond with his offer to do what he could to get her name off the internet. I wouldn't have lifted a finger or hit the first key on my laptop. She obviously still has a thing or two to learn about indiscretions comitted while on line. My eighth grade English teacher used to remind us that "there are just some folks who refuse to learn a lesson 'til life teaches 'em." And to all the bleeding hearts, "she will survive." If this is the worst thing that ever happens to her in this life, she will still be better off than more than 95% of the other people who live on this planet. Okay. Now we can go out for sushi.

Nate, I have been asked to provide a character reference for Laura because you seem intent on continuing to slander her good name!

I am Laura's toaster, and I can ASSURE you that this is the first time she has ever done anything like this! Laura is a good person! She always shakes out the toast crumbs after using me to make toast! Sometimes she uses whole-wheat bread, sometimes rye, sometimes white bread. She is particularly fond of strawberry preserves on the toast after she makes it.

In the final analysis, Laura is just a poor confused girl who likes toast and jam just like any red-blooded American. Maybe you should think of that next time you point your finger.

- Laura's Toaster

Some years ago when my wife-to-be was in high school she wrote a wonderful essay for a writing scholarship contest that was remarked upon by all concerned as inspired. Her best friend also submitted a remarkable piece.

It was quickly revealed her best friend had plagiarized a New York Review of Books essay (patently stupid even in those pre-Internet days).

Applying guilt-by-association, the powers that be assumed my wife-to-be had also plagiarized, but they could never find the source. Being a school drawn from working class families, the teachers and administrators assumed that it HAD to be plagiarized, what tire builder's kid could write with such insight?

Sadly, my wife-to-be's piece was NOT plagiarized. Her parents and teacher did not support her protest that it was original. The principal withdrew it from the scholarship program without appeal. Frustrated, she decided not to pursue a writing career. After graduation she went into waitressing for several years and only later returned to college in another field.

Does anyone else see a beautifully karmic whole of action and response, cause and effect?

The punishment so perfectly fits the crime.

And in our society, so rarely does that happen. Guilty people get away with murder, while innocent people suffer punishment that was not deserved.

Laura had several opportunities to amend her ways, to not go down the wrong path. And at every turn, from the initial illegal solicitation, to the decision to submit the illegal document to the refusal to take responsibility for her actions, she chose the wrong road.

Nate, you are more optimistic than I, to think that she has learned a lesson. Experience has taught me that it is more likely that she will blame you for her troubles.

xjournalist - no, I'm totally with you. This is a common pattern, too: the parent who wants so badly for their money not to be wasted that they can't bear to see their kid take a bad grade or flunk out as s/he deserves.

What's sad, what that parent hasn't realized, is that if their kid won't do the work and cheats when the work is called for, the tuition is already wasted.

Of course, this point brings us back around to the economics debate. Does the tuition buy the education, or the degree? I think the former, but it's the latter opinion that leads to the sense of entitlement.

"I want to be a lawyer
I want to be a scholar
But I really can't be bothered so just
Gimme it quick, gimme gimme gimme"

-K. Bush

If I believed any of this, I would have to get up from my desk, walk several feet to the window, and jump out. As a bad-tempered old colored woman who never finished college (it was the Sixties, okay? I never expected to live this long...), I spent a good part of the last thirty-odd years in the military and corporate worlds doubled over with stomach cramps, chest pains and headaches from dealing with caucasoid kiddies who considered themselves "educated" and therefore superior to me because they had graduated from "college" although unable to put together a proper sentence in the English language. I learned more Latin in high school than-- well, never mind.

I'm retired. Not my problem anymore. Must go make myself a cup of chamomile tea and order some more automatic weapons for my Barbie dolls.

Be honest, nobody wants this girl to learn a "lesson." What we want is for her to suffer for all those plagiarists we hate who don't get caught. She's paying for their sins, not for damage she's caused.

What "lesson" is she supposed to learn? Surely not that "plagiarism doesn't pay." Because IT DOES. It's just a lottery system where 99 percent of those who do it don't get caught, and the one percent who do feel the full rage of those who are angry at the 99 percent who don't.

For those who don't get caught plagarism pays BETTER than hard work. Hard work is what people do when they can't figure out how to get out of doing hard work. That's all. There's nothing morally admirable about it.

I don't think people who plagiarize are immoral. Personally, I don't plagiarize, but that's because I'm scared of the risk. But there's risk in everything, so the fact that a plagiarist takes risks doesn't make their behaviour wrong.

Every time I get in my car, I risk getting in a brutal car accident and being paralyzed for life. Conversely, I risk doing the same to someone else. That doesn't mean I don't do it. I calculate the risk, and decide to drive. But I'm too chickenshit to plagiarize.

Formal university education is often a complete waste of time -- I've had whole semesters of class where I didn't learn a single thing, but had to sit through it all and do busy work to earn the "credit."

This girl took a risk I'm scared to take. Thus, I slaved away at stupid, useless college assignements while she partied. That doesn't justify feeling glee when she's caught. You could also stand outside emergency rooms and shout "I hope you learned a LESSON!" at those who end up getting in car accidents. Why, though? Because you're scared to drive, and wish nobody else enjoyed the advantages you're too scared to take?

Apparently this girl had no interest in playing the stupid game universities make people play, the little dance they make you do to get a degree.

The people who actually think that little dance is something other than a lazy way for the schools to say they "taught" you something are mad about this. But I don't care, and neither does anyone who doesn't derive their self-worth from how well they dance when their professor says "dance!"

Someone referred me to this site. How funny! I can picture this becoming part of main stream pop-culture. It might appear in episodes of shows similar to The Simpsons.

Miss Laura K. P. (uh, Krishna), is now a famous celebrity. I Google her name, and I find 347 results that pertain to her. (There are 201 for Laura K. Krishna.) She ought to take advantage of her fame... to progress her career.

With Laura K. being such a good lier, she ought to marry "Survivor" Rob "The Snake" C. They would make such a good couple!

Oh yeah, after reading the first batch of comments on the first posting...who ever wrote something about Nate must be a Bush supporter because of his actions, just remember Bush won, so there is justice in this messed up world.

Good job, the morality of our culture has been lacking of late, and while this is a small example of the lack of ethics, it is still a step in the right direction.

She cheated, she got caught, she got what she deserved.

Okay, so I have read everything from everyone. I think Laura deserves what is coming to her. I just don't understand how stupid people are to buy other people's work. I am a hardworking student and nothing ticks me off more than students who cheat.

It was awesome and brilliant of you Nate to post the paper on the Internet so it could be found by whoever her professor is.

Kittens are fluffier but puppies are cuter.

Dear people who keep calling Nate a self-righteous jerk: Get off your own high horses. If you do something stupid (like, say, buying a paper and then lying get out of paying for it), and there's a record of it, that is 100% your problem. Period.

