Trip Gabriel Plagiarism Analysis

Trip Gabriel, a reporter for the New York Times specializing in articles about education and politics, argues in this article, “Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age” about how creativity and originality is under threat because students prefer to copy content off the internet without acknowledging original sources. The article raises some valid points but glosses over the fact that nothing is ever original: every new idea or thought is inspired by or an improvement over an old idea or thought.
In this article Gabriel asserts that in this day and age a student can go to any website and just copy and paste what they need, but when they do not document the source they have committed plagiarism. Gabriel documents various sources throughout the article such as the different cases that occurred at the Rhode Island University, DePaul University, and University of Maryland. He also pointed that it occurs outside of school environments, too, when he mentioned the bestselling

novel written by Helen Gehemann who stole others’ work and included it in her book. Gabriel also claims that plagiarism is taking away writers’ originality and diminishing their creativity. Instead of creating their own paper they head straight for the internet. In the article the author was trying to open our eyes to the plagiarism, how students are getting caught, and how it impacts their ability to learn. Gabriel explains how easy it is to plagiarize now days. The author supports this by explaining the accessibility of copying and pasting on the computers and Internet. The authors purpose is to explain why people plagiarize and he uses this article to inform students that plagiarism is bad. The purpose of the article was to help inform students on how to make sure you don't own the source and how you need to give the right credit.
Today, students who share everything online may even think information is just free to take online because they don't bother to look for an author unless it’s a book. Gabriel states that “digital technology makes copying and pasting easy” (494) and how Internet is changing the concept of ownership. Information has been much more easily accessible, and with everything being one click away, students tend to feel like they are not stealing anything. In fact, Gabriel uses statistics such as how 40% of 14,000 undergraduates admitted to copying a few sentences on their papers and only 29% of those asked (down from 34 percent), thought that copying from Web constitutes as plagiarism (495). The Web enables people to copy from different sources instead of trying to cultivate something original and unique.
Gabriel has tried to show both the sides of people who think that ownership and originality are waning (495) and the people who think that original works are still coming.

As a counter argument, Gabriel gives the example of a teenage author whose book was nominated for a fiction prize who lives by the credo, “there’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity” (qtd. in Gabriel 496). This theory did not find many supporters, in fact Sarah Wilensky said it encourages laziness and not creativity. It is not an original work if you are mixing and matching (496) and coming up with new ideas. Gabriel asserts that due to digital technology, plagiarism has undoubtedly become easier and instead of creating their own students head straight for the internet. In the article the author tries to show that many students plagiarize not because they were ignorant but because: it is easy to just copy and paste, and because they are unprepared for the intellectual rigors of college writing

(496).
In this article the author writes of many real experiences of plagiarism and the action taken to discipline the students committing the act. He makes an assumption that most people growing up in this generation have either already plagiarized, or will in the future. I agree that plagiarism has increased since technology has advanced. However, I don't believe that it is due to the information available online that anybody can take for themselves. I believe it is because students are not taught from elementary level on how to read from different sources and synthesize them into your own words so they are not tempted to plagiarize later in college as trying to copy from different sources is time consuming and hard. To improve writing skills, it’s necessary to teach students through school how to read sources and summarize them in their own words. “Writing is not easy and to do so takes time and practice” (496). Doing so would definitely help through college and would not tempt them to plagiarize. I do agree that a few students take the easy way out and plagiarize content instead of putting in the time and effort to construct good original writing. However, to tar all students with the same brush by quoting a couple of academic studies conducted amongst students may not be fair.