“That they have,” said Levin, secretly incensed, “—to be respected as people. But don’t they have to earn my respect for their work?”
“You can’t go lecturing them like high school kids. That’s why they wanted out.”
“Wouldn’t it—er—have been better if you had advised them to stay with me? Since the issue was the quality of their work, if you transfer them out of my classes, aren’t you really kicking my standards in the pants? Maybe you should have asked them to talk to me first?”
Gilley rinsed his cup. “My experience is that once a student has no further use for his instructor the best thing is to separate them both.”
Though Levin denied the worth of the tactic, the loss of his students confirmed his fear he wasn’t teaching well.
One wet January day, with Professor Fairchild present, sucking his yellowed ivory cigarette holder, Gilley convened a meeting of the composition staff to discuss the increase in plagiarized papers. Since October, the director of composition said, Avis had turned in three clinkers, he had lit on one, Farper one, and now Jones thought he had another. Gilley was sure others, as yet undetected, were around. He advised stricter scrutiny of all compositions, and consultation with colleagues if any seemed suspect. Avis had a flair for spotting work that had been copied. “Try her, Dr. Kuck, or me,” he said. “Though the comp room does a good job of holding down the number of cribbed papers, some do get by us. If you suspect a theme—if it hits your eye wrong—that’s a sure sign to watch out. If you can’t spot its source right off, as I say, bring it to one of us. I’ve nailed quite a few of these tin potatoes in my time and will be glad to help you.”
Levin asked what happened to a student who got caught.
Professor Fairchild removed his cigarette holder to reply, but Gilley spoke first. “Once we have certain proof, or a confession, the student is brought before the Student Dishonesty Committee. His or her instructor and I are the complainants, and he or she is advised as to his or her rights by the dean of men or women. Usually he or she fails English and is suspended from college for the rest of the term. If the case is very serious—if we have proof and he or she won’t confess—we may expel him or her.
Professor Fairchild, nodding between puffs, added, “That’s right. And once you’ve got a clear-cut case of cribbing, don’t take the responsibility on yourself for judging or not judging guilt. Avoid false pity and turn the guilty one in to either Dr. Gilley or me. Preferably Dr. Gilley. It’s the only way to stamp out this thing.”
“That’s right,” Gilley said, but the old professor, with a chuckle, had begun a story: “About a year after I’d come here” —he scratched his eyebrow with one finger—“I guess it was closer to five, but no matter. At any rate, I had in one of my
classes a boy I rather liked. I thought he was a gentleman until he handed me a paper I recognized at once as part of a magazine article I had recently read. You know, I had a chat with this young fellow—he came from a good family and readily admitted his error. He said he had been loaded down with engineering studies and hadn’t any time left to do his English.
“I said that I’d forgive him his first offense and not take any drastic measures if he would turn in a makeup paper that same day. He did, that afternoon. It was a good paper. The boy was a competent writer—I knew that from a previous theme he had written in class, and I think I gave his makeup paper a grade of B or B plus, most likely B. But something about it didn’t quite sit right with me. I woke up out of a sound after-lunch nap and began to wonder about the second paper. Something smelled fishy in Denmark. I spoke to Dr. Femur, in political science—he retired after we lost liberal arts degrees—and after some research he located the contents of the composition in an address by Theodore Roosevelt. I immediately wrote the boy’s father, a successful shoe merchant, who came from Portland, Oregon, to see me. We had what amounted to an emotional session. The young man, in tears, swore on my wife’s Bible that it would never happen again. I took his word, and so, may I add, did his father.
“Well, the boy handed in a third paper, but I was forewarned, and forewarned is forearmed. I asked Dr. Fabrikant—I think it was Fabrikant—” he looked around the room but Dr. Fabrikant was not present “—to read it over. He gave me the clue I needed and I located most of the contents of the third paper in the writings of John Stuart Mill. Needless to say, the boy was expelled from college. As an amusing postscript, I will add that the father wrote me an angry letter, in which he doubted my competence as a professor because I had given Teddy Roosevelt a grade of only B, or B plus, whichever it was.”
