In college courses, we are continually engaged with other people’s ideas: we read them in texts, hear them in lecture, discuss them in class, and incorporate them into our own writing. As a result, it is very important that we give credit where it is due. Plagiarism is using others’ ideas and words without clearly acknowledging the source of that information.
Plagiarized work used to be generated through frat house recycling efforts, purchased from local ghost writers, or simply copied from campus library reference materials-all clumsy efforts readily detectable by educators familiar with their course material. But the World Wide Web and other electronic resources have changed the game and left educators scrambling to keep abreast of plagiarists’ new methods.
Of course, this editorial would not exist without the invention of plagiarism. The above two paragraphs were cut and pasted from www.indian.edu and from www.asee.org, respectively. Yet, if we did not admit this fact, you would have never known. Many papers written by college student’s initially appear to be the original work of the students. However, many of these students also choose to cut and paste, rather than write an original work. But plagiarized words do not belong to us. So remember, “honesty is the best policy; but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.” Those words originated by Richard Whately, the archbishop of Dublin. Unless, of course, he plagiarized them.
Leadership: Cabrini’s strongest muscle
Cabrini may be a small school, but the opportunities for growth that it offers its students are far more abundant than colleges five times its size.
In large schools, students run the risk of becoming just another number. At Cabrini, however, each student has a chance to shine among their peers. Whether it’s joining a sports team, becoming a disc jockey or writing for Loquitur, you will be able to find something that makes you feel like you are playing a significant part within the group.
So the next time someone decides to complain that Cabrini isn’t D-1 or that there are not enough computer labs remind them of what they can make of what they have around them. Ask your friends at other colleges if they can do as much as you can, an easy guess would be that they can’t.
The editorials, viewpoints, opinions and letters to the editor published in Loquitur are the views of the student editorial board and the individual writers, not the entire student body or the faculty and administration.
