For some students, the hallowed halls of higher education provide a rich environment for intellectual stimulation and enlightenment.
But for some professors, the intellectually enriched environment seems to sometimes produce a virtual guidebook on “how not to plagiarize,” as well as offering up some timeless examples of the confused and humorous thoughts about the world filling the heads of some college students.
Anders Henriksson, a retired professor, compiled some imaginative efforts of students through a selection from history essays by higher education students across the nation.
His book, Non Campus Mentis, a play on the Latin phrase “non compos mentis,” which means “not of sound mind, memory or understanding” offers the collaborative efforts of students to explain world history.
One college student, attempting to explain the relationship between slavery and the American Civil War during a final, wrote, “The major cause of the Civil War is when slavery spread its ugly testicles across the West.”
Another student offered a misguided summary of the life of Julius Caesar. “Caesar inspired his men by stating: I came, I saw, I went. When he was assassinated, he reportedly said Me Too Brutus!”
While the book offers countless goofs from across the nation, professors at The University of Memphis offered some of their own independent examples of students suffering from mental block, and numerous examples of inventive and misguided attempts at plagiarism.
Jack Hurley, the chair of the history department at The U of M, offered one of the more classic examples of blatant plagiarism.
Hurley said he once had a student who turned in a paper plagiarizing from a book Hurley had authored. “The student handed me my words back,” Hurley said.
Journalism Professor David Arant also has been confronted with “flattering” forms of plagiarism.
Arant said he assigns a project to write an in-depth article about a media law case each semester. He said he once had a student who turned in a paper that seemed to be too good.
“It sounded really familiar,” said Arant, who said the paper sounded like something he would have written.
“As it turns out, I did,” Arant said.
According to Arant, he had published the article using his first name, while he now goes by his middle name. He said that the student must have been too embarrassed to come back to class.
Candice Justice, a journalism professor at The U of M, told of a more covert attempt to plagiarize.
Justice said that she gave an assignment requiring her students to interview someone in the media.
One student turned in the assignment after apparently interviewing a reporter at a television station in Oxford, Miss.
“There is no television station in Oxford,” Justice said.
Linguistics professor Cynthia Bernstein, who has taught freshman English classes at The U of M, said she had one student who completely fabricated the figures and facts in a paper about the U.S. and Soviet Union’s arms race.
“He said that his source was a little out-of-date,” Bernstein said. “So he said he just made them up.”
English Professor Danielle Sullivan said that one A-student made a big mistake by having her boyfriend write her final paper for her. The boyfriend plagiarized the paper he wrote for her, and Sullivan said she noticed right away. The student had double plagiarized.
“She failed the class,” Sullivan said.
Other screw-ups seem to be rooted in technological advancements.
English professor John Bensko had a student who wrote a description of the city of Minneapolis, who in a last-minute frenzy accidentally let the spell checker change the word “Minneapolis” to “menopause.”
One of the most common mistakes in papers are grammatical.
Psychology professor Bill Dwyer said that horrible grammar is the crippling error he sees most often in final papers.
“Some papers are written at what seems like a 4th or 5th grade level,” Dwyer said, and added that some sentences were incoherent.
“I’m astounded that some high school gave them a diploma,” Dwyer said.