He laughed to himself. “I cite this little story to show how they will take advantage of your good will, Mr. Levin, if you
aren’t alert and on guard. I’ve been hard to fool since then.”
The meeting broke up, Levin pleasantly excited.
With him, to name an evil was to encounter it. In a few days he read a theme he was suspicious of. His suspicions made him nervous because one of his own painful memories was of cheating on a math final in college; he had copied from a paper a friend had slipped him—at Levin’s request. But the instructor felt he had the right to judge his own students’ honesty. It was the way of society: the reformed judging the unreformed. Better that than the other way around.
He compared the paper to two others the boy had written, one in class at the start of the winter term. The theme in question was a four-hundred word essay he had entitled, “Build Your Own House and Like It.” Levin found this paper to be without any of the writer’s usual weaknesses of structure and content, and with a kind of humor he hadn’t encountered in his previous work. As a matter of fact, it was unusually good. The author of the paper, Albert O. Birdless, nineteen, from Marathon, Cascadia, was majoring in vocational education. His build reminded Levin of a young tugboat. He was stocky, with a short neck, heavy shoulders and legs, and stubby feet in square-toed shoes. His longish crewcut appeared to have gone to seed. On his head he usually wore a freshman beanie. Birdless was the exception to the almost universal rule of cordiality on the campus; his eyes were blue unsmiling marbles. He was a writer of less than average skill who did not attempt to hide from Levin his opinion that composition was a waste of time.
Since he sat in the last row it may have seemed to him that Levin paid no attention to him, because he sometimes put back his head and sneaked off a quick catnap during the hour. Levin had by now got over feeling very much annoyed with those who fell asleep on him; yet he had once or twice with a look tried to get Albert to resist boredom, and Albert had flushed and turned away. As he began to snooze one morning after a poor recitation, Levin asked him to snap out of it. He
was then annoyed by the boy’s scowl as he shifted his shoulders and reluctantly sat up, but the instructor suppressed a wisecrack and the incident was over. Later, passing each other in the hall, they exchanged cold glances. To some extent this bothered Levin, for there was little enough good feeling in the world and he did not like to add to the bad. Yet it seemed to him that those you chose to dislike had by some rule of economy in nature chosen you, so that narrowed ill-feeling.
Albert’s average was a solid D plus when he handed in his spectacular theme. Although Levin’s suspicions were at once aroused, after reading the paper he considered giving it an A under a remark that the improvement was miraculous and would he do the same next time they were writing a theme in class. But he was angered at the boy for trying to pull this on him. O. E. Jones, who had given Albert a D last term, shook his head over this paper. After some hesitation, Levin handed it to Gilley, who took in page one in a swoop, and said with a throb in his voice, “No doubt about it, Sy, this is a professional job. You’ve caught a rat.”
Levin’s throat went dry. “Are you sure? Where would it be from?”
Gilley, leaning back in his chair, reflected, one eye aimed at the ceiling. “I guess some place like
Reader’s Digest
or
Coronet.
Also try
American Home
and one or two of that kind. Just thumb through the back issues of the last couple of years. Freshmen, as a rule, are too lazy to go too far back, only so far that the instructor isn’t likely to pick up that same issue in the dentist’s office. I don’t think you’ll have much trouble locating it.”
“Should I ask him about it first—if he did crib it?”
“I have no doubt he did but I leave that up to you. Some ask questions first. Some would rather not until they have the evidence. Avis has a knack of going straight to the
Readers Guide,
looking over the titles of articles on the cribbed subject for a couple of years past or so, and just about right away
putting her finger on the one she needs. Her last incident she had this student nailed dead to rights an hour and a half after she read his theme. We had him suspended by his dean and off the campus before five o’clock of the same day.”