Awwww, too bad the poor stupid girl got her name plastered all over the Internet for cheating and lying. She's completely responsible for what she did, and these are the consequences. She's *lucky* Nate feels guilty about it. I sure wouldn't.

This is the kind of thing I'd expect to see on the Daily Show.

Imagining either Carrell or Colbert ripping her apart...Maybe even Samantha Bee...

Hi - OK, pleeeeeeez don't bring Bush (or Cheney,, or Condoleeza, or any other U.S. politician) into this. Pretty soon they'll be forcing a feeding tube down Ms. Krishna's throat. (Sorry, that was tacky, I know...just kidding)

This shows your ethics just as well as it shows hers. Not a bright, shiny day in nateville is it? You are such an attention whore it is just sick. You put all this information out there and if we want to call her school we can. THANKS TO YOU.

The comments about Laura's life being ruined are ridiculous. She will have a tough 6 months or so if she doesnt get expelled. Or a tough year or two if she does and has to go somewhere else. But *if* if gets on her transcript, then after her first job, no one will ever see it. So make a few years tough? Sure. Wreak a life? Not. Perhaps it will even improve her life if she learns something.

::And the Dean won't be able to say anything because of "confidentiality" until Briscoe rises from the grave and slaps the Dean around a bit. "This is a MURDER investigation."::

Great, now I have Zombie Briscoe images in my head.

Briscoe: "This is a MURDER investigation. BRAAAAAIINNNS"

Briscoe's Partner of the Season: "No, Briscoe! Unhand that perp! That's not due process!"

With all due respect-- one English major to another-- it's not your job to punish her.

God. I don't want this to end. I'm addicted. Has anyone heard anything new? Nate? Someone? Pleeeease. Don't bother me kids, I'm watching my story....

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

You're a comedy writer?

Nate made one mistake.

He assumed that Laura is a "kid."

She's not, she's an adult. And for once in her life, she's been treated like one.

When a child makes an unethical choice, you explain to them what they did wrong and give them a slight punishment so they'll remember the lesson. When an adult makes an unethical choice, especially an illegal choice, you come down hard on them so they'll know you're not screwing around. A kid tries to steal a candy bar from a convenience store, you slap his wrist and explain to him that stealing is wrong. An adult holds up a convenience store, you put him in jail for armed robbery.

So decide. Is Laura a kid or an adult? If she's a kid, she shouldn't be in college, where it is expected that students are responsible adults. If she's an adult, she clearly has no concept of academic integrity and should not be in an academic setting.

I just hope someone will write a Top 40 song about this. In duet form.

Why can't I shake the hoax possibility?

Too many things just don't feel right about this story -- I have to admit, however, that if the univ. in question had issued a simple "it didn't happen here" it would be clearer.

But alas, they haven't.

I'll be on April Fools Day watch tomorrow.

Cheers.

Remind me not to date an aspiring commedy writer who is a English major.

Sadistic self-gloating bastard!

Yeah that happened to my wife at college -- she was falsely accused of plagiarism. The professor didn't believe that an undergrad could do such fine work. She was innocent -- I saw her write the paper -- but you can never prove your innocence in a case a like that. She still passed, but with a lower grade, so it didn't really hurt her, but it was demoralizing.

So you have to remember that not all accused are guilty.

Count me in the camp that things Laura is a borderline sociopath and that her mom is her enabler. She lied to everyone, except possibly her mom, and mom was right there to clean up after her little girl's mess. I doubt that this fiasco will do anything to her other than put her in a state of denial.

But I hold out the hope that I'm wrong.

PS: nk, http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=impudent
But at least you're honest about it.

I hope the Dean stabs her in the face.

There is never a reason to cheat, lie or steal.

If she ends up going free of punishment people need to start calling her and the school every day.

...nor ever a reason to stab someone in the face...

what is up with all these "not all accused are guilty" people?

how is that at all relevant in this case?

laura was indeed guilty. she asked for the paper. got it. didn't pay for it. and turned it in. she isn't falsely accused by any sense of that word. she even lied to her dean about it. so how is she innocent again?

I have read a number of the comments left here, but certainly do not have the patience or interest to read the hundreds of them. I will, however, put in the effort to leave one of my own.

I do not know Laura, outside of what has been posted here. I do not feel sorry for her, but it is kind of sad what the people who have accessed this blog have done. Whether or not this is a hoax, a joke, a story, or real; there are principles involved.

It is wrong and against every (I haven't read each university's guidelines, but this would be a fair estimate) university's regulations to plagiarise. To copy or not cite someone else's words (I think it is three or more), and then put your name on it, is wrong. Even paraphrasing requires a source, fer chrissakes.

Since high school this has been pounded into my head, at least. We were even told that ignorance of the rules is no excuse, because you have still committed the crime. So many teachers and profs go over methods of citing, and making bibliographies, when they assign essays, etc.

Even if her university, as a prestigious one, believed that their students, at a higher level, wouldn't need constant reminders of these rules or were expected to know better, there is still no possible way that Laura wouldn't know that what she was doing was wrong.

Not to mention having someone else write it for her. That is much worse than just plagiarism- that is Nate's entire (shitty as it was) essay that she has claimed to be her own.

It most certainly is an insult to anyone who has earned their education to think that there are people cheating the system, getting away with plagiarism, hardly lifting a finger (except to take photos of the cheques they don't mail) to earn a degree. I have seen things like that, to a lesser extent, happen all the time. Even letting someone else copy your work is against regulations.

I am not saying I am better than Laura. I certainly am lazy (and am behind in essays that I should be writing right now, actually), but I have NEVER asked someone else to write an essay for me (My mother did a lot of work on a science project I had in grade 4, but I got a bad mark for that anyway- karma).

Furthermore, lack of credit drives me insane. Online, people copy and paste pictures and lines of text all the time, but never bother to cite a source- name or link.

There is a quote I remember now, but, ironically, I can't think of who wrote it or where I found it (possibly Elfwood, or a GreatestJournal community). Roughly, it is: "Stealing is stealing, no matter what." Whether a candybar, artwork, an article; if you claim it is yours, put your name on it, it's stealing.

I was appalled to hear that people have been calling and harrassing Laura. Her school will deal with her accordingly. After all this attention, they will probably make an example out of her.

Don't pity her: think of the people she was keeping from being in that university (who would work hard and earn it) by cheating her way through. If she had gotten away with it once (but it wouldn't have been this time- did you read the thing?) she would have done it again and again.

- Theresa (first year Sociology/Political Science major)

Normally I don't go off posting comments on random blogs of people that I don't know... But this situation kind of moved me... To Feel compassion for Laura K. Krishna (or whatever you are calling her).

