Marius Discusses Plagiarism

Expository Writing Program Director Richard Marius warned freshmen yesterday that inaccurate citation of sources could abruptly end their time at Harvard, but he could not do so without a small slip himself--with apparently no ill effect.

The senior lecturer for both English and Expository Writing addressed freshmen in a new effort to avoid plagiarism, a practice that sends roughly one dozen students, many of them Yardlings, to the Administrative Board each year.

Marius' error ironically occured while he gave samples of plagiarism for students to evaluate, when he confused the name of a primary source with the author's first name while reading the text.

Marius apologized for the error but said it did not interfere with the gist of his speech.

During the speech Marius explained what constitutes plagiarism, how it can be avoided and where to get help. Marius filled the address with anecdotes, but still had to break in at one point to tell an unruly audience to remember they were freshman in college, not high school.

In Marius' examples, many students could not identify which paragraphs broke plagiarism rules. About half were wrong on one example that Marius said was plagiarism "through and through."

By way of advice, Marius said that students unsure about whether they are plagiarising should ask their instructors. He added that spring Expos students can get help from the Writing Center.

Harvard is "concerned not with trying to make this [meeting an example of how] we're trying to get you," but rather to circumvent the problem itself, Marius said. He compared the lecture to shopping at K-Mart, where signs constantly warn that shoplifters will be prosecuted.

According to Marius, much of the plagiarism at Harvard is inadvertent, resulting from sloppy notetaking, instances when "your mother typed the paper and left out all the quotation marks" or other examples of poor writing. He said that when taking notes, students "should make a clear distinction between your thoughts about the source and the words of the source itself," adding that students should mark all paraphrases by author and title.

But Marius warned that plagiarism of an entire paper was easy to spot, citing the example of one student who, when caught, responded that he did not believe anyone at Harvard read Sports Illustrated. Marius said that when he or another professor suspects plagiarism, he asks a scholar in that department to read the work.

In a general overview that preceded Marius' lecture, Dean of Freshman Henry C. Moses discussed the rules for dual submission and collaboration. He also said "the use of work by others" in computer programs is subject to the same restrictions applied to written material.