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In the end...: Generation ‘Y’ copycats
My second semester at the university was ending and there was a mad rush to submit reports, projects, portfolios and what not. Several sleepless nights later, I managed to turn in everything on time but before doing that, curiosity got the better of me and I decided to go through some of my batchmates’ work. I was in for a rude shock.
Their reports seemed eerily familiar. Something was definitely amiss and it was not just the caffeine talking. Then it hit me — their reports were nothing more than a creative cut-and-paste job. In fact, I had used some of the material that they had so generously used (read copied) as a source of reference in my report.
Confrontation didn’t really help. “Why?” I sputtered, visibly bewildered. “Why would you copy it just like that?”
“Well it did take a lot of hard work, you know. Finding all this material and then putting it together is not really easy so it is my work if you think about it. Besides, who is going to find out? There are so many things online,” was the incredulous reply. I was speechless.
The internet may be the next best thing to sliced bread, but as with most other things, there is more to it than what meets the eye. Downloading MP3s, games and even books is as easy as boiling water, which means thieves are a dime a dozen. This, of course, means that plagiarism is insufferably convenient, particularly for those who do not have a creative bone in their body, or who are simply too lazy to be original. Students ultimately stand to gain a lot from it because, well, let’s face it, there is no real system in place to curb this problem.
I mean, have you heard of a Pakistani website that checks for plagiarized material in term papers and reports quite like the way it is done abroad? Turnitin. com is a fine example of such a website. With its offices in California, the creators say their mission is “to stop the spread of internet plagiarism and promote new technologies in education”. In fact, students across the United States and Canada are routinely required to ‘turn in’ their papers to this website for verification, much to their chagrin, of course.
Here, however, it is an altogether different story. The lack of such websites in Pakistan makes it relatively easier for students to plagiarize. In fact, they do not have to worry at all because there are no such websites.
Of course, the fact that there are countless websites that have been created with the specific purpose of ‘assisting’ you with reports only makes matters worse. While websites like School Sucks
So popular is this method of acquiring term papers and reports that this is turning into a rapidly growing business in Pakistan. “Most of these US-based term paper writing firms outsource to Pakistan and India because labour is cheap here,” says the owner of a very prestigious term paper writing firm in Karachi, who chose to remain anonymous.
“We have full-time writers who write for us the year round,” he explains. It is during the busy months (April-June and October-December) that he assigns work to freelance writers and gives them a deadline. Failure to meet it can lead to a deduction in their wages.
Interestingly enough, these writers are paid anywhere between Rs150-300 per page. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out the glaring difference between the payments made abroad and those that are made here. “A lot of our freelancers also end up plagiarizing which is a real problem for us,” the businessman adds.
This is not surprising, considering that a lot of these young writers are students who would much rather be doing other people’s work (and plagiarizing when needed) instead of on their own assignments. They often end up doing a hack job on their own papers.
“Copying too requires intelligence,” says Rabia, a student at Greenwich University. “You can’t just cut and paste entirely from a website and expect no one to find out. If your teacher is aware that you don’t write well and suddenly you turn in an impeccable paper, that is likely to cause suspicion.” Rabia points out that the trick is to make the same mistakes that one would usually make and use different material from different sites so that it becomes a lot harder to detect any signs of plagiarism.
“We have all plagiarized at some point at university,” admits Zeeshan, a student of computer science at Iqra University. “Some of us say it openly, others don’t. Look, we are not writers or anything, okay? And we have to pass, so we do what we have to do,” is his remorseless defence.
Even so, plagiarizing is inexcusable regardless of what the circumstances are. Regrettably, the internet has considerably eased up the cut-and-paste process with little or no implications. If and when they are caught, students make up inane excuses like, “this is was the reference material I was using for my assignment and submitted it by mistake”, “I forgot to put in the quotation marks”, “Someone sabotaged my assignment” or the classic “I didn’t do it. Someone copied my work and turned it in”.
Clearly, these next generation copycats have figured out the dos and don’ts of copying. “The best of times” for them, as Charles Dickens once said. The worst, however, is yet to come.
The writer works as a sub-editor for Dawn
