I'm so sorry, and I know how you feel. My summer students are just dead weight, a bunch of barely animated meat, unresponsive and weary. Every day is a struggle.
And it always confuses me how much energy and labor go into elaborate forms of cheating.
Oh, I'm so sorry. That stinks.
Ugh - that sucks! 
Oh suck.
This is so sad and so common.
I agree with you on never being able to look at them without suspicion and loathing. It's poisonous.
Yeah, it is just so effing demoralizing when they do that.
I'm terrified that the first class I teach on my own (this fall) will include a plagiarist...for all the reasons you describe.
You should soooo print that out and give it to them, minus the I hate you part (we don't want to upset the bosses)...
No, do not print that out and give it to them. Do not put on your blog or anywhere else any information that could suggest specifically whom you're talking about with this entry. You open yourself up to uncessesary legal bullshit by doing that.
Frankly, as much as this sucks, you'll learn not to care as the years go by. Either you'll become slightly more efficient at reporting these kids, or--more likely--you'll learn to erode your standards just as so many profs before you have. Giving them another chance, giving them a not-quite failing grade, just to get them out of your hair, it's a slippery slope.
I've said it before, but as a student there is nothing that enraged me more than students cheating. It cheapens what the good students are doing, it cheapens all the work of the professors, and it disrobes the entire academic system which is supposed to be based on curiosity, intrigue and trust. Instead, it becomes something more akin to uncaring laziness. That isn't what education is supposed to be.
I thank the professors who don't turn the other cheek; there are too many who would rather ignore it.
It doesn't get easier ... you just get used to it. And if you're me, you just stop giving as much take-home exam work. Sorry about it, though. They really just don't get it.
The semester when I had six students plagiarize their research papers (with one of those same students then following up by plagiarizing the take-home part of the exam) was the most demoralizing term I've had since I started teaching. The next term, my school subscribed to Turnitin.com services, which has made such a difference. I now have every single student turn in every single piece of take-home writing to Turnitin.com, which then prints out an "originality report" for each piece. It takes a few minutes to look through each originality report, but nothing like the time I used to spend doing Google searches for phrases from students' papers. And because students know that we're using this system, the number of students plagiarizing has dropped dramatically.
And the effect of all of this "plagiarism prevention" (as Turnitin.com styles itself) is exactly the sort of things you point out: it builds trust in the classroom, I no longer look at students with suspicion, I don't build up resentment because of students trying to take advantage of my trust, etc. All of which is to suggest that maybe you could convince your school to sign up for the program; apparently it's really not that much money, and the time and money it saves administratively in not having to follow up on plagiarism cases must be significant.
I've been there, it doesn't get that much easier, turnitin.com does make the finding of plagiarism less time-consuming, and even knowing that you have access to Google and turnitin.com doesn't necessarily help.
But we're with you all the way with this.
Rather than taking this so personally, you might consider ways of preventing plagiarism. A few students do it because they are dishonest, but many, if not most, do it because they do not know how to succeed without it. They feel ill-equipped and fear failing.
You can and should review your practices to see how you can encourage students to keep up, help them prepare for what will be asked of them (e.g., ungraded practice essays done in class), refer them to a campus writing center, reduce their anxiety levels and sense of desperation about doing the work independently, etc. Students may not have study skills and test-taking skills, and it is our job to teach them, not hate them when they fail.
I work with non-native speakers who come from countries where plagiarism is not defined the way it is in the US. This may not apply to your exam, but some cases of plagiarism are truly misunderstandings, not intentional cheating. You can only know what was intended by talking with the student involved.
My pet peeve is professors who are bitter and cynical about their students. Preventing that kind of negative attitude requires broadening the definition of what you are there to teach. We all complain about students and tell stories about their mistakes, but when you start hating them (for plagiarism, ignorance, laziness, lack of interest in your field, immaturity, etc.) you should seriously consider a different career, in my opinion. How can you be helpful to a student who has plagiarized if you consider it a deliberate affront against you instead of an ineffective coping response they have applied to a situation they feel unequipped to handle?
Nancy, I'm going to assume you're not a regular reader here because I don't recall seeing your comments and if you were a regular you would know that Mel is far from bitter and cycnical about her students -- which is your implication here.
I, for one, think it is great that Mel is open and honest with how she feels about this issue, that she went and checked the student's past work to see if the student was capable, and that she blogged it out rather than letting the irritation seethe inside. Sometimes it helps to let it out.
Just knowing the little bit that I know about Mel from conversing with her online during the last year, I suspect she will follow the university policy for plagiarism and that she will not actually treat the student with hatred. Plagiarism is upsetting and a pain to deal with. If you ignore it, the student is likely to do it again. If you deal with it, you have to go through some really unpleasant processes and it sucks up a lot of time. Mel's upset. That's pretty normal.
Might I recommend to you in the future, Nancy, that before you respond to someone's upset rant by implying they are bitter, cynical, and should consider a different career you should determine whether or not you have a sense of context for making those statements or if they are based on an isolated emotional moment. Your first three paragraphs might be considered informative. That last paragraph just seems really unnecessary to me.
Hear, hear, profgrrrrl.
