Plagiarism Is One Thing, Copying Is Another

When you lose your Bachelor’s degree, you are usually mistaken for a married man-because you are no more a bachelor-you have lost it-normally to a wife. But when you lose your Masters degree, you lose an honour indeed-an honour lost to society.

Recently, a brilliant parliamentarian endured national humiliation when the University of Ghana revoked his Master of Philosophy degree in Sociology. The university alleges that the MP’s thesis he presented in 2000 contained ‘plagiarised material.’ However, the university was charitable enough to have allowed the MP to enjoy the honour of the award until 2006. University dons are eccentric, but they are also kind.

This week’s issue is not in defence of the parliamentarian, who coincidentally, is a good friend. It is not also to question why it took the university six years to have a rethink of the MP’s award. It is to discuss the crime of plagiarism-from the student’s perspective.

Like prostitution, plagiarism-the act of appropriating the ideas or words of another as one’s own-is an old crime. In the 18th century, a very promising Romantic poet, Thomas Chartterton, committed suicide when he was accused of generously borrowing from the poems of more accomplished poets. He was only about 17 years but the depth of his scholarship was just as remarkable as William Wordsworth or Ben Johnson. As his poems came under the watchful eyes of ‘literary Pharisees’- those who see very far-he was found to be a thief-an Atta Ayi of a plagiarist.

In 1963, Martin Luther King Jnr made a powerful rendition of the famous ‘I have a Dream’ speech. It went down in history as one of the most inspirational speeches ever delivered by a visionary. Years later, it was found that King’s dream was actually a nightmare. For, he was alleged to have plagiarised the speech. That brought into question his doctoral thesis, which he was also alleged to have plagiarised.

Now showing on British television screens is a programme that dramatises how bright students sell their essays to intellectually less endowed or lazy ones, via the internet. It is an internet assisted fraud that could see a lazy student write a PhD thesis while relaxing in a foamy bath with his girlfriend, as a giant plasma TV rolls images of poor African children learning under a mango tree.

It is very simple: The student types a problem question into an internet search engine, and instantly, he is presented with a tsunami of brilliant essays. His only challenge is to choose which essay best suits his purposes and an A+ is in the basket already.

Plagiarism is like a secret sin-it is no sin when nobody gets to see it. It is the public scandal that makes the crime of plagiarism sinful. I know this because I have had my own problems with plagiarism. It is the most shameful misfortunate that could befall any writer. It is more shameful than stealing gari from an orphanage in Malawi.

Four years ago, the Independent and the Chronicle newspapers published a long article I had authored about common mistakes in Ghanaian English. The piece was a collection of lessons I had gathered from lecturers in the English Department of University of Ghana. I had also read recommended textbooks, including University Grammar and K.A Sey’s Ghanaian English. While the issues I had raised and discussed in the piece were not my original thoughts, I had presented my understanding of those issues in my own words and showed some originality.

However, I had lifted word for word, an example I had found in the Oxford Dictionary, to buttress a point. On hindsight, I regret I did not, at least, couch the expression in my own words, if I found it irresistibly attractive. So when I.K Gyasi, a man I described then as an intellectual tyrant, spotted the theft and raised an alarm in a scathing rejoinder, I had very little reason to write a rebuttal.

Even then, I tried to gather together the broken pieces of my honour, to attempt a redemption. That proved to be a ridiculous mistake. With my honour abused and my ego drowned in shame, Mr Gyasi pounced and pounced until there was no journalistic life in me. In return, I resorted to name calling, a shameful exercise that embroiled Africanus Owusu-Ansah, a respected writer, in that never-to-have-fought-battle. It wasn’t until I had travelled outside the country that I would begin to write again.

Plagiarism, or ‘dubbing’, as university students call it, is like an amoeba-it comes in different forms and shapes. For instance, will I.K Gyasi have accused me of plagiarism if I had acknowledged the source of my example? Or will he have kept quiet if I had rephrased the wording of the example? Would that necessarily have transformed the expression of the Oxford lexicographer into my own original thought? Or would it be better to have produced my own example, thought through my own thinking processes and transcribed as a reflection of the original thinking of a hard working student?

These are questions many students ask themselves before they proceed to plagiarise. The student on a dubbing expedition starts on the ridiculous hypothesis that the writer of the ‘dubbed’ material is more intelligent, or just as intelligent as he is. His second hypothesis is that, the writer’s intervention was timely, and it was a coincidence that the two of them had to write and think through the same problem. So they become good friends who nevertheless, will never want to meet, or get to know each other.

The third is that, the writer has presented the ideas they had both agreed on, in the most attractive way, so altering the wording may detract from the quality. This is where the theft begins. The student’s research question then becomes: To what extent will this material I see before me (by God’s grace), transcend the boundaries of plagiarism if I repackage it and stamp my distinguished authorship on it, like no Shakespeare’s business?

Students forget that lecturers were once students-they know all the tricks. There are times lecturers would out sheer ‘academic charity’, award a plagiarised work a B-, because they know that no thief ever goes to heaven. Other times, as in Haruna’s case, they could be critical. At this point, the motive of the academic board does not matter. A university has more than a right to take back a degree it has awarded a student, the same way some men strip their wives of their underpants when their marriage ends. A university degree is an honour, it is not a prize. That is why we keep them in drawers.

But Haruna is an intelligent man. At the time he was writing the thesis for the now revoked Masters degree, he had successfully passed the QCL-Qualifying Certificate of Law-and started serious studies at the Morkola Law School. He was at the same time, more than a consultant on Legon campus-offering student leaders and aspiring leaders from all the universities in Ghana advice on student leadership. He left a legacy of visionary leadership as NUGS president.

But this is no reprieve for the former student leader. A little learning always proves dangerous than absolute ignorance. If it must be done, it must be done well, and for a thesis, it must be very well. It is supposed to contribute to the knowledge in the field.

The MP’s story is not unlike many of history’s great leaders. If we look beneath the halo and their ‘manicured persona’, many of our celebrated heroes will be stripped of their medals. That is why I have stopped reading autobiographies. Even after his admission and public apology, Bill Clinton’s autobiography is still vague on Monica Lewinsky. Similarly, Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom treated Winnie as a bit.

If Ghanaian universities should dig back into time, to reassess some dissertations, parliament may need to vote money for the construction of a second parliament, where MPs and ministers with revoked degrees will sit. That Ghanaian proverb proves incontrovertible everyday: when your friend’s beard catches fire, jump into the Akosombo dam. I hear the water level is very low at present. We don’t need Master’s degrees to sort out that damn dam.

See you next week.

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