plagiarism by Americans

Let me preface these remarks by saying: I'm out of my field. Yes, I teach plagiarism every day- but that's to people who don't have a clue what it is, or even why it's wrong. They have seen clearly, lately, at least that it has profound consequences. The ongoing controversy here has several results, but the best of them, for me anyway, is probably that my own students now believe me when I say it can come back and bite them, years later, and it will probably be just as illegal then as it is now.

But, having now read more about this case, and having heard people talking about it for over a week, I'm left with more questions.

1. "Nobody on my committee told me I had to go and put quotes up there," he said, or something like that- one could get through the American school system and not know that? Are we talking about the same thing? A friend of mine at the pool said: "It's plagiarism...there's nothing to discuss." I've always started from the assumption that my students didn't know that they had to quote AND attribute...but I'm not sure I can use that assumption here. Is that possible? Is it possible to not know that you have to do either??? What were those little names doing in those parentheses, anyway?

2. 29 out of 30 of the cases were in the 41-page lit review? (I hope I'm getting my facts right)...this alone has many profound consequences, many of which I haven't quite worked out. The most important being, maybe he didn't read the lit.

3. The dissertation was about education of the "gifted child"...Having children who have been beneficiaries, victims and survivors of the "gifted education program" I'd like to say that singling out children from the k-12 pack and labelling them one way or the other is no small deal, with no small consequences....and I count on our education system, and the body of research that supports it- to be doing the right thing. So here are a few questions: did the main dissertation contribute to the field? If so, in what way? If he copied old lit reviews, or copied old material, does that mean he was counting on someone else, basically, to do the background research? Because he was in a hurry?

4. Assuming that they circle the wagons, and he stays, what happens? Can they argue that they treated C. Dussold fairly? In court? Can SIUC be led with strength and integrity? It seems to me that with time this can only get worse, mostly for SIUC. If we're going to be in the vanguard, let's not be in the vanguard of places where everything, right down to our vision, is second-hand goods...