What about this one: "My summer students are just dead weight, a bunch of barely animated meat, unresponsive and weary..."
Feelings come from thoughts. You wouldn't feel the way you guys have described (sad, it sucks, demoralized) if you reframed plagiarism as important feedback about teaching/learning instead of a betrayal of trust.
Students pick up on your unexpressed attitudes. If a teacher feels like the students are bad it will leak out in small ways (nonverbal behavior, energy level, patience, choice of words), the students will not respond positively and the situation will deteriorate. Mel herself described this.
As a teacher, you have to deal with lots of unpleasant situations with students -- they fail exams, get sick and have life crises, skip classes and don't read the text, misunderstand instructions, they want extensions and complain about things, etc. Plagiarism is no different than the rest of the stuff that goes with the job. If a person can't deal with the unpleasantness in a constructive way, I DO think they belong in a different field.
I obviously don't know Mel or any of the rest of you, and you may all be wonderful teachers (though the wonderful teachers I know don't talk like this). I believe badmouthing of students is disrespectful and has no place among those committed to their profession. I find it more demoralizing than anything the students do because it disrespects the aspirations of students who are struggling for a better life, the sacrifices they frequently make to be in school, and the ideals about how education can positively transform society. This is important to me and this makes anything the students dish out worth it, year in and year out. Whatever their progress, it will enrich their lives, even those who have plagiarized and been caught. Students don't exist to validate us by doing well -- they exist so that we can change them for the better. How can you do that if you disrespect them?
I work at an institution that emphasizes quality teaching and doesn't tenure anyone without it. If someone made these sorts of remarks, even in private, it would be regarded as a sign that the person was struggling and perhaps ineffective in their classroom. The faculty would be supportive by offering concrete tips for dealing with the problem, not agreement that those pesky students are rotten brats, as seems to have occurred here. I can't see the point of validating a counterproductive and self-defeating attitude about how students ought to be, no matter who expresses it. You take the students as they are and teach to their needs, whatever they may be, including the need to be taught that plagiarism is unacceptable.
I have as much right to an opinion here as anyone, and taking my comments as some sort of personal attack is about as ridiculous as taking plagiarism personally (e.g., "how stupid do they think we are?"), in my opinion.
If Mel has been teaching 15 years, she doesn't need to be told anything I said in my so-called instructive paragraphs. They are obvious. People who are burned out and feel negative about their students shouldn't be in the field -- they do damage and I stand by what I said about them. Despite being young adults, students can be vulnerable and professors can affect them for good or ill -- if we couldn't, there would be no effectiveness to what we do. That is a responsibility that must be taken seriously. Defensiveness also has no place in the classroom. This post is intended as a generality, not a comment on Mel's life or a criticism of anyone else's teaching ability -- something I can obviously know nothing about.
Verbose generalities tend to belong as a post on one's own blog, with a trackback or other type of link to the post which stirred up the necessity to write such things.
A lecture, not an actual discussion which includes the author of the post to which the comments are attached, is a fairly trollish behavior.
Well, Nancy, since you just quoted me, I guess I'm compelled to comment on my remark and give you a little context. I've been teaching for 13 years. And I've consistently gotten among the highest student evaluations wherever I've taught (everywhere from community colleges to R1s). And I've taught special populations (e.g., at-risk students or other special needs groups). And I love teaching. And the class I'm commenting on is my bread-and-butter class, the one that scores of students take each semester based on the recommendations of their peers. Several institutional decisions this summer, coupled with a rare population of students without any talkers (you can usually count on a few engaged personalities to prime some of the others), has left me with a situation in which no one is responsive. I don't even get a change of facial expression from members of this group. They all look extremely tired and disengaged--and nothing I do makes a difference (and I do subscribe to a mixed method approach in order to maximize learning opportunities across learning styles). So, my comment is descriptive of the group's overall comportment in the classroom, not evaluative of their being. I hardly doubt these very students, or any outside observer for that matter, would describe the situation much differently.
I do want to add a pedagogical tenet that I hold near and dear to my heart as a teacher. The responsibility for learning does not fall on the teacher, but on the student. The role of the teacher is to construct an atmosphere that provides the conditions for the possibility of learning. The teacher can then be guide, storyteller, sage, adjudicant, expert, entertainer, facilitator, or whatever other role that the situation calls for. The one thing a teacher can't be, though, is a magician who makes learning happen. If you think you are a magician, you are probably just an illusionist.
Oooh, dr.m, great last line - I completely agree.
Nancy is right that plagiarism can be an example of feedback about teaching and what students need to learn. But you know what? Sometimes it's not. Sometimes you've made absolutely crystal clear exactly what plagiarism is and why it's wrong, and some students do it anyway. Nancy herself admits that some are just dishonest.
The problem here is that Nancy is extrapolating from one post - which is in fact addressed to one specific student and assuming that this means that Mel is bitter or negative about students, in general. Seems to be a problem with reading closely.
FWIW, I also work at an institution that values quality teaching and doesn't tenure anyone without it. And I have also heard excellent teachers make comments very like Mel's.
What New Kid and Profgrrrrl said.
Sorry to hear about this, Mel. (Coming to this rather late.)
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