seems to me she should be allowed to rewrite the papers with proper
attributes. and, if she is believed to be plagiarizing, those teachers
should prove it, where it was from.  a C in grad school is not good anyway.
I remember in college my women's studies teacher asked us to write a paper
using ideas from the readings, I did mine, and because it was so well
integrated the bleeping teacher could not see the influence.. I had to
write it over, pointing out whose idea i was using where. (in short,
attributing)  i was annoyed because those were the days of typewriters, not
like you could do changes easily on the computer today.  so I grumbled
about it for the two days it took.  but I got an A on it.

Tamar Mag Raine
[log in to unmask]

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950

IM: tamarmag48
Oakland Mayor's Commission on People with disabilities


> [Original Message]
> From: Kathy <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 9/1/2004 6:02:51 PM
> Subject: Re: Woman with CP kicked out of Boston University law school
onplagiarism charges (fwd)
>
> I know I will probably raise some hackles but I can't understand what is
so
> difficult in crediting proper sources even if you're severely disabled.
It
> seems to me it is a matter of making sure everything is properly cited and
> footnoted.
>
> I know if I'd got an C-plus average, I'd be talking with my professors to
find
> out why my grade average was so low.  Most graduate programs consider
that to
> be a low pass, at best.
>
> Kat
>
> On Wednesday 01 September 2004 8:51 pm, Gary Peterson wrote:
> > Hi all!
> >
> > An E-bud of mine sent me this and I thought you might want to check it
> > out.
> >
> > Later!-Gary
> >
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 15:43:43 -0400
> >
> >
> >   Woman: BU trumped up plagiarism
> > By David Weber
> > Monday, August 30, 2004
> >
> > A 26-year-old woman disabled with cerebral palsy claims Boston
University
> > dashed her dreams of becoming a lawyer by trumping up charges of
plagiarism
> > against her and booting her out of law school six days before
graduation.
> >
> >       Layla Kiani, a magna cum laude undergraduate double major from the
> > University of Texas, had all but completed her three years of law study
at
> > BU when two professors leveled the plagiarism charges against her in May
> > 2003. She has filed a lawsuit in Suffolk Superior Court against the
school.
> >
> >       ``This all happened more than a year ago, but I am still in shock
> > every day,'' Kiani said.
> >
> >       Kiani, who moves about in a wheelchair and whose reduced motor
skills
> > limit her physical ability to write, admits she committed errors in
> > footnoting and attribution in four of her papers. But she said she never
> > intended to sneak anything by her instructors.
> >
> >       Kiani said she believed BU had deemed her methods on the papers
to be
> > sound because they had passed muster previously.
> >
> >       ``If you turn in a paper and get a grade (C-minus) on it, you
would
> > think you are OK,'' she said.
> >
> >       After the initial plagiarism charge was made in May 2003, Kiani
said,
> > another professor notified the school that he too believed Kiani had
> > plagiarized in a paper from the prior year.
> >
> >       Kiani, who claims misprescribed anti-anxiety medication caused
her to
> > experience chronic drowsiness that affected her grades, said she felt a
> > ``false sense of security'' when she submitted her first troubled paper
> > without incident one year before the plagiarism charges.
> >
> >       BU associate general counsel Lawrence Elswit defends the school's
> > decision to cut Kiani loose after her grades were lowered because the
> > plagiarism charges caused her average to drop below 2.0.
> >
> >       ``Without getting into too much detail, the evidence of plagiarism
> > was indisputable and overwhelming,'' Elswit said.
> >
> >       Kiani's lawyer, Ben Tahriri, said, ``You have a colossal
institution
> > going against diminutive woman who's gone through 10,000 hoops to get
where
> > she is today.'