When is it Plagiarism?

trump obamaLast night’s Republican National Convention has thrust “plagiarism” to the forefront of the news. One of last night’s speakers was Melania Trump, the wife of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump. Trump’s speech sounded to many strikingly similar to one given eight years earlier—by First Lady Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention in 2008.

How similar?

Incredibly so. Not just identical words, but nearly identical context and sentence structure. At one point, Trump says, “Because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them” (emphasis added). Eight years earlier, Obama had said, “Because we want our children — and all children in this nationto know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them” (emphasis added).

That is plagiarism.

(You can see a side-by-side text comparison here and here and side-by-side video comparison here.)

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Learning the “Old-Fashioned Way”: Study Says Taking Notes by Hand Better for Recall

note takingThese days, it’s hard to find a law student who doesn’t come to class with a laptop or tablet of some type. Even if the student avoids the temptation to access the Internet during class and simply uses his laptop to take notes, it’s likely his recall of concepts will be not as good as a student who takes her notes by hand.

According to a post in The Chronicle of Higher Education, researchers have found that taking class notes by hand helps students better recall concepts in the lecture. The researchers asked students to take notes using “their normal classroom note-taking strategy.” Some used laptops (disconnected from the Internet) and others used pen and paper and wrote longhand. After 30 minutes, students were tested on the lecture. Researchers discovered that while the laptop note-takers took more than twice the amount of notes as the longhand note-takers, the laptop note-takers “scored significantly lower in the conceptual part of the test.” Both groups scored the same on factual recall.

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Returning College Athletics to College Students

kansas city chiefs football gamesThere is a simple way to end the hypocrisy that is modern college sport and at the same time preserve the much-beloved pageantry of men’s college football and basketball.

First of all, we need to embrace the idea that college athletics should be a part of the educational mission of colleges, and not part of their “providing entertainment” function. Subject to the exception for men’s football and basketball set out below, participation in college athletics should be limited to regularly enrolled students who chose to attend their college free from the enticement of special financial support.

The first step is to abolish all athletic grants-in-aid (euphemistically called athletic scholarships) except for those awarded in men’s football and basketball. Except for a few pockets of fan support for college baseball and hockey and women’s basketball, the simple fact is that most sports fans do not care about college sports other than football and men’s basketball.

It is foolish for colleges to “hire” players for their “non-revenue” sports teams at great cost when there are so many regularly enrolled students who would be happy to participate on those teams without additional financial inducements. Marquette, for example, does not need to give athletic grant-in-aids to have men’s and women’s teams in tennis and soccer. Lots of current students would jump at the opportunity to be a member of one of those teams.

Obviously, the teams recruited from the ranks of the regular student body would not likely be as talented as those that are purchased with grants-in-aid; but what should matter more is that under this proposal regular students would have the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of athletic participation, rather than simply have the option of sitting in the bleachers, watching their professional “classmates.”

For the vast majority of students, even those who devoted much of their pre-college years to competitive sports, college athletic participation opportunities today are pretty much limited to the intramural and club sports. The unrecruited varsity “walk-on” who plays a meaningful role on a college sports team has become almost as rare as the college football player who is awarded a Phi Beta Kappa key.

Men’s football and basketball programs are exempted from the proposed grant-in-aid ban for purely historical reasons. Unlike the case in every other country in the world, at an early date in the United States colleges and universities, rather than private sector clubs or the state itself, assumed the role of sponsoring developmental professional leagues for men’s football and basketball. In this role, college teams in both sports came to be treated as the equivalent of the major professional sports leagues, at least with regard to fan interest.

“Big time” football schools have performed this function for more than a century, and having cultivated enormous fan-bases that extend well beyond the college community, it would not be feasible, or even desirable, to scale back the level of competition in these two men’s sports.

This proposal would obviously require a modification of Title IX, or at least its reinterpretation, but that should not be problematic. Title IX has from its beginning been about expanding educational opportunities and not about providing subsides for elite athletes.

Freed from a mechanical application of Title IX, this proposal would greatly expand educational opportunities. By eliminating athletic grant-in-aids in all other sports and by dramatically reducing athletic travel budgets colleges could expand the number of varsity and junior varsity opportunities for their students, both men and women. Title IX would still require schools to provide equal opportunities for male and female students, but the moneys spent on men’s football and basketball were no longer be part of the calculation. The money that would have gone to athletic grants-in-aid for non-revenue sports could be added to the institution’s regular financial aid budget.

Because “college” football and basketball are still inextricably linked to the idea that the players are students at the institutions they represent, scholarship players in men’s football and basketball would be required to remain enrolled as full-time college students, as they are now. Current eligibility rules could remain in place; players would still receive athletic grants-in-aid; and there would be no problem, at least from the perspective of this proposal, if the amount of the grant was increased to provide for additional spending money.

Schools with scholarship programs in men’s football and basketball could also operate non-scholarship teams in these two sports. Hence, Marquette could have both a scholarship varsity basketball team and a non-scholarship varsity team, each playing a separate schedule and likely in different conferences. While fan attention would likely continue to focus on the scholarship varsity team, the non-scholarship second team would give some regular Marquette students who enjoy playing basketball the opportunity to experience the benefits of participation in intercollegiate sports.

This proposal would return most college sports to students who come to college for the purpose of broadly preparing themselves for their future. It would take athletics away from those whose primary concern, reasonable or not, is for a career as a professional athlete. Superbly talented golfers, tennis players, and baseball and hockey players will find other ways to demonstrate their potential for professional careers in sport.

I know that some will object that this proposal will adversely affect those students whose only path to college is through a grant-in-aid in a non-revenue sport. However, I don’t see that as persuasive. There is nothing that will prevent a college from giving such a student regular financial aid if the student has academic potential as well. Alternatively, the school could take the money that would have gone for the athletic grant-in-aid and instead give it to an equally needy student with even greater academic potential.

This proposal could be implemented by voluntary action on the part of colleges and universities, either under the umbrella of the NCAA or outside of it. It could also be legislated into existence by Congress. However adopted, this proposal would benefit both athletics and higher education.

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