My Evening

[fabrisse]

I agreed to judge a poetry competition for the Center where I tutor.

One of the kids used five lines from an old (we're talking from my childhood) pop song in his poem. I asked him if he knew the song, and he said no.

I marked him down for his presentation because he forgot two lines of the written poem. The other judges marked him higher because he'd attempted to memorize his piece rather than reading it.

It was a shock to me when the other two judges put him in the top three. I made it clear that even if the plagiarism was unconscious, and I have done that myself (I admitted it as soon as I realized that I'd done so. It was embarrassing, but not telling the responsible people would have been worse.) his winning would be unacceptable.

One of the other judges got very upset with me. She accused me of having an agenda against the boy. Since our other two picks for the top three overlapped with each other and the third judge, I think we should just have dropped it there. It didn't get dropped. It got acrimonious. One of the worst comments she made was that the song in question was a white song (for the record, so was the judge) and that he therefore wouldn't have known it.

This isn't someone I usually work with. I couldn't let the kid win with a plagiarized poem. We ended up selecting one of the other top three. Both of them were original as best I can tell.

Afterward, one of the girls who acted as an emcee, came up to me and said she couldn't believe he'd flat out lied when I asked whether he knew the song. They'd learned it together in music class.

I'm heartsick that the kid is going to get into trouble, but I couldn't let him win even if the plagiarism were accidental. It was wrong.

Finding out that he lied made it worse. The other judge now hates me even more for having been right about his knowing the song.

He's usually a good kid, from my limited experience with him. I think it's better he learn this lesson now, particularly as several of the high schools we give recommendations for are honor code schools where something like this would be an automatic expulsion.

My cheeks got hot when I was arguing with the other judge. She couldn't understand my point at all. She was right that I had an agenda: it was that no one be rewarded for stealing another's words or ideas even if the theft were unconscious.

What would it teach him or the girl who was emceeing (or any of the kids, for that matter) if he'd won?

What would happen next week when he went to the regionals and someone else perhaps recognized the same words I did?

Why do I feel so awful about the other judge hating me?

Comments

[siderea]

Why do I feel so awful about the other judge hating me?

Because you now have an enemy? This person isn't going to suddenly realize, "Oh, well, she had a point; I guess I can see why she felt so strongly. I really shouldn't hold it against her."

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Yes. She made it very clear that she found it worse that I'd been right.

By the way, is this a J thing with me? It never occurred to me to grade him up for trying to memorize the piece. It never occurred to me anyone would think his quoting without attribution was acceptable -- even if it were accidental.

[sunspiral.livejournal.com]

She made it very clear that she found it worse that I'd been right
Oh noes, you were right and hurt her self-esteem! Let this be her problem.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I'll do my best. Letting go is not always my most salient trait.

[elleesttrois.livejournal.com]

Wow! What a crappy dilemma.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

[eanja]

Are these the 5th graders? From what I remember of being that age, that's just borderline old enough that you might not entirely get plagarism if you haven't run into it before, but you probably do, and you certainly need to have it explained as unacceptable right now if you don't. (I can see someone quoting one line that they didn't remember where they heard, but 5? How do you use 5 lines of something if you don't know it?)

Your other judge boggles me. I can see being sort of squishy and not wanting to kick the kid out if she thought it was accidental, but how can you actually reward someone for work they didn't do? That she a)would apparently rather be right that have the correct decision made in the competition, and b)seems to be assuming that the kid wasn't capable of plagarism versus ignorance based on his color makes me think she's someone who's opinion is worth pretty much squat.

That said, of course you're upset. It's always upsetting if someone dislikes you, and often the people who are most irrational about that are the ones who are also most obviously nasty, and that it's hardest to know how to respond to if you yourself are more reasonable and used to dealing w/ other reasonable people.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

She doesn't look squishy, but I'd suspected that of her from my one other contact with her when I was subbing.

The ultimate winner was the the one girl we all had in our top three. I don't see why we needed to argue about the boy. She's the one who kept saying, "He's in my top three and you have an agenda so we'll never decide." [/paraphrase]

I fully agree that 10 years old is old enough to have this explained.

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

You did the right thing.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[breeamal.livejournal.com]

Good for you! More and more people think that plagiarizing is ok these days and they need to be smacked down hard. Not just the kid (who doesn't need to smacked down that hard, but the Adult judge who thought it was ok. Besides the fact that she immediately jumped to the conclusion that you had an agenda says more about her than it does about you.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

It bewilders me that an adult could think it's OK. She talked about her own kids very briefly somewhere in the argument, so there may have been other factors in play.

I think the kid will learn his lesson. I hope the lesson isn't just "Stay away from Miss Fabi's excellent memory for song lyrics," but one can never be certain.

[thorbol.livejournal.com]

You did indeed do the right thing. I just hope you have an ally if you ever have to deal with that idiot judge.

Unconscious plagiarizing doesn't bother me much by itself, though of course one should never get an award for it when originality if at the heart of the award. As much stuff as clutters my brain, I'm sure there are times when an idea I think is mine actually came from somebody else. The moral failing arises when you fail to admit the borrowing when the truth of it is clear, and maybe that failing is about as bad as the outright lie the kid told you.

If he is indeed generally a good kid, I'd wonder how much or what kind of lying the adults in his life are teaching him is all right. He'd still have to face his own music, but it would help a hell of a lot with this sort of thing if lying weren't such a general practice.

I never lied much, but I'm sure glad I didn't end up at a school that could have kicked me out for just one, at least if it were a lie of the sort you wrote about. I'll bet a good number of the people who survive such places learn, not that they shouldn't lie, but that they should be smart enough to get away with it. Many probably end up in business and government.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I definitely think the intellectual dishonesty, even if accidental, is the larger of the kid's crimes.

I remember being scared of getting into trouble and coming out with some lies to cover myself when I was his age. I broke myself of it fairly quickly, but it was always lying from fear. I put him on the spot in front of about eighty people, so fear was probably a big part of his lie. While not excusable, it is forgivable and understandable.

The adult worries me more.

My honor code school definitely had kids who thought the point was to learn how to cheat so well no one could catch you. One of them was expelled a week before her graduation. Thing was, if you admitted your wrong-doing, the chances were good that the honor council -- which had more students than adults on it -- would arrange probation or another punishment rather than expulsion. If you lied about it, there was no mercy.

I had to sign every exam and long paper with the following: "I have neither given nor received help on this work, nor am I aware of any breach in the honor code." All our homework had a short form of it. Unless we were specifically cleared to study together, we weren't supposed to. In some ways it was harsh, but in others, I think it was the best thing that could happen to me.

Why do I feel so awful about the other judge hating me?

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's being unjustly accused. Happened to me the other evening at a dinner party - left me shaken and angry, unable to stop thinking about it until someone else who was there told me the accuser was an idiot. :-)

Re: Why do I feel so awful about the other judge hating me?

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Yes. I think you may be right.

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

I'm just echoing everyone else here, but I think you were right. Even if it was accidental, the kid needed to have it explained, and he shouldn't have won. You wouldn't have to beat the kid down in order to explain that copying work was not acceptable. I can't even imagine what the other judge was thinking about this.

Why do I feel so awful about the other judge hating me?

{{{hugs}}} I'd feel bad about it, too, even if I didn't really like her, so why would I care?

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

{{{hugs}}}

Thank you.