First Laura made a mistake. Nate published her last name and now the world knows. Half the people here think it's justice, and a whole bunch of you think it's funny. So here's some young kid who made a mistake and now her whole life is about to be ruined because of an internet incident. This is a akin to someone taking a picture of one of you slackers who are websurfing this site at WORK (YOU UNETHICAL SLIMEBAGS WEBSURFING ON COMPANY TIME HOW DARE YOU) and posting it to the world and threatening to call your employer to get you fired. Would that be fair? Would that be justice? No. This one incident will chase Laura around for a long time and getting expelled is not a good thing.

All of your guy's negative energies towards Laura will not help in building a better society, but rather will just injure a person WITH NO POSITIVE OUTCOME TO ANYONE ELSE.

Second, so Laura cheated and a lot of you have worked hard to get where you are. BOO-FUCKING-HOO. Have any of you monkeys ever thought to question the competitive nature of the educational system? Have you ever thought in the end plagiarism isn't such a high crime because a) everyone does it, there is NO SUCH THING AS ORGINAL CONTENT PEOPLE... all content descends from someone else's words and forms and ideas b) she (or someone else) is paying for the school, so why should this be held against her c) maybe the competitive nature of the capitalist education is flawed to begin with? Maybe we should be having an open education where people aren't graded? Have you ever considered that perhaps grading itself leads to these inequities because information which otherwise nominally should be free suddenly becomes a commodity?

First, Laura cheated. So fucking what? All of you pointing fingers at Laura are no less guilty of whatever cardinal "sin" deemed by some class of society of another. Some of you probably do drugs. So fucking what? Do you want the man coming and telling you not to do them? Some of you probably slack off at work? So what? Do other people at your work have to work harder? Maybe? Is it right for them to take once incident and hang you for it?

Well if you beleive in mob justice, maybe it's right which is what half of these fuckers in this incident have part of become. They've become hell-bent in their schadenfreude. They are so happy that they can point out someone somewhere that they perceive is doing wrong that because get to take out their entire supressed anger and sense of powerlessness on them. This so-called sense of "justice" is nothing but sick and sadistic monkey like behavior. This rant is probably wasted on all of you because you probably take pride in all of this. But to me you are coming across as compasionless sheep. If this were 100 years ago, the tone in this forum would be the same tone that would have went out and made a hanged black man. It's disgusting humanity at it's worst.

I write this because I hope that Laura, or someone who is reading this will know that there is at least person on their side who has a shred of compassion in an overhwelming see of shamless finger pointing.

And by the way. I've never cheated during school, and work my ass off at my job. It's usually the finger pointing bastards blameshift and do the least amount of work. Just remember that someday, someone might come along and "teach you a lesson" as well.

She's not a kid. She's at least 21 years old. She can drive. She can drink. She can vote.

She isn't a kid.

She wasn't coerced or tricked into cheating. She asked him for a paper. She turned it in. She lied to the dean.

How people can see this as anything but deliberate is beyond my understanding. Maybe it's just wishful thinking on their parts, to give everyone the benefit of the doubt or somesuch.

But she isn't a kid.

People make livelihoods off of their ideas and words and even if that is something difficult for the most rudimentary to understand... I think the concept of CHEATING is pretty clear. Even kids are taught not to cheat.

hey, just a quick thought...am I the only one who finds a spark of irony in the fact that this girl's last name is the same as the name of one of the avatars of the Hindu god Vishnu, who, according to mythology, steps in to compassionately save humanity? And she acted completely contrary to that. Just a thought.

I know this is a double post but...

Actually what the people who want to see Laura punished *really* remind me of are the people who go out and stone women who have had affairs in islamic countries. It's suppressed puritanism at it's worse. The further shame is that some of you have the guile to call yourself "educated".

Uh huh. And why don't we give the thief that stole our TV the stereo also? Since apparently, they weren't at fault for breaking and entering as long as they're just a dumb kid, right?

I don't think she should be flogged. I don't think her life should be ruined. But honestly... is an F in class really going to RUIN her life? Have some perspective.

It doesn't matter if they were a dumb kid or even if they are old and intelligent.

First, I for one don't think Laura did anything inherently wrong. No one was intrinsically hurt by her actions except through a contrived economic arguement (it makes it tougher for the honest people).

Guess what. THERE ARE NO "HONEST" PEOPLE. It's all sham. If you happen to be a saint who hasn't broken any rules on a repeated basis... well my apologies and feel free to judge away, but I suspect you have good ranks amongst fundamentalists of all sorts.

You aren't gaining anything whatsoever by punishing Laura. Blame the game, not the player.

Okay my last reply for real:

"I don't think she should be flogged. I don't think her life should be ruined. But honestly... is an F in class really going to RUIN her life? Have some perspective."

If she is threatened with explusion, I'd call that a pretty severe punishment. If she gets an F in the class and that's all... Fine, I'll compromise with you and we can forget it.... But all the calls for expulsion, and the harrasement over the internet is just undue and it makes me sick to my stomach.

Yeah... There are no "HONEST" people. That's why there are RULES to FOLLOW. So that people aren't bulldozed over by people who patently don't CARE.

Did you even READ what and how she wrote? Man.... get a clue! Or is your judgment of people just THAT poor?

Amazing, Dan.

Of course, most of us realize that Laura's original last name of P**l was edited out and replaced with Krishna.

annoyed with stupid people...

Punishing someone else will not undue the wrongs that have occured to you. In fact, if you give into it, you will become the some force of those that wronged you.

Show yourself compassion and allow yourself to express and live freely and show other people compassion.

she (or someone else) is paying for the school, so why should this be held against her

Wow. I thought this was a serious posting until you said that.

Yeah... but some people are just going to ask for a lynching. But most schools don't expell their students for plagiarism these days. That's just how things are.

And yeah... the harassment over the internet and people calling her on the phone and the dean by themselves isn't called for. Nathan shouldn't have written her real name, but he also couldn't have known how big this would get. That's just stuff to acknowledge. Honestly, the people who have acted on their own are more at fault than what Nathan did.

But she is responsible. And really... the penalty can go UP to expulsion. But usually... it doesn't go past a redo for the paper or an F on the class.

And stealing of ideas and words is still stealing because that is intellectual property. People do get paid to do that. Yeah, her paper wasn't for money. But if you see college as a training field for the work field, then she is just facing consequences that are gentler than they would be in the work field.

The humiliation is a bit much, but the consequences that she faces are the same ones faced by everyone in the academic and working field. They aren't new rules, they've been around for a while and they're there to uphold integrity in a field without physical products.

P'raps some will find this interesting, to both sides of this argument

The Teen Brain Theory

By MEGHAN MUTCHLER DEERIN
Chicago Tribune
August 28, 2001

When an otherwise reasonable adolescent takes the car out for a predawn
spin, doesn't crack a book until the night before the exam or guzzles beer
until she gets sick on the driveway, parents typically blame raging
hormones. But scientists have hit upon a new theory.

