M
ETHODIST
C
OLLEGE
Pride
Fayetteville, NC
Vol. XXXV, No. 4
Wednesday, October 15, 1997
Internet papers not worth much (and it’s still cheating)
By Lisa Bertagnoli short for people’s papers) to the defi- ^ .
By Lisa Bertagnoli
College Press Service
Let’s say one evening
you’re innocently surfing the ‘Net.
By sheer accident you mistype a word
and you end up at a site called “evil
house of cheat.”
(Honest, you meant to type
“chat.”) Curious, you double-click on
the word “papers,” then on “history.”
After all, that Civil War 20-page paper
is due next week, and you haven’t
written word one.
Then, like a meadow in
spring, a list of papers blossoms be
fore you, on classic topics such as
wars, presidents and foreign policy.
And, what’s this you see? They’re
free for the downloading. You only
have to promise not to pass the paper
off as your own.
This is not a dream, this is
not a fantasy. This is cheating in the
Information Age. Of course, it’s not
new; term paper mills have flourished
in college towns and in the classifieds
of Rolling Stone for decades. But on
line cheating is cheaper (free!), easier
(just download away) and faster (no
more waiting anxiously by the mail
box).
And it’s plentiful, too: Aca
demics who have made it their busi
ness to follow these sites say any
where from 40 to 70 exist, with names
ranging from the cheeky (oppapers.
short for people’s papers) to the defi
ant (schoolsucks).
Contrary to the olden days,
where not everybody had $100 to
spend on a paper, nearly everybody
on college campuses has access to a
computer, and thus, the Internet and
its bounty of papers.
While the cheating game
might have changed, the penalties are
still the same.
Punishment for cheaters and
plagiarizers ranges from failing the
course or paper to suspension or ex
pulsion at Indiana University-
Bloomington; at Stephens College,
Columbia, Mo., cheaters can fail a
class or have their degree revoked.
Harvard University students caught
cheating take a year’s “vacation” from
school. At U.S. military academies,
cheating means automatic expulsion.
On-line Libraries?
For students who wouldn’t
dream of cheating (you only cheat
yourself, right?), one question should
pop into mind: How can these exist?
Easy, says Kenny Sahr, who launched
a term-paper site called schoolsucks
in September 1996. “All this is a li
brary,” says Sahr of the term papers
visitors can access by clicking on an
image of “Thinker” statue. Sahr
doesn't charge for the papers, which
I looked at some of the sites and
thought the term papers in my area
were pretty poor
-University of Illinois professor
Elizabeth Pleck
are donated to the tune of 20 a day by
students around the globe.
According to Sahr, the
schoolsucks library is a lot more popu
lar than the one on campus. The site
gets about 20,000 hits a day, and half
of those visitors leave with a paper,
he says. And in case you’re thinking
the visitors are from backwater
schools you’ve never heard of, think
again: One week in September, the
Top 10 list of visitors to the
schoolsucks hailed from solid aca
demic schools such as UCLA, Uni
versity of Texas-Austin, Washington
State, Penn State and Rice University.
Of course there are those
who would beg to differ with Sahr’s
description of his site as an on-line
library, beginning with state legisla
tures. Almost every state has a law
Southern Writers Symposium
higlilights work of Fred Chappell
By Alexandra Nulle Dummer
Staff Writer
The 13th annual Southern
Writers Symposium “exceeded expec
tations” according to director Dr.
Mary Wheeling White.
The symposium, held Sept.
26-27, was founded by Dr. Sue
Kimball, professor emerita of English,
13 years ago. This year, however, Dr.
White put the symposium together
with a lot of hard work, and will do the
same next year.
She said the purpose of the
symposium is to “celebrate Southern
literature by presenting interpretations
of the author’s literature and memoirs
of him.”
This year’s featured author
was Fred Chappell, an English pro
fessor from UNC-Greensboro. Fifty-
five attendants from around the coun
try came to participate, and many of
them were professors and Chappell’s
former students. The symposium
“cultivated a friendly, atmosphere
rather than a stern academic atmo
sphere,” White said.
Chappell was invited by
White one year ago to be the guest
speaker and was able to fit Methodist
College into his busy schedule of
book tours and events. “Several times
he expressed his gratitude to Presi-
Chappell said the
most important as
pect of writing is “to
know how
you want
the reader
to feel
when they
read the last
sentence and close
the book.”
dent and Mrs. Hendricks and Dr.
Christian (head of the English Depart
ment) for inviting him and making the
weekend possible,” said White.
Chappell said he agrees with
Robert Frost’s saying, “Anyone who
teaches and writes cheats his stu
dents.” As professor of English,
Chappell says he “observed students
in a different way and listened to them
carefully.” This helped him to use the
subject of teaching in his books.
Chappell’s favorite class to teach was
freshman composition. “I worked
harder than with any other [class] and
got more satisfaction seeing the
change from the beginning to the end
of the semester,” he said. And
Chappell was not afraid to say he
hadn’t always been a great teacher,
but he did say, “I’ve learned a lot more
than I ever taught.”
Chappell has written many
novels and poems, of which $600
worth were purchased during the
weekend. When describing the dif
ference between writing poetry and
fiction, Chappell said, “Poetry is more
like walking through the woods...and
fiction is like riding a bicycle.” Inspi
ration sometimes works and some
times it doesn’t. He added, “I’ve been
inspired, and now I’m sort of living
on the interest.”
Chappell said that creating
material for a story comes through ob
serving people and incidents. “I start
out just generally telling a story and
then other stories are born amoeba
like through conversations (of the
character) or memories,” he said. The
important part in writing a good book,
Chappell says, is “to know how you
want the reader to feel when they read
the last sentence and close the book.”
Chappell closed his informal
question/answer session of “Chat
and Backchat, Sass and Backsass” by
saying, “It’s been the happiest exist
ence anyone could wish for. So happy
in fact, I sometimes feel guilty.”
College costs continue upward trend
By Colleen De Baise
College Press Service
The cost of college contin
ues to go up nationally, outpacing
inflation.
The average tuition at a state
college or university is $3,000 a year.
It’s $ 13,000 at a private school. Those
costs are about five percent higher-
triple the inflation rate—than a year
ago, said the College Board, which is
sued its annual college cost survey
Sept. 24.
According to the College
Board, most students are paying on
average anywhere from $36 to $670
more than they did for last year’s tu
ition.
But that’s just the begin
ning. Most colleges also raised room
and board costs, which are up as
much as five percent from last year.
Fees rose as much as four percent at
two-year colleges.
When it comes to paying for
college, the news is mixed. A record
amount of financial aid-about $55 bil
lion—was available to students last
year, up 5.4 percent from the year be
fore, the College Board said.
Most of the increase, how
ever, was in the foim of loans rather
than grants, and most of the new bor
rowing was unsubsidized. That means
more and more students are being
forced to take out loans to finance
their education, which they must re
pay after graduation.
Still, College Board Presi
dent Donald M. Stewart said even
against plagiarism or cheating.
California’s law lets site operators off
the hook if they make users sign a
disclaimer saying they won’t present
the paper as their own work. Texas’s
law, which took effect Sept. 1, is a little
stricter, punishing those who profit
from the sale or distribution of “aca
demic products” meant to fulfill an
academic requirement.
Sahr, who is 26, says the
laws don’t apply to him for several
reasons. His disclaimer, for one, spe
cifically tells students to use the pa
pers for ideas, resources, even bibli
ographies, but not as wholesale term
papers. Second, he says he doesn't
profit from the sale of papers, but
makes money from selling ad space
on the site. And finally, Sahr denies
the papers are “academic products.”
Friends and Enemies
Frankly speaking, the sites
bug some educators. (That may be
why two who keep lists of all the sites
which collect term papers didn’t re
spond to College Press’s request for
copies of it; they don't want them fall
ing into the wrong hands.) An out
spoken critic of the sites is James Tay
lor, vice president of academic affairs
at South Plains College, a two-year
school in Levelland, Texas. Taylor
says it’s not cheating or plagiarism
that bothers him, but the fact that the
presence of such papers gets in the
way of the education process. “We’re
supposed to teach students how to
write,” he says, “and these papers in
terfere with that.”
At the other end are profes
sors such as Elizabeth Pleck, associ
ate professor of family studies and
history at the University of lllinois-
Urbana/Champaign.
“I looked at some of the sites
and thought the term papers in my
area were pretty poor,” says Pleck.
She’s not concerned about having a
crafty student pull the wool over her
eyes. “You know when a paper isn’t
(a student’s) by the way it is written,”
she says.
Still other teachers worry
that students view the Internet as a
See Internet Cheating, page 2
Letters! He gets letters!
Satisfied customers often
e-mail their thanks and praise to
schoolsucks founder Kenny Sahr,
who launched an Internet site from
which students can download term
papers free of charge.
Sahr says he’s saving the
best messages for a book he plans
to write someday. Here’s a sampler,
warts and all:
Your page rocks...having
read your site about what the press
thinks i finally got some motivation
and have mailed a couple major
newspapers around melbourne
australia about your unmoral site
for you...cool huh!”
“hey man, thanks for put
ting up this site, this has gotta be
the best thing anyone has ever done
for us students in history, you should
also start a donation drive to help
support and update school sucks, I
know several peopld who would
very happily and generously donate
money for a cause like this... ”
I'm writing to comment
you and yours on your construction
of School Sucks... it is very done and
a help to all. May it prosper.
'I I
m
mmA
m ^ ^
■■
Senior forward Kemal Kansu currently ranks second on the Monarchs’ squad in scoring with
seven goals and leads in assists with seven. The Monarchs are currently 6-4 overall, and are 1-
1 in the DIAC. (Photo by Scott Galayde)
though most students and their fami
lies worry about the price of educa
tion, “for most Americans, college is
still accessible—especially in the light
of financial aid currently available.”
Steward noted that a major
ity of all students at four-year colleges
pay less than $4,000 per year for tu
ition and fees.
“Focusing too much on the
highest-priced institutions overstates
the problem and unduly alarms the
public,” he said. “The United States
continues to extend higher education
opportunities to a larger percent of
the population than any country in
the world.
Half of all college students
receive some type of financial aid, of
ten a combination of grants or schol
arships, loans, work-study from fed
eral, state and private programs, said
John Joyce, a manager at College
Scholarship Service, the financial aid
arm of the College Board.
“Focusing on ‘sticker price’
or allowing ‘sticker shock’ to influ
ence college choice will limit oppor
tunities that are out there for stu
dents,” he said.
In contrast to loan aid, fed
eral grant money has grown only
slightly in the past decade. Loans
now make up about 60 percent of all
aid, compared to slightly more than
40 percent in 1980-81.
In particular, the purchasing
power of the Pell Grant, available to
the neediest students, has dropped
See TUITION, page 2
INSIDE
Trickster Tales brings lots of little visitors
to campus -page 2
Internet users add to telephone line jams
--page 2
Soccer player exceeds others’ expectations
-page 3
Don’t sweat the small stuff; others have it
a lot tougher -page 4