To All Columbia College Students,

Dean Yatrakis will know if you plagiarize any of your final papers, which you most certainly will. And when you inevitably try to pass someone else's work off as your own, she will remove you from your precious leadership positions and probably expel you. And then when you try to get a job, she will tell your future employer how dishonest and awful you are.

And by the way happy holidays!

After the jump, an absolutely terrifying email sent to CCers, which we admit is not our own work but that of Dean Yatrakis! It is in quotes demonstrating such!

Today, the Village Voice ran the first part of a billion part article that's something like the definitive account of everything that happened surrounding Madonna Constantine. You might recall October's noose-hanging incident and the whole multiple charges of plagiarism thing, for example. Anyway, we've distilled everything that's new and important in the article in easy-to-digest bullet points below (Spoiler Alert: She plagiarized.)

• "As many as 10 people complained about Constantine over several years, and these sources say the college did little to intervene."
• "Constantine attempted to silence her accusers in the spring of 2007 by sending them letters threatening to sue unless they dropped their claims. She used college stationery and the college mailing account."
• "Despite [former student Karen Cort's] accusation [of plagiarism], Constantine never pursued official sanctions. Instead, as punishment, she ordered Cort to cancel plans for the January break and come to her office. Constantine had her mark each book in her office with the professor's stamp. The shelves in the office held hundreds of books. The job took several days to complete."
• This particular plagiarized text was a second-year research paper written by the aforementioned former student, Karen Cort. Constantine told Cort to list Constantine's name as the primary researcher, despite Cort actually writing and researching the paper. For whatever reason, Cort agreed.
  
  (Read more...)

Howard Dean comes to Columbia, rips on McCain, and tells you to run for office: We don't need no stinking think tanks! Yeaaaaaaaaah!

"That's What God Said." Did you hear that Scott Stringer?

From Butler chairs to the USenate: GS Housing circus comes full circle. At least the Senate chairs look more comfortable.

TC students, burned by plagiarism, fight back with words.

Criticizing Critical Reading, Critical Writing.

For those of you who get caught plagiarizing on your finals or otherwise, here are some essays you can write about why plagiarism is bad.

The one Bwog used:

Plagiarism
(missing works cited)
By Bwog

Plagiarism is a distinguished sounding word. One would almost think that it sounds like some lofty philosophical ideal named for the great Greek teacher Plagiarus, something to be aspired to. This is not so. Plagiarism is in fact a moral misdemeanor, and an academic felony. By definition, plagiarism is "a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work." Socrates, Plato and Aristotle would have frowned on such a practice, and "Plagiarus" would have been kicked out of the academy. Such is the fate of many college students today.

The Opal Mehta scandal continues! Apparently not satisfied with plagiarizing from Columbia grad Megan McCafferty, Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan also lifted passages from Salman Rushdie's 1990 children's novel Haroun and Meg Cabot's Princess Diaries. At least she chose well with the Rushdie.

Learn all about it from our good friends at the Crimson.

When college-authored Young Adult Chick Lit scandals emerge, who better to comment than Barnard '08's own Robyn Schneider. Herself the author of two forthcoming Young Adult books, Robyn (B&W profile) is taking it personally.

Kaavya Viswanathan must have an industrial strength photographic memory.
Why, you ask? Because only someone with a mind like a steal (ha) trap
could unknowingly plagiarize Megan McCafferty's novels more than forty
times and do so unconsciously.

McCafferty's publisher, Steve Ross, called the Harvard sophomore's debut
novel, already a New York Times bestseller, "Nothing less than an act of
literary identity theft." He claims that it is "inconceivable" that
Kaavya was not aware of what she was doing.

But what I think is that Kaavya still isn't aware of what she's done.
Many of the litblogs I read are blaming Kaavya's plagiarism not on her
lack of morals but on her age. Apparently, if you give a teen a book
deal, they won't know better than to plagiarize. It's sentiments like
this that make me want to gouge my name out of the LA Times article that
featured Viswanathan and myself as young chick lit novelists. Do I have
to listen to sweeping generalizations that all young writers don't take
stealing seriously because our generation downloads illegal music files?
Just because James Frey lied doesn't mean I automatically assume all
memoirists are "embellishing" the hell out of their unremarkable lives.
And just because Kaavya apparently plagiarized doesn't mean that all young
novelists should be blamed. Can the world please leave the rest of us out
of this?

The publishing world has been all abuzz the past few weeks over Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan's new book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. Even the Blue and White fell under the spell of a peer with a $500,000 book deal and reviewed the book in this month's print edition.

Well, frustrated authors, rejoice! It was all too good to be true. The Harvard Crimson published an article tonight claiming that Kaavya plagariazed portions of fellow young adult chick lit (yes, that's a real genre) author Megan McCafferty's first two books.

Does that name sound familiar? Here's the Columbia twist-- Ms. McCafferty was the gentle vision in a red sundress who graced Columbia's bookstore last week with a reading (Bