Cheaters never win (against me!)

Recently, my students had to turn in a one-page paper covering a particular topic related to the class. Unfortunately, one of my students decided to blatantly copy from two sources without any citations.

This isn't the first time that plagiarism has been an issue for one of my undergrads. My first year here, four out of 100 of my students failed another general science class because they improperly cited sources. In their case, each had directly taken text out of a source and then cited it, but omitted the quotation marks. All claimed that they were taught that that was okay in high school.

Now freshmen I can sort of understand. But upper level students? The problem with LargeU (and likely many other "R1" type schools) is that the science undergrads often leave their humanities courses (not that they have to take that many) until their last two semesters, and the science classes have very few, if any, written assignments--even some of the laboratory courses don't require written lab reports!

Coming from TinyCollege, which is a little-known liberal arts school, I find this shocking. Even my crappy science courses at TinyCollege required various written reports, summaries of current literature, etc. Hell, the tests often had short answer / essay questions requiring a demonstration of actual thought!

At any rate, I took this recent plagiarism issue as an opportunity to meet with the student and go over proper citations, etc. I could have filed paperwork to get a note in his file, fail him, etc., but I think the tears that welled in his eyes (and came very close to spilling over...UGH!) throughout our 30 minute meeting was punishment enough.


Is plagiarism an issue at your school? Do you think science majors get enough experience writing at these research institutions, that supposedly have stronger science programs than small liberal arts schools?

If you jaywalk, they will build

Yet another puzzling thing about LargeU that I will never understand (but love): if you jaywalk, you will get a ticket. If you and all your friends jaywalk repeatedly in the same location, "they" will simply paint a new crosswalk.

Over the last few months, random crosswalks have appeared all over LargeU campus, at seemingly random, non-intersection locations. While I'm happy to not be at a ticket risk when dashing between buildings, it does pose a bit of a hazard. LargeU is not a closed campus; in fact, most of the campus is criss-crossed by heavily traveled roads, requiring LargeU undergrads to jump in front of traffic to get to their physics lab.

But...did you know that the crosswalks are more than just bars of paint on the road? No, they are so much more than paint. LargeU crosswalks are actually magic bubbles that protect one from an approaching vehicle. Well, at least that's what you would think if you drove through campus, what with all the undergrads running through crosswalks without pausing....and don't get me started on the bikes.

So these new crosswalks are actually more of a hazard than a help because drivers aren't aware of them (indeed, there are no "yield to pedestrian" signs or other marks, making the white lines extremely hard to see at night), yet undergrads just assume that cars and buses will stop.

At TinyCollege, there was no pedestrian problem because the campus was closed to through traffic. I know it's impractical to shut down all LargeU roads, but surely there is a better solution than just playing "miss-the-undergrad" every time I drive to campus?

Gimme, gimme more vacation!

There is one thing about LargeU undergrads that I will never understand (okay, so there are MANY things about LargeU undergrads that I will probably never understand, but let's just take one at a time).

LargeU students have a whole week off for Thanksgiving. A week. Seven days.

Yet most LargeU students feel entitled to take off the Friday (as in tomorrow) off as well, like this is a mandated travel day (I should point out that most live within three hours of LargeUtown, so it's not like they have to compensate for flying time or anything). In fact, they act completely shocked if you decide to have class at all. You can't even THINK about having homework due, a quiz, or, God forbid, an exam.

Back when I was an undergrad at TinyCollege, we only got Thanksgiving Day and Friday off. Think I ever made the 12 hour drive home? No way. Did some of my friends skip their afternoon classes on Wednesday to fly home? Sure.

But a week? A freakin' week?? If they had two weeks off, there would probably still be LargeU students skipping classes.


Oh, and I should mention (I think some of you will find this amusing) that after this week's only slightly unfair exam, Prof. Teacher decided to cancel class this Friday. Sheesh.


How about at your school? Do undergrads expect classes to be cancelled to facilitate their holiday plans?