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Finals week is here, and the pressure to do well on final exams and papers can push some students over the edge.

With the availability of several paper databases and student networking capabilities, the pressure to perform may cause students to look to plagiarism as an option.

Several students in recent weeks have received e-mails soliciting old papers they may have written or may be willing to write.

Michelle Singer, a third-year political science student and former Daily Bruin columnist, received an e-mail from another student who wanted to buy one of her old papers, but she said she did not want to notify the administration for fear of being implicated in cheating.

“The student who was trying to buy my paper said that she had (gotten) my e-mail from a mutual friend in the class, and she was interested in buying a paper from me that I had (written) for a class last quarter,” Singer said.

“I know that cheating is rampant here, but I still thought, ‘How could a student be so bold as to send an e-mail with her entire name in it?’ I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Singer said, adding that she did not know from whom the student had received her contact information.

One student discovered that taking this risk has its consequences.

A fourth-year student, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was caught for posting a listing on the Internet soliciting someone to write a paper for him. He believes students who buy papers don’t always have the intention of plagiarizing.

“I was taking a graduate-level class, and I had all this other work ... it (had gotten) down to the wire, and I needed a topic – I needed a paper. I was hard-pressed to find one, so I decided to post a listing,” the student said, adding that he received a few responses from students interested in the proposition.

“I ended up not using any of them, because I knew how stupid of an idea it was after I did it,” he said.

Soon after, the student was called into his professor’s office and then the dean’s office to discuss his post.

“I had no idea how serious it was. I explained to them I only needed a paper topic, and after several meetings, they decided to let me go,” he added.

He also said he believes all students who purchase papers online do not have the intention of using them as their own, adding that reading someone else’s work will only enhance what they write.

“I think you should be exposed to all pieces of information you think are important to what you’re writing. If you believe you need to see someone else’s paper on the same topic, then you should be able to look at that. It’s the same thing with books – sometimes the idea is the same as yours, and you have to buy it in order to read it,” the student said.

Students offer mixed opinions as to whether purchasing a paper leads to plagiarism.

Some Internet services sell papers to students and maintain that students are using the papers solely for research purposes.

Diana Sedano, a fourth-year microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics student, thinks purchasing a paper is likely to lead students to plagiarize.

“If a student wanted to borrow someone’s paper just to look at it, they wouldn’t need to buy it. If they were legitimately using it to know what the format was like, they definitely wouldn’t pay for it. If you buy a paper, you definitely have the intention of copying it,” Sedano said.

Students and professors at UCLA are equally bothered by the amount of plagiarism and cheating that occurs not only during finals week, but throughout the rest of the quarter as well.

“It’s frustrating as a hardworking student to see someone here get good grades for something they didn’t do,” said Alejandro Escalante, a third-year microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics student.

Political science Professor John Zaller believes that he approaches plagiarism and cheating in a way that deters students from thinking it is a possible solution.

“I make a conscious effort to trade off between different types of testing – although students are able to express themselves better during take-home exams, I know the possibility of plagiarizing is higher. Therefore, I do a trade-off between take-home exams and in-class exams,” Zaller said.

Zaller, like some professors at UCLA, has looked to the Internet as a means of attempting to eliminate plagiarism.

UCLA obtained a site license to use a service called Turnitin.com, a Web site launched in 2001 which enables students to submit their work to the Web site and have their assignments compared to other documents, such as encyclopedias, books and even previously submitted student papers.

Each assignment is graded with an “originality” percentage, and each instructor may decide to investigate the low-originality papers for possible plagiarism.

Many students think cheating is wrong, but they still question whether it is their responsibility to report another student who they suspect might be practicing academic dishonesty.

“As a student, I think the only thing I can do to stop cheating is report it when I see it. I don’t know what the answer to this problem is, and I don’t think a lot of other people do either. Cheating bothers me, and I think it bothers a lot of other people, but a lot of us don’t know how to deal with it,” Singer said.

The Office of the Dean of Students penalizes hundreds of students each year for academic dishonesty.

Hundreds more go undetected, but Escalante said if he cheated, he would be acting against his principles.

“If I cheated, I know that I would be failing myself as a person, and in the end, someone will find out. If you take the easy way out, you’re going to fail in the long run,” Escalante said.

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