Dear Professor, Please do my work for me. KThxBai.
"I'm assigned to interpret and comment on a published article? Who needs that - only little people do homework. I'll just write the author and have them do it for me by pretending to be someone I'm not."
If I knew the professor I would simply contact him/her immediately, but I donÂt. I could guess and email a few profs at this university, hoping to identify the right one, or perhaps the Academic Dean, then let him/her take care of it. But I worry the administration of any university is likely to let it slide precisely because this student is well-connected. (I have personally seen this happen before.)
Alternatively, I could publicly shame the individual by writing about him/her  which strikes me as somehow the right thing to do when an individual is in the public eye and presenting themselves as a paragon of integrity (one of the criteria for the position this person holds  to be clear, this is not a child of a public figure, the student is an actual public figure).
Whether IÂm the right person to do the writing IÂm not sure.
IÂm also not sure about another thing: my evidence is simply the above  a private email to myself. Associating that email with the individualÂs name is not something IÂm absolutely certain I should do.
But IÂm not certain why I would feel so uncertain. Does my responsibility to protect anyoneÂs privacy really extend to helping them cover up the fact that they committed an unethical act? (As an intellectual, and someone who takes academic dishonesty quite seriously at my own institution, I feel like this would be no different than turning in a classmate who I saw preparing to cheat on an exam; and that not doing so would be tantamount to complicity.)
On the other hand, did they actually cheat or did they only attempt to do so?
It certainly is over the line. It's probably worse than plagiarism, which is (and should be) a serious offense. As for what she should do, I dunno. Public shaming is asking for trouble, contacting the administration is not letting it be handled at a lower level, so contacting the student's instructor is probably best. If she can't figure out who that is, then I dunno. There are only so many hours in the day to respond to issues in e-mails from strangers....
I sure hope that's not common, but.... :-/
Anyway, it looks like she handled it very well - http://www.lawyersgu...e-1#comment-99146
Cheers,
Scott.
