Plagiarism

Introduction
Plagiarism or academic dishonesty as it is commonly known is a rampant vice among college students which is committed both intentionally and unintentionally (Maureen and Joyce 2006). There is a growing concern about the increasing levels of plagiarism among students who are either too lazy to do their assignments or are turning to doing group work and then turning assignments as their original work. Different forms of plagiarism exist which to fairly new students in college may be quite hard to master. For instance copying from internet sources without giving credit, paraphrasing of other people's work and not acknowledging the original author and the most common one is whereby students fail to cite even when they have referenced their work (Plagiarism Statement 2006).

My position on this issue is that plagiarism should be discouraged using the strongest and enforceable terms possible. The first step is to give an F in the particular assignment or test and then proceed to reassign the test again but first making sure that the student understands what plagiarism is and why he or she is repeating the assignment. To make sure that the student is serious with work, the possible total marks that can be awarded in the second attempt of the paper is seventy percent and not a hundred in order to make the student to work harder. On top of redoing the work again, the student involved in plagiarism should appear before a specially constituted board of staff members in the department of the student and also the parents should be present (Jack and Michelle 2009). Failure of following the above procedure by the student will lead to failure in the course and subsequently no graduation for such a student.
This stand may seem harsh but it is the only way of curtailing a culture that is threatening to kill innovation and originality among our future scholars. In the field of research, originality of ideas is encouraged although those ideas must be from prior...