While studying brain images of normal teenagers, neuroscientist Jay Giedd
of the National Institute of Mental Health and neurologist Paul Thompson of
the University of California, Los Angeles, recently made a surprising
discovery.

They found that adolescents undergo dramatic changes in the frontal lobe,
or prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain critical to judgment, reason,
self-control and planning.

"The surprise is how late very, very drastic brain growth is taking place,"
said Thompson, who directs UCLA's Laboratory of Neuro Imaging. "In late
teens, the prefrontal cortex is the area that's changing the fastest, and
we know that prefrontal cortex is responsible for inhibitions, suppressing
risky behavior and controlling impulses."

The two scientists suggest that stereotypical teenage behavior, such as
rebelliousness and risk-taking, could be caused by the rapid changes in the
teenage brain.

"Teens often change in personality through those years, from being very
emotional risk-takers to being very self-controlled by the mid-20s,"
Thompson said. "At the same time, the prefrontal cortex, which suppresses
risky impulses and is involved in self-control, is growing the fastest.
Wouldn't it be an intriguing thing if the brain changes mirror to some
degree the change in behavior?"

Guidance Needed

If their theory proves true, it might point to a greater need for parental
involvement during the teen years, Thompson said.

"It really enforces the need for good family support," Thompson said. "You
need a lot of guidance through those years."

Giedd has gone a step further, suggesting that the types of activities
teenagers engage in, from playing video games to watching MTV, could hurt
their brain development. More constructive activities, such as playing
sports or a musical instrument, could have positive repercussions for the
brain.

Those inferences have drawn the ire of other experts in the field.

"Anything neuroscientists have to say about how the maturity of the frontal
lobe relates to behavior is just speculation," said John Bruer, president
of the James S. McDonnell Foundation in St. Louis, which funds research in
cognitive neuroscience. "For every kid who's supposed to have unplugged
frontal lobes, I can show you one who's playing the Mozart concerto."

Bruer, who is the author of "The Myth of the First Three Years" (Free
Press, $25), which criticized the fervor about early brain growth,
lambasted this latest theory as the next installment in pop psychology.

"I think people have a set of teenage behaviors that they don't like - take
video games - and say if you do that while your frontal lobes are
developing you'll be damaged forever, but if you play chess, you'll be a
genius," Bruer said. "We really have to be careful in looking for purported
biological explanations for very local social and cultural phenomena we may
not like."

Mounting Evidence

Meanwhile, other brain-development experts are hailing the newest theory as
another drop in a deepening pool of evidence that indicates the frontal
lobes may take two or more decades to fully develop.

"I think it's dead on," said Russell Barkley, professor of psychiatry and
neurology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Author of several books on attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder,
Barkley has studied brain development in children and adolescents. He and
many of his colleagues theorize that most people don't become fully
self-aware until their early 30s.

"What we tend to do is look at teens as if they see things the same way we
do, and of course they don't," Barkley said. "This is why all kids save
their summer reading until Labor Day."

Giedd's and Thompson's observations help to explain why teenagers have a
time horizon of one to three days, compared with the average 35-year-old,
who has the capacity to plan 8 to 12 weeks ahead, Barkley said.

"It's that ability to plan ahead that is the essence of the frontal lobe,"
Barkley said. "What [Giedd and Thompson] have shown is that, of course, the
frontal lobe is not mature yet."

As a result, Barkley said, kids don't always think things through.
Typically, they don't fully anticipate the consequences of an act before
they commit it.

"That's why the juvenile court system makes decisions differently than the
adult court system," Barkley said. "It's founded on the idea that juveniles
do not have the power that adults have to foresee the consequences of their
actions."

Planning Ahead

It's the tough job of a parent to help teens grasp that there are
consequences to their actions, said Kate Jacobs, a school social worker and
mother of two teenagers in Oak Park, Ill.

"They just don't believe that any of the bad stuff that happens in the
world can happen to them," Jacobs said.

And when it comes to planning, forget about it, Jacobs said.

"My son can't keep the week in focus, not without constant reminders,"
Jacobs said.

His first month of high school was about as relaxing as a fire drill.

"We had these frantic nights when he suddenly remembered he had something
due the next day," Jacobs said. After weeks of panic, she got him a
planning book.

Giving kids the tools to become independent is what parents should do ,
said Scott Hunter, a University of Chicago psychology professor and
director of the university's pediatric neuropsychology service.

Whether the latest brain theory proves true, teenagers need parents who are
involved but not overprotective, said Hunter, cautioning that parents could
become too sheltering in response to the recent research.

"Part of being an adolescent and being an adult is making mistakes," Hunter
said. "The nice part of making mistakes is being able to learn from them."

The brain can't develop without an interaction between experience and the
brain's own biological processes, Hunter said.

"Growth is stimulated by experience and experience is what's enriching,"
Hunter said. "Sometimes parents do have to step in and make the right
decision, but they need to help their adolescent develop the capacity for
independence."

And, though teenagers generally are more likely to be impulsive and make
inappropriate decisions, that tendency varies widely among individuals,
making it unlikely that a rapidly sculpting prefrontal cortex is the only
culprit, Hunter said.

"Brain development is probably not the only reason," Hunter said. "A lot of
us have experiences when we're younger that help us make more mature
decisions when we're teens."

Thompson agreed that a combination of factors, including a changing
prefrontal cortex, might contribute to stereotypical teenage behavior.

"It needn't just be one or the other," Thompson said. "Now, we're well on
the way toward piecing all these things together."

Let everyone out of jail! Punishing others just punishes ourselves!!!!!!!!!

If someone kills your mom, punishing them won't bring your mom back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

STOP THE CYCLE OF VIOLINS!!

STOP THE INSANITY!

BUSH LIED THEY DIED!

skeletor,

Your punitive attitude won't cause people like Laura to change their ways. It will only cause them act smarter so you won't detect them.

Until then, live in fear chump, since it's apparently all you got.

Following dmh's logic, it's clear that no-one should ever be punished for anything, ever.

Which is a pretty sensible proposal, if you think about it - not least because abolishing the US legal system would cure the budget deficit at a stroke!

Two factors have greatly influenced my reaction to this whole thing:

(1) I'm in the fourth year of my undergraduate work and, given that I'm majoring in English Lit, have busted my ass on many a paper that I didn't bother to start until the night before. There is NO excuse for plagarizing a paper--even if Laura had just been blowing the work off until the last minute and for some reason was unable to do a simple five page RESEARCH PAPER (let me emphasize that again--RESEARCH PAPER: not something for which she has to come up with a reasonably original thesis but what amounts to cut-and-paste with citations) in the amount of time she had availible, she could easily have simply lied to her professor about why she didn't have the paper on time in order to gain an extension.
(2) I've previously worked for a couple of computer science professors as the assignment grader for their respective sections of a programming course (one of the first taken by anyone majoring or minoring in compsci). I never ceased to be amazed (or disgusted) by just how many students thought that they could paste in a chunk of code from another student, change the order that a few variables were declared in or some variable names (if they changed anything at all), and I WOULDN'T NOTICE (especially when the code produced identical runtime or logical errors, which was something else I couldn't fathom--if you're going to plagarize, why not plagarize something that WORKS?). What bothers me even now is that while I was able to report the academic dishonesty to the professor the first few times it happened, towards the end of the semester I had so much grading work dumped on me that I didn't have time to go back over the assignments and check for plagarized work (especially when you consider that I also had my own papers and programming assignments to write).

