All morning I've been telling myself Don't be evil, a situation that rarely arises in my current milieu. You'll notice, for instance, that one rarely finds a comic-book-style supervillain brewing up a secret plan to destroy the world while working in the bowels of the English department. In my boring workaday world, opportunities to intentionally make someone's life miserable arise only rarely and aren't particularly tempting.
But after a week crammed full with meetings and paperwork and massive amounts of grading, it might feel positively cathartic to stand in front of a class and say something like this: "Before you take your exam, I want you to know that I've identified passages in some papers that were copied directly from online sources without attribution, which constitutes plagiarism. Those of you who did that need to see me as soon as you're done taking your midterm exam. You know who you are."
Yes, that would be truly evil, but on the whole I think I'd prefer to abstain, not least because I don't want a guilty conscience to burden my weekend with the grandkids.
But the question remains: if you were a student, when would you want to be told that your attempt at plagiarism had been uncovered? Before the midterm exam, which would be distracting, or after the exam, when everyone leaves campus for Spring Break and therefore won't be able to do anything about the situation for a week? Which would be less evil: to ruin a student's concentration on an exam or force the student to stew about the incident all through Spring Break?
Probably I'm overthinking this. Probably this situation, which to me seems so fraught with danger, will constitute a mere blip on the student's consciousness, a minor incident that will be quickly forgotten. Probably I should just calmly follow our campus procedures without any hint of vindictiveness or anger. This is me, sitting calmly in my office abstaining from evil. Somebody give me a gold star.
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