Will write for food

I should trust the bus schedule to be accurate and informative, but it's not. I should trust my doctor to always prescribe the best medicine, not the one with the sexy, 27-year-old drug rep, but he doesn't. I should trust the FDA and current safety precautions, but 166 people have contracted E. Coli. I should trust my Uncle Roger, but he's always suspiciously missing when the cat turns up dead. \nProfessors should, by no exceptional stretch of the imagination, be able to trust their students -- but they can't. \nA Rutgers University-Center for Academic Integrity study found that more than 40 percent of 18,000 college students knowingly and willingly plagiarized someone else's work. Statistics like this one are a damning testament to the reality that people have cheated and will continue to do so as long as they think they can get away with it.\nSo far, one of the most effective methods of rooting out plagiarism has been a Web site many students are familiar with: TurnItIn.com. A professor will create an inbox to which a student uploads a paper. The paper is then scanned and compared to "in-house copies of both current and archived internet content," which essentially means "everything we could find on the Internet ever." But the more valuable resource -- which makes TurnItIn unique from say, Google -- is a database that contains 22 million previously submitted papers.\nAt face value, the goals of the experiment are sound: Deter plagiarism and teach students how to properly credit their sources. However, students at McLean High School in northern Virginia are the latest in a growing number of students protesting the regular use of TurnItIn. The Committee for Student's Rights objects to TurnItIn making a profit off of students' work, calling it an "infringement of intellectual property rights," according to the Washington Post. \nLast year the Bloomington Faculty Council voted to continue the license agreement with TurnItIn, which costs the University almost $25,000 a year, according to a March 2, 2005, Indiana Daily Student article. Multiply that figure by 6,000 institutions in 90 countries, and you realize just how massive TurnItIn's operation really is. \nThe question students are asking themselves is: Why is TurnItIn making money off a database entirely composed of our own sweat, blood and tears? Published or not, a student's work is his or her own. Although the paper in question is not being reproduced and sold, TurnItIn is still utilizing the text for profit. \nSupporters will attest that TurnItIn also protects students from other students. Cheating is not always a two-way street. A paper left in a library printer is easy pickings for anyone who walks by.\nThe solution, as always, is a compromise of both worlds. Instead of having the BFC spend $25,000 a year to reduce academic dishonesty, the University should be building its own non-profit essay database. Participating colleges and high schools would only pay for maintenance and upkeep so that no third party is making money off of students.