News

Student cheaters use the Internet to rip off an essay, so professors use the Net to catch them.

But a Halifax university has nixed the idea of using software to sniff out plagiarists.

Mount Saint Vincent University, citing legal and privacy concerns, has banned the use of a plagiarism-detection program called Turnitin.com and any similar software.

Turnitin describes itself on its website as the standard in on-line plagiarism prevention, used by thousands of institutions in more than 80 countries. Professors enter a student paper into a database that automatically checks it against-billions of archived pages.

But the Mount's student union complained to the school last September, after learning two or three professors were using Turnitin.

"We in no way condone plagiarism," says student union president Chantal Brushett.

But she says Turnitin raises a host of human rights, legal and intellectual-property issues. For instance, students are automatically presumed guilty and must prove their innocence whether their essays sound legit or not.

"It's an antagonistic atmosphere and a culture of guilt, fear and suspicion on campus."

Brushett says students must consent to having their papers submitted to the database, but since it's a course requirement, they're over a barrel.

Professors have other means to check on papers, she says, such as working with university librarians or typing a fishy-sounding line into Google.

"There's no need to be submitting papers to a for-profit company based in the United States, in order to check for that plagiarism, if it exists."

University spokeswoman Robyn McIsaac said the Halifax school had been neutral on the issue. Then a senate committee struck a task force and brought the issue to the Mount community.

"There was lots of discussion, there was lots of feedback and at the end of the day, the majority of people on campus agreed that we should not be using plagiarism-detection software at this time."

Since students' work is submitted to an external database, their own papers may be at risk of being plagiarized, McIsaac said.

The Mount has a smaller than average student-teacher ratio, she added, so professors are better able to gauge their students' work than at many schools.

The ban comes into effect when the Mount's summer session beings in May.

McIsaac said the decision will be reviewed after three years.