By mark e. button

One wonders what prompted such an unfortunate opinion column as the one by Emma Gross published in The Salt Lake Tribune last Sunday ("Clashing values over what cheating is").

Professor Gross may have a point in calling upon educators and administrators to "adapt their ideas about moral behavior in ways that are conducive to learning." For example, most public schools no longer enforce Protestant Christianity in the classroom, or demand silent deference to teachers on pain of corporal punishment.

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Should these kinds of changes in moral values and the ethical systems that undergird them also encourage us to change the way we think about cases of plagiarism? In stark contrast to Gross, a professor at the University of Utah’s College of Social Work, our answer — from teachers and students alike — should be an emphatic no.

To revise our standards about plagiarism would not only undermine the intellectual integrity of our universities and public schools, it would also serve to erode the core mission of our institutions of learning: to cultivate students who can reason, write and argue for themselves. My fifth-grade daughter knows the importance of proper attribution in her writing, so plagiarism is hardly the "far-fetched" concept that Gross claims.

As someone who has dealt with his fair share of plagiarism cases over the years, my concern about Gross’ opinion column is not only that it runs counter to existing University of Utah policy and is accordingly at odds with minimum expectations for ethical conduct in academic pursuits at almost all educational levels, but that the paltry rationalizations that she proffers might find their way into the exculpatory claims of those who are charged with presenting the work of others as their own.

This would be the biggest disservice of all. For if arguments like Gross’ prove convincing it would not only suggest that the university should revise its ethical standards to fit claims of "expediency and opportunity" rather than serve as an institution that exists to challenge these preferences with "abstract principles" like honesty, integrity and responsibility, but also that the U. need no longer care about whether students can reason or think on their own.

Gross may be right to suggest that schools are in need of more "meaningful" and "appropriate" responses to plagiarism, but her only suggestion along these lines is that students should have the opportunity to explain their actions (which is already provided for in the Code of Student Rights and Responsibilities) and that "teachers should be willing to consider alternative perspectives on plagiarism."

What does it mean to consider "alternative perspectives" on attempts to gain academic credit and public esteem for ideas that are not one’s own? Perhaps this means bringing in the perspective of those individuals whose words or creative products have been taken without attribution. Since many of these sources are no longer among the living, the only "alternative perspectives" of relevance are the various explanations by students of why they succumbed to this expediency.

In my experience it has been a testimony to the moral bearing of the majority of students charged with plagiarism that they know the difference between an explanation and a moral justification. In accepting responsibility for their mistakes they have honored the norms of intellectual honesty and integrity even in the breach, rather than seeking to lower these values to the level of their all-too-human lapses.

Rather than "stymie growth," as Gross asserts, the observation and defense of these ethical standards — of far older provenance than the 19th century — is a basic precondition for both intellectual and moral growth.

Mark E. Button is an associate professor of political science at the University of Utah.