The Lecturer’s angle
If plagiarism showed in the way people walk, it would still have been difficult to spot many a plagiarist. If you videotape yourself walking naked, you will be sad to realise how many animals in the bush share the copyright to your walking style and the rhythm of your steps. Thankfully, no other mammal walks exactly the same way as you; there are only striking resemblances.
Writing works in a similar way. There are times you lose yourself in the wonder of a writer’s style of presentation. Instinctively, you would find yourself turning the back of the book to check the name of the author again. You might even check to confirm the name after enjoying him to the end.
That is the only witchcraft the writer possesses. But while the reader is bewitched by the writer, there is always the satisfying feeling at the back of your mind that, you and that writer are in each other’s thinking. The beauty of it all is: You complete his thoughts when you also begin to write something. You either reinforce his ideas, or you present your own thoughts with the same breadth of scholarship, or even better. You could also be worse, and most often, we are.
The challenge: When you and another student are tasked to present your understanding of the thoughts of the writer, you often find yourselves shopping the same tomatoes from the same woman at Agbogbloshie market. It works like magic. There is usually a particular phrase the two of you borrowed wholesale, and added an apostrophe or an interjection, to disguise the source. Students call it ‘Cut and Paste.’
When this happens, you don’t need another thief to spoil our beautiful story, you need a university lecturer to break open the heads of the students with the hammer of a Bic pen, to take what belongs to Caesar to the author and leave the chaff to rot in the blockheads of the students. But students do not go mad because they have rotten chaff in their heads, they have a thousand ways of going about the same crime. Eventually, lecturers get fed up and award them the ‘som gye’ grade.
Universities lecturers appear done with after graduation, but they are useful for purposes other than academic references and career advice. For this reason, I had considered writing this sequel under a pseudonym. As you can see, I am writing with a great deal of trepidation, in the sustained belief that, none of my lecturers ever reads this and calls for a remark of any of my dissertations. They can be dangerous.
When you live in a glass house, you cannot afford to remain uncircumcised. If nobody spies on your breathing-sack through the translucent glass, the reflection of the magnified Koteboto image in your own house will haunt you until you hurry to plagiarise somebody’s Buliamatali. Nobody can arrest you for ‘Koteboto plagiarism’, it is God’s divine copyright handed down to us through Abraham.
So how do lecturers help students to plagiarise? A friend told of how his supervisor at a London University angrily threw the first draft of his thesis through the window. The professor went ballistic because the student had hurriedly presented a completed draft of six chapters, instead of going about it chapter by chapter, for his perusal and correction. The Prof had satisfied himself that, unless the student had copied somebody’s work, it was not practicable for him to complete such a quality work in that short time.
A student’s revenge: My friend brought back the plagiarised work, locked it in his suitcase and proceeded on a boozing spree for a month and a half. The next day, he presented the first chapter, unedited-no manicure, no pedicure-raw bushmeat.
The professorial verdict: ‘You see, you have been very original this time, because you listened to my advice and spent time to work on it. You students should listen to us, we know better.’ So chapter by chapter, my friend won the professor over as he quaffed his head to a crescendo.
The grade: The lovely one-A Sharp. Today, he barks on radio and calls himself a political analyst. Oh Yehowah! He is a human photocopier through and through, yet he flaunts his Master’s degree with the pomposity of an Asante royal peacock. No wonder his second daughter was fathered by his best friend. Otwea!
There are lecturers who insist that lecturing is different from teaching. Their trademark is that they don’t answer many questions, because they spend much of the lecture time comparing their salaries with their compatriots in industry. Their mantra is: Go and read. They are good at recommending books, none of which they authored. Ironically, they are the ones who award marks with the same conditionalities that govern World Bank loans to Sudan.
If you ask five thieves the crimes that sent them to prison, two of them will tell you that they were implicated, because they didn’t report the theft when they saw the thieves stealing. In other words, they supervised the theft, for only ten minutes. A lecturer supervises a ‘researched armed robbery’ for a whole year.
So I was wondering whether it would not be worthwhile to press the pause button on ACP Kofi Boakye’s alleged cocaine scandal and investigate the supervisors who passed Haruna’s thesis in the first instance. What would they have done if they had found that the work Haruna plagiarised is in fact, another masterpiece of a plagiarised research by a student in the 1970’s. If that student is dead, the Archaeology department of Accra Legon will be happy to exhume the disgraced bones of the ghost and burn them for Christians to see what Hell means in the academia.
But why should a university allow a student to go through this Golgotha, only to revoke his degree when he is married. Researching to steal is a difficult academic pursuit. It is a spiritual transfer of copyright ownership that requires strategic cutting and pasting. The plagiarist swims through the academic DNA of an author, to befriend his thoughts without marrying them. It is so much work that, often when they finish, the plagiarists feel the author had copied them instead.
Even as intelligent as they are, lecturers are only able to tell a diabetic thesis from a korshiokor one by its poor referencing. So when a korshiokor thesis fails to betray a bibliographical nightmare, the way some korshiokor children display pregnant testicles instead of stomachs, lecturers become only a little wiser than Bob Okalla in an academic gown. Lecturers often deem it scholastic when a student plagiarises 500 authors, they are angry when they concentrate on only one, according to W. Mizner.
Because of these ethical dilemmas, lecturers are usually honest people. A professor was humble enough to admit that, his sharp brain was failing when a first year Law student pointed out a flaw in his examination question. He thanked the student for not answering the wrong question correctly.
There are also some professors who are eager to cast aside their professorial oats to learn from students. There remain open to criticism and consult freely.
There is no honeymoon pleasure more fulfilling than when your lecturer invites you to her office and informs you that, she has quoted and acknowledged you in an academic journal. When eventually, you find your ‘unacademic’ name tailgating Wole Soyinka on the same reference list, as Mrs Kari Dako honoured a student in University of Ghana, you have very little excuse to stop paying tithes to your adulterous pastor.
But, there are also honest students who will commit incest than plagiarise. A university had inadvertently awarded ASP Cephas Arthur a Master of Arts degree, instead of a postgraduate diploma. The ASP was honest when an interview panel congratulated him on the award. So when he was voted this year’s best cadet officer, only the women who fancied him were angry, because he didn’t marry any of them.
Having a degree means, while others think in inches and yards, to sell you window curtains, the degree holder thinks in degrees of knowledge in an academic discipline. Brother, if you have one or two degrees, enjoy them while they are still yours. Even Jesus Christ was happy to have his disciples confirm that he was The Messiah, when he asked them: Who do men say I am?
So when people ask you who you are, say you are a Master’s degree holder. If you have Master’s degrees in two subjects, be happy to make the distinction. But, be sure one of them is not a postgraduate diploma. Degree swapping is a form of plagiarism. Wife swapping is consensual plagiarism. Even Michael Jackson-the chief colour plagiarist-will not forgive you for either.
See you next week
Write the author: [email protected]
The author is a newspaper columnist and a Business Lawyer in London
Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.