I completely sympathize with and applaud everything you tried to do here, with only one reservation: why the sudden surge of sympathy for the stupid woman? She (1) solicited you for the paper, (2) ignored an overwhelming amount of evidence that you were not serious, (3) offered to pay you a ridiculously low amount despite her claim that money was no object, (4) turned in the paper without so much as skimming it, (5) welched on the promised payment, and then (6) didn't come clean to the dean despite the undeniable evidence of her guilt. Despite her protestations to the contrary, I sincerely doubt that this was a one-time thing, and I hope that she fails the course at the very least.

[For the record: I have never plagarized anything in my life. The closest I have ever come, in fact, was a paper I wrote for a history/theology class when I was studying abroad in Japan last year, where I did not cite paraphrased material simply because the professor had specified that we were ONLY to cite directly quoted material (note that this was a senior-level seminar at a university that would be the equivalent of lower-tier Ivy League). Some days I wish I'd attended that university for the entirety of my undergraduate studies.]

http://tsgarp.blogspot.com/2005/03/laura-k-krishna-case.html

I think it is interesting that only a few people have commented on the manipulative nature of Laura's mother. She hinted at paying you off, she supported her daughter in not talking to the Dean, and she ignorantly believes that her daughter isn't capable of doing what she in fact has done. She is worse then an enabler, she is a fullout supporter and she tricked you into think her manipulation was her being nice.

Nate Kushner, whoever you are, you are a complete fraud. You are self-righteous, revolting human being and a disgrace to humanity.

Laura K is completely wrong in what she did, that is indisputable. But your actions, in comparison, are a hundred times more reprehensible.

You began your little "game" by making a judgment on a human being with hardly any hard facts or information as to this person's motives and life situation.

Sure, we all know that Laura is cheating, but do you happen to know what's behind her need to cheat? Did you ever ask Laura why wasn't she doing her own work? Did you even bother to find out what she is going through right now in her life? No way. It was a lot more "fun" for you to set up a trap for her and screw her, than to help her, which is what you claim to be doing.

It seems like you did not need to know any facts, as your own conclusions are more than enough to do something that can potentially ruin someone else's life. You know that this could potentially destroy her future, right? Do you think one mistake is enough to ruin a person's career? Is this your rule of thumb? One mistake, your life's over? Do you apply the same rule to your own life, or you only hold Laura (and others) to those standards? If that's the case, this blog should end with your life as a moral, ethical human being. What you're doing is unethical and immoral at best, and I'm sure your life would have been ruined long ago if you held yourself to the same standards. Unless you have not ever made any mistakes, of course.

Did you even care about Laura? Do you think your stupid "lesson" is going to be a positive one to her or anyone else? Had you wanted to teach her a lesson, you would have first found out why she is not doing her own work, and of course, you would have refused to do it for her. Worst case scenario, offered to act as a guide. But just who the hell do you think you are?

Before jumping to your own conclusions and doing something that can potentially destroy this person's life, you went above God. Even God would question the motives of every human being before administering a harsh punishment.

This could be analogous to hanging the man who robbed the bank to save his daughter's life. You may think that I'm exaggerating, but it could have been ANYTHING. Since you don't even know a single fact about this girl, there's an entire world of possibilities that you, self-righteously, did not consider.

Do you know what could be the repercussions of something like this? Imagine if this girl suffered from depression, or were suicidal and could not deal with the pressure of college on her own. Could you live with the thought that she might have collapsed and committed suicide, as a result of being expelled from college because of your funny "lesson," which happened to ruin her entire career, reputation and life?

Are you entirely free of sins in your life? No, you aren't. This blog proves it. It's an evil thing to do to anyone. Dishonesty is bad, but never as bad as attempting to destroy a person's life because they made a mistake or acted dishonestly, not to mention that you don't even have one half of the facts concerning Laura's life.

Who died and left you God? Who gave you the right to punish other human beings? Even the Constitution of the United States, your country, would find your actions reprehensible.

The Amendments of the Constitution stipulate that every citizen, even the worst of all murderers, terrorists and rapists, cannot be condemned without having a right to [Amendment VI the Constitution] (a) being informed of the nature and cause of the accusation, (b) be confronted with the witnesses against them, (c) have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in their favor, (d) have the assistance of counsel for their defense, (e) have a fair trial with an impartial jury.

And if that is not enough, the VIII Amendment protects each citizen from cruel and unusual punishment.

Do you even know the Amendments? I'm sure you don't. You basically decided you were THE ONE to make justice, and punished a person by committing a series of crimes yourself, including defamation of character, intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraud, and whatever else could come out of this.

You are a disgrace to humanity. Shame on you.

As for Laura K, I cannot comment on her case, as I don't know her or a single fact about her situation. The action in itself is wrong, that is a fact, but we cannot judge (let alone punish) anyone without knowing all the facts.

If you had truly wanted to teach this person a lesson, you would have done so with a little bit of compassion. You had plenty of time to post this stupid blog, whose main objective is to ridicule a person you don't even know, and whom you deceived with LIES. Nice, you can be as dishonest as you want, after all, you are doing so to punish someone else's dishonesty. So ethical.

Couldn't you have spent some time trying to figure out why this girl is in college if she doesn't want to do the work herself? Could you have helped her in some way, without maliciously luring her into this disgusting, vicious trap? Of course not. You are an arrogant, self-righteous schmuck, whose own judgments are just enough to know that Laura K is simply a lazy ass who deserves whatever happens to her.

I really hope that you end up paying you dues. What goes around comes around, and next time you screw up, hopefully, you'll get punished just as harshly. And when your time comes, don't say life's not fair. It will only be fair. At least for you.

NYLady,
Interesting comments... but did Nate mete out punishment? Or did he simply present the facts of the case? At worst he's the advocate for the opposition - he's not doing anything to Laura. Laura's school has now have been informed, and they can judge her. Laura's future employers MAY be informed, and can choose what to do with that information.
Truly, he played a cruel practical joke on her by giving her a terrible essay. One of the commenters earlier mentioned how their own family members had done a similar thing to each other! Other than that, it has just been reporting. And the judge/jury/executioner as you put has actually been a jury of her peers (all of us), the majority of which seem to have found her guilty.
If there is reasonable doubt (which doesn't seem likely) as to what Laura did... then perhaps she shouldn't be punished, but really.