After class the next morning, Levin, still uneasy, asked Albert to drop into his office during the afternoon.
“What for?” he asked.
“We’ll talk when you come in.”
“Okay.” He popped on his beanie and left.
He didn’t show up till after five. Levin had his coat on but sat down.
“Anything wrong—sir?”
“Would you mind taking off your cap?”
“Yes, sir.” He was able to look at Levin without meeting his eyes.
Levin asked him to have a seat. Albert, placing his books on the desk, sat on the edge of the chair. When he thought about it he sat back and crossed his well packed thighs.
“Could I smoke?”
“Yes.”
But he was out of cigarettes and Levin had none to offer him.
“I’ll make it short,” he said. “This last theme you gave me—this on my desk—is a very skillful job. It’s so much better than anything you’ve so far handed in that I have to ask you if it’s your own work?”
Albert’s unsmiling eyes were steady after a quick glance at his theme.
“You weren’t helped by somebody, directly or indirectly?”
“Who says so?”
“Some students don’t quite understand where citation ends and cribbing begins. Sometimes they will copy material from a magazine or book and forget to acknowledge the source. Did you happen to do something like that?”
“Every word on that paper came out of my own head,” Albert said.
“Every word?”
“Some came out of the dictionary.”
Levin nervously stroked his beard. “But how do you account for such an unusual improvement in your writing? Usually—you have to admit, and this holds for your last term’s themes which I’ve also looked at—you have at least one sentence fragment in every paper. Your ideas are presented with difficulty and without humor, whereas in this everything is lucid and the humor is really funny. Your paragraphs, Albert, if you don’t mind my saying so, are generally badly built. After a short elaboration you pay no attention to the topic sentence, in the rare cases where you have one. Your first two themes, with indulgence, came to D. This, though, is a first-rate A. Suppose you were the instructor, what would you think?”
“If you don’t write so good, that doesn’t mean you’re a failure.”
“I never said so. All I ask is how you can explain this practically flawless piece of work?” He handed Albert the paper.
The student opened his mouth to let in air. His voice was emotional. “I worked twelve hours on that one theme. Isn’t a guy entitled to a good grade once in a while? It just so happens I know about house construction. This last summer I helped my uncle who’s a builder. And if this one sounds so funny that’s because there are some things that happen to be funny, so why shouldn’t I write that way?”
He was staring with a wet-lipped grin at Levin’s hot ear.
Levin stood up, buttoning his coat. “I guess that’s all.”
Albert was also on his feet. “I bet you don’t believe me.”
“In this case I frankly don’t see how I can. This paper is the work of an educated man.”
“There’s more than one way to be educated.”
“This is educated in only one way.”
“So you think I’m lying?”
“I don’t think you’re telling the whole truth.”
“That’s what I thought,” Albert said sullenly. “I know damn well you never did like me. I’m not the only one that has your
number. There are a lot of other guys who don’t like your class.”
“You’ve taken a poll?” Levin inquired.
“I hear people talking. They say you never give anybody a break.”
Levin denied it but Albert did not stay to hear.
The instructor could hardly wait to get to the library, after supper, to find the article Albert had copied from. His hand trembled as he thumbed through a volume of magazines. Finding nothing that night, he returned the next morning during a free hour. Albert sat at a nearby table, watching Levin over the top of an open book that covered his face to the eyes. Levin imagined a disembodied smirk hanging behind the book.
Once or twice his heart raced as he thought he had the article, but it turned out no. The third day, impatient to get the unpleasant job done with, he gave the whole afternoon to the search. Nothing doing. Every night that week he read in the main reading room, adding other periodicals to those Gilley had suggested. Albert was almost always present in the vicinity, sitting behind a stack of books around which he peered from time to time, a sight Levin, to his surprise, found mildly pleasurable. Yet he was annoyed at all the time this was taking, angered that Albert knew what he wanted to know and so far couldn’t. Amazing how denial creates doubt. He was out to destroy that doubt.