Thursday, September 27, 2007

The Sad Saga of Student McIgnorant, Our Pick For Favorite Fake Name Of the Week.

Hello mr. Professor,

Hope your semester is goin well. I'm writing this email in reference to my grade from your class in the summer, writing research. I've been trying to get in contact with you through phone so has Mr. Disciplinary Committee Chair but we have not recieved any calls back. Due to my failing grade in the class Mr.Committe Chair, and another staff member came to a decision from my administrative hearing. I have yet to recieve a final grade from the course. Without the rough draft being graded you explained to me that myself along with the other students were at a C grade level. Now because i failed the rough draft does that mean that i failed the class as a whole? Because from my understanding there were other papers and grades that were incorporated into the class. I need some clarity on this because i need a grade for my transcripts to be transfered over and i do not want to transfer the incorrect grade and plus i need this class to be able to move forward in my curriculum for school with a C or higher. I know that you are busy with your fall semeter classes as well as myself, but i would really appreciate if you can get this grade squared away as soon as possible. My apologies for not writing this sooner but i was under the assumption that everything was squared away. If its possible if you have time to respond back to myself and also to Mr. Committee Chair. Thank you

Student McIgnorant



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Discussion:

Mr. McIgnorant plagiarized on a graded draft of the paper that was the sole purpose for the summer course. The syllabus states that any plagiarism will result in immediate failure of the course. The university policies regarding plagiarism were worked into the actual course assignments in order to ensure all students knew what they were and the consequences for violating this first clause of the student Code of Conduct for the university. The student was also counseled as to the outcome when the plagiarism was discovered. The ONLY contact with the Disciplinary Committee Chair was when she informed me that the student admitted to the plagiarism and knew that he failed the class. The university has my official e-mail address and has access to my home phone number; no one has ever contacted me.

The sad part: this student claims he wants to be an English major in order to become a school teacher! Just look at his "professional" writing ability! He claimed he couldn't find anything on his original topic (which is either a lie or he's just an incompetent researcher), so he changed the topic without approval. He openly admitted the [second] topic used research he had done for another course, which is not allowed by official university policy (also discussed early in the semester). While he seemed quite pleasant and interested in learning how to do research, he's either just: 1) really dumb, 2) too lazy to do the work, or 3) both.

This is why so many of us need RYS.