After reading ‘Plagiarism: a major crime for everyone?’ by Ielse Broeksteeg (November 2009 issue) I thought: ‘well, this would’d been funny, if it weren’t sad.’ I wonder why university students in Belgium don’t have access to Turnitin? Why don’t they have to submit an originality report along with their papers?

After a few years in Britain (I’m originally from Brazil) where I attended UEL psychology BA programme, I was surprised when I moved to Leuven and found out students don’t have access to Turnitin. Perhaps this incident involving a professor and a student (is that all?), the issue could be raised to the attention of the public and authorities. In Britain it’s clearly straightforward, as a student you MUST submit your paper first to TurnitinUK, which you obviously have access to. After your ‘originality report’ is produced, you can analyse it to check the level of similarity with other sources and make any revelant changes if needed. The originality report then has to be submitted together with your paper. Universities don’t accept a paper without it.
Of course, we can always ask ourselves if the student wrote his/her paper him/herself, they obviously know if they’re cheating or not. And the puzzling question would be ‘why do it in the first the place?’ However I believe if in Belgium universities adopted the same system in use in Britain, as mentioned above, lots of problems would be solved at a bottom level, i.e. when students are writing their papers. Would that save a lot of work for correctors? They’d just have to check the originality report, instead of having to submit the papers themselves to be analysed, and so on and so forth.
The article is certain covering fundamental issues. It doesn’t make sense (if all the university wants is to set an example) to punish a poor sore 1st BA, first-time cheater student so severely; and at the same time you forgive an academic staff who should be setting the example himself. As we say back home “dois pesos, duas medidas”, meaning, two weights and two ways of measuring... or for each head a different sentence... that doesn’t sound right, does it?
Anyway, I’m pretty sure it will happen again sooner or later, perhaps involving another professor just to make it funnier... Or sadder! Depends on the humor of the day.

- L.D. da Silva, on 16.11.2009