>>>Yeah that happened to my wife at college -- she was falsely accused of plagiarism. The professor didn't believe that an undergrad could do such fine work. She was innocent -- I saw her write the paper -- but you can never prove your innocence in a case a like that

That's what happened to me, Herostratus. And the university handled it appallingly. Accusing me of cheating without proof, and then telling me that "I knew what I'd done", whilst refusing to put the allegations to me. Then they recanted the allegations without ever giving me an explanation, and I got a lower grad. I only found the truth inadvertedley from another lecture. They were revolting.

Still, not as revolting as Nate, who makes me wanna barf up my breakfast. Unless of course, this is one giant April Fool's day hoax (which I sincerely hope it is).

Do you honestly think that having your full name all over the Internet, available to just about anyone, with the details about ho you were entrapped and lured into cheating (a bad mistake) is not going to bring enough repercussions for her, for this to be a harsh punishment?

If Nate had wanted to punish her or make some justice, he should have simply emailed her professor with evidence showing that Laura was having her work done by someone else. Then she would have received the FAIR and equal punishment administered to all other students in her situation, administered by the RIGHT authorities. Nate has absolutely nothing to do here.

How about someone here decides Nate is an evil ass, and goes and beats the crap out of him? After all, that's Nate's own theory. Make justice by your own hand, the way you like it. If someone makes justice to him after this, he can't complain.

Publicly humiliating her over the Internet is just crossing the line. You don't know what this can bring to her in the future. A name like this is hard to forget, and if the entire school hears this rumor and finds this link, I can't think of what her life's going to be like.

This is really a horrible, vile thing to do, and quite frankly, this blog did a lot more to expose Nate's malicious nature, than a dumb college student who paid to get her work done. This happens in college campuses all the time. There's even fliers where people offer to write essays... and in writing centers at colleges, sometimes tutors end up rephrasing the whole thing for students who just can't write.

It's not the same as plagiarizing, but it's the same as what Laura did, and what Nate agreed to do, in addition to lying, committing fraud, and trying to hurt another person. If anyone could get hurt after making a mistake, we would all live in a state of terror.

Nate, if the world followed your advice, you'd probably get beaten sometime soon, and many people would be victims of other horrible things as well. Don't set this example and try to pass it as "justice."

NYLady, in your seemingly pathological urge to demonstrate that you wipe the floor with everyone else in the self-righteousness stakes, you're ignoring several crucial points:

1. Nate admitted that he was wrong to post her real name (which I personally think was his only serious error), and did everything he could to put that particular genie back in the bottle;
2. Nate had not even the remotest idea that this would spiral out of control like this - until Tuesday, he said his blog had maybe thirty readers;
3. At every stage in the original transaction, Nate bent over backwards to insert clues that he might not be entirely bona fide - I'm sure he was as surprised as anyone that she still went through with the deal;
4. I'm sure he was equally surprised that she handed the paper in without even READING the damn thing, even though it was going out under her name - can he really be blamed for this level of gullibility?
5. If there were mitigating circumstances along the lines you suggest, Laura would certainly have mentioned them by now;
6. Even if she hadn't, her mom DEFINITELY would!

What disturbs me about your vitriol is that it's based on the assumption that Nate deliberately set out to make her life hell, that his actions were, to use your hysterical terminology, "horrible", "vile" or indeed its anagram "evil". In other words, you're assuming that he intended to generate all this publicity from the off.

But there's no evidence for this whatsoever - going from his comments here (when he's allowed to get a word in edgeways), Nate seems like a genuinely nice and conscientious guy who is as shocked by all this as we are.

As for not being able to comment on Laura's case, take those blinkers off, why don't you? She lied repeatedly, she tried to defraud Nate after he'd helped her (note: all this was BEFORE this publicity blew up), she lied to her Dean and she almost certainly lied to her mom, too. You really don't have an opinion on that (despite having any number of opinions about Nate, whose case you're equally unfamiliar with)?

As I said, any mitigating circumstances would certainly have come out by now - wouldn't it have been the first thing she'd have told Nate over the phone? But she didn't. And why not? Because she didn't have a leg to stand on, and she knew it.

Yes, I agree the "punishment" is wholly disproportionate - but you cannot possibly blame Nate for this unless those blinkers have been welded to your head. I'd never heard of him until Wednesday, and I suspect the same is true of 99.9% of the rest of us. Had you told him a week ago that by April 1st he'd be fielding over 200 comments a day from total strangers, he'd have invited you to join his comedy troupe.

All right, I'm probably not saying anything that hasn't already been said before, but NYLady's comments prompted me to respond.

Bottom line: plagiarism is wrong. The circumstances under which the act of plagiarism can be mitigating, but certainly not in this case. Laura solicited the paper from Nate, despite numerous attempts on his part to dissuade her. She submitted the paper without even bothering to read what she had solicited. Furthermore, she did not submit payment as was agreed upon, and since she did not bother to read what she had purchased, she had no reason to withold payment. What Laura engaged in is thievery, of the lowest and basest form.

In other cases of thievery, circumstances surrounding the situation may or may not lead to some modicum of justification of the action. An appropriate example would be a destitute man stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving child. However, the theft is still a crime, and mitigating circumstances aside, the man will still be punished for it. However, I cannot see any circumstances that would justify plagiarism. Plagiarism arises out of sheer laziness and the unwillingness to put forth effort to create something.

Regarding the family/personal circumstances reasoning: ultimately, the world does not put itself on hold for one person, regardless of the reasons and the person's emotions. If she had had legitimate circumstances that would have prevented her from completing the paper in time, then she should have gone to the professor or dean. They would have been understanding and more than willing to assist her in any way possible.

Quite frankly, the attitude that mitigating circumstances can somehow justify Laura's reasons for cheating frightens me. Is an engineer who is having marital problems justified in cutting a few corners at work because he's depressed? Of course not; the resulting product/building is at risk because of that behaviour. Even if unknown circumstances in Laura's home/personal life caused great stress, that is not justification for cheating. Life is going to throw people for loops, and they have to learn how to deal with it.

An earlier point I made was that crime should be punished. Let me also say that the punishment should fit the crime. Nate's intended punishment--to report the activity to the dean--most definitely fit the punishment. Laura cheated, and she deserved to be reported, and had Nate's plan worked out, that's exactly would have happened, and this kerfluffle would not be occurring. However, because of his decision to post the story on what he considered a fairly unnoticeable blog, the plan backfired.

Nate, of course, shoulders some blame for this, because it was his decision to post the story, and he has shouldered the blame. He removed the real names of those involved and offered to speak to the dean on Laura's behalf to help her out of the mess she created. That's far more generosity than most would engage in, especially considering that when she was confronted with her actions and the evidence, she still refused to confess.

Nate did not intend for the information to spread the way it did, and nor should he be held responsible for what occurred following the spread of that information. Nate's posting on the web was not malicious; he did not tell people, "Hey, look her up and make life hell for her!" Once he found out about what people were doing, he discouraged the behaviour. He was "out to get" Laura in the sense that he wanted her to receive punishment for her wrong. He was not "out to get" Laura in the sense that he wanted to ruin her life. His actions, I believe, speak clearly to that.

What Nate has done is post a truthful, if snarky, account of one girl's attempt on plagiarism. His intent was to make the school aware of Laura's activities. He fully intended to allow the school to mete out punishment, and probably considered his job done after he had reported her. Unfortunately, others decided that they had the right to report what was going on. The blame for all this nonsense rests squarely on their shoulders, because they interfered in something that, quite frankly, was none of their business.

I sincerely doubt that this will have any lasting effect on Laura's future. The internet has a long memory, true, but horrible recall. At worst, she will fail the class; colleges are loathe to expel students. Quite frankly, for such atrocious behaviour, the punishment matches the offence. If the dean and professor are feeling particularly lenient, she will only fail the paper without the opportunity to make it up.

Ultimately, I hope Laura's learned her lesson. Unfortunately, I do not have enough faith in mankind to believe so.

NYLady... the only advice I've seen Nate offer on this whole thing is to "Stop calling Laura and stop calling her school" (I don't care enough to get the quote perfect.) I think that's pretty good advice he's offering. And if everyone in the world followed his example, maybe

"This happens in college campuses all the time. There's even fliers where people offer to write essays..." - you

wouldn't be so unfortunately true.

Besides, Nate didn't put it "All over the internet" - he put it on one site. "We the people" (that's 3 words in a unique turn of phrase - and I think it's some US politician's words - but I don't know whose) did the rest.

oops... looks like there's a new thread!

On the subject of mitigating circumstances, it would be interesting to know what punishment is formally applied by the college (though it would admittedly be hard to find that out without seeming ghoulishly voyeuristic).

Given that Laura has been punished quite spectacularly already - and then some! - by this very public trial, my guess is that the formal punishment will be rather more lenient than some of the more lynch-happy commenters would have hoped. And I think that would be right - after all, if she doesn't learn from this, she's never going to learn anything at all.

"NYLady, in your seemingly pathological urge to demonstrate that you wipe the floor with everyone else in the self-righteousness stakes, you're ignoring several crucial points:

1. Nate admitted that he was wrong to post her real name (which I personally think was his only serious error), and did everything he could to put that particular genie back in the bottle."

Sorry, but admitting to having done something wrong doesn't make it right. And less than anyone else here, does Nate deserve any leniency when having lapses of judgment. He helped a girl screw up, just to screw her a lot more. He screwed up, so now he's gonna have to take it like a man. If someone broke the windows of your house intentionally, but after seeing the consequences, he admitted he was wrong, would that be a "crucial point" that excused the person of guilt? Give me a break. I can't see how that is crucial.

"2. Nate had not even the remotest idea that this would spiral out of control like this - until Tuesday, he said his blog had maybe thirty readers."

For Christ's sake, what would you think is the expectation of writing an online blog and inviting people over indefinitely? It's not as if Nate didn't know that the entire world is online, and that rumors are easily spread. Truthfully, it's like posting fliers in school and expecting just 15 people to find out about the latest rumor. If you want to defend Nate, try to get something a little more plausible. Nate lied, faked and acted, just to entrap a girl into cheating, to later expose her publicly. Again, give me a break. After 100 posts, Nate kept it up.

"3. At every stage in the original transaction, Nate bent over backwards to insert clues that he might not be entirely bona fide - I'm sure he was as surprised as anyone that she still went through with the deal."

Oh please. Bent over backwards? The girl couldn't have a clue as to what Chivas is, do you really think she'd just figure it out? Especially since she's probably not that smart, or she'd be doing the paper herself.
He "bent over backwards", but he also knew that he failed at it, and he went forward. So, this is not a "crucial" point. It's just part of the fun in the blog, since it shows how "stupid" the girl must be. Do you honestly think that those clues were Nate's attempt at being compassionate? How could it, if now he's using them to make fun of Laura?

"4. I'm sure he was equally surprised that she handed the paper in without even READING the damn thing, even though it was going out under her name - can he really be blamed for this level of gullibility?"

Yes, he can. The girl obviously had never been exposed to someone malicious enough to lie to her, entrap her, and then ridicule her. Probably because this is not your average person. There's lots of bad people in the world, but I guess you never learn the lesson until you find one. That's actually the only lesson I can think of, that Laura will actually get out of this. DO NOT TRUST STRANGERS. There is evil people out there, so this is a good lesson not only for her, but for all of us.

"5. If there were mitigating circumstances along the lines you suggest, Laura would certainly have mentioned them by now"

By now? Why the hell would it matter "by now" ifthe damage is done already? How is that "crucial" at this point? It doesn't make a godamn difference, and how or why would Laura share her personal problems with a bunch of people online who are laughing and ridiculing her?

You really got to be out of your mind if you think she will write her reasons. My actual point is that Nate NEVER bothered to find out what the girl's situation was like, BEFORE he engaged in the act of lying to her and entraping her, to later defame her. What was the actual situation doesn't make a difference at this point.

"6. Even if she hadn't, her mom DEFINITELY would!"

Quite relevant point. Crucial, to say the least.

"What disturbs me about your vitriol is that it's based on the assumption that Nate deliberately set out to make her life hell, that his actions were, to use your hysterical terminology, "horrible", "vile" or indeed its anagram "evil". In other words, you're assuming that he intended to generate all this publicity from the off.”\"

If he hadn't, he would not have put it online. Nor he would have gone around inviting everyone, who then further invited others. Seriously, don't you know how the Internet works? Or you think Nate is naïve enough not to know?

"As for not being able to comment on Laura's case, take those blinkers off, why don't you? She lied repeatedly, she tried to defraud Nate after he'd helped her (note: all this was BEFORE this publicity blew up), she lied to her Dean and she almost certainly lied to her mom, too. You really don't have an opinion on that (despite having any number of opinions about Nate, whose case you're equally unfamiliar with)?"

How could I be unfamiliar with Nate's case? YOU take those blinkers off. He's been posting every single detail, how could I be unfamiliar? Are you kidding me? You don't really make sense anymore.

As for Laura's case, I don't know what her situation really is, and I am only speaking about the transaction where she was made to believe by Nate, through LIES, that he would do the paper for the $75. Whatever she did after that, doesn't really matter. She was entrapped before he knew anything about her. So even if she were dying right now from cancer, Nate would have damaged her anyway, so your point is completely irrelevant.

"Yes, I agree the "punishment" is wholly disproportionate - but you cannot possibly blame Nate for this unless those blinkers have been welded to your head."

Of course Nate didn’t know this would be disproportionate. But he knew this girl's name would be online, for the entire world to see, to make fun of, and entirely at risk for people who knew her could find out and spread the rumor.

Are you telling me that Nate is as stupid as to be unabincapable to foresee that the girl's reputation could be ruined by posting his ridiculing story online, where the entire world can see it? Do you expect me to believe that?

If you want me to believe Nate is stupid rather than evil, that's a silly approach. Just by reading his posts, it’'s obvious he knows how the Internet works. Now that he's getting judged as well, I'm sure he's not as happy. It was better when everyone was making fun of Laura. Now things are getting ugly!

NYLady said:
"Sorry, but admitting to having done something wrong doesn't make it right. And less than anyone else here, does Nate deserve any leniency when having lapses of judgment. He helped a girl screw up, just to screw her a lot more. He screwed up, so now he's gonna have to take it like a man. If someone broke the windows of your house intentionally, but after seeing the consequences, he admitted he was wrong, would that be a "crucial point" that excused the person of guilt? Give me a break. I can't see how that is crucial."

1. True, a wrong does not make a right. However, Nate admitted to his wrong, whereas we are still waiting for Laura to do so to her dean. Nate admitted his wrong publically and did his best to rectify the situation. That does not excuse him from what he did earlier, but it shows the authenticity of his remorse. Again, we're still waiting on Laura to actually confess that she did something wrong.

2. Laura dug her own grave when she solicited Nate to write the paper for her. In fact, she brought along her own shovel, casket, and flower arrangement. Laura is not the victim here; she sought out someone to write her paper for her. That makes her the guilty party, not vice versa.

NYLady said:
"For Christ's sake, what would you think is the expectation of writing an online blog and inviting people over indefinitely? It's not as if Nate didn't know that the entire world is online, and that rumors are easily spread. Truthfully, it's like posting fliers in school and expecting just 15 people to find out about the latest rumor. If you want to defend Nate, try to get something a little more plausible. Nate lied, faked and acted, just to entrap a girl into cheating, to later expose her publicly. Again, give me a break. After 100 posts, Nate kept it up."

3. Hundreds of thousands of people blog on the 'net, and many of them make no secret of it. It is also safe to say that 99.99% of those blogs are completely and wholly unknown. The internet is not a predictable thing, and just because someone attempts to generate attention does not mean that attention will come. The vice versa is also true. Nate advertised this post among his friends, which is not an uncommon practice. That is not to say that he trolled around the 'net in an attempt to generate attention.

4. See 2. Again, Laura solicited Nate. Nate did not approach her and offer to write her paper for her; she did that of her own free will. I still fail to see how that makes Nate the guilty party.

NYLady said:
"Oh please. Bent over backwards? The girl couldn't have a clue as to what Chivas is, do you really think she'd just figure it out? Especially since she's probably not that smart, or she'd be doing the paper herself.

He "bent over backwards", but he also knew that he failed at it, and he went forward. So, this is not a "crucial" point. It's just part of the fun in the blog, since it shows how "stupid" the girl must be. Do you honestly think that those clues were Nate's attempt at being compassionate? How could it, if now he's using them to make fun of Laura?"

5. Stupidity is not an excuse for wrongdoing. The fact that she was unable to distinguish "Chiva" from "Shiva" merely says that she placed no value in the course she was taking. Nate called what she was doing by its name: "Just know that plagiarism is not going to help you out of the cycle of death and rebirth." If that's not a clue by four upside the head, I don't know what is.

6. I'll reiterate the point that many commenters have already made: Had Nate refused, Laura would have merely gone on and found someone else to do her bidding. She was in a desperate enough state to plagiarise; from that, and her statement offering an "out" to Nate, it can be inferred that she had absolutely no intentions of letting a refusal stop her.

NYLady said:
"Yes, he can. The girl obviously had never been exposed to someone malicious enough to lie to her, entrap her, and then ridicule her. Probably because this is not your average person. There's lots of bad people in the world, but I guess you never learn the lesson until you find one. That's actually the only lesson I can think of, that Laura will actually get out of this. DO NOT TRUST STRANGERS. There is evil people out there, so this is a good lesson not only for her, but for all of us."

7. See 2 and 4. Laura solicited Nate. I don't think I can reiterate this enough times. Your statement that Nate is "malicious" and sought to "entrap... and ridicule [Laura]" is really quite unfounded when one realises that Laura initiated the contact, not Nate.

NYLady said:
"By now? Why the hell would it matter "by now" ifthe damage is done already? How is that "crucial" at this point? It doesn't make a godamn difference, and how or why would Laura share her personal problems with a bunch of people online who are laughing and ridiculing her?

You really got to be out of your mind if you think she will write her reasons. My actual point is that Nate NEVER bothered to find out what the girl's situation was like, BEFORE he engaged in the act of lying to her and entraping her, to later defame her. What was the actual situation doesn't make a difference at this point."

8. See my previous post. Stealing material goods, e.g. food, may have mitigating factors, e.g. to save a family from starvation. Even so, a crime is a crime. However, plagiarism is the theft of intellectual property and arises from sheer laziness. What sort of mitigating factors could there be to justify that?

Even the "personal/famly circumstances" doesn't really hold water because Laura could have very easily approached the professor and asked for an extension. Instead, she approached Nate and tried to buy her grade. Inexcusable, no matter what the angle.

Quite frankly, it doesn't matter that Nate didn't know why Laura tried to plagiarise. The fact remains that she did, and that behaviour is always inexcusable.

NYLady said:
"As for Laura's case, I don't know what her situation really is, and I am only speaking about the transaction where she was made to believe by Nate, through LIES, that he would do the paper for the $75. Whatever she did after that, doesn't really matter. She was entrapped before he knew anything about her. So even if she were dying right now from cancer, Nate would have damaged her anyway, so your point is completely irrelevant."

9. Nate did write the paper for her, cited sources and all. He never made any promises about the quality of the paper, and he never promised not to rat her out. And quite frankly, I'm glad he did.

And I sincerely doubt that there's anything as dramatic as the cancer spin you've put on it.

All in all, I think Wetherby Pond said it best: If she doesn't learn from this, then she never will.

One more thing:

I am not defending Laura, nor am I saying that what she did is right. What she did is obviously wrong, and she should not get away with it.

My point is, even though what she did is wrong, what Nate did was much worse.

You say "Laura lied." But Nate lied too, and a LOT. He not only lied, but he faked, bothered to put together a paper, and sent it to Laura. That's being dishonest and crossing the line.

Laura bought the work, which is also dishonest.

But Nate DID the work. Doing the work for someone is, as well, dishonest.

Basically, my point is not "Nate is wrong, Laura is right", or "Nate is right, Laura is wrong."

Both Nate and Laura are wrong. But Nate is worse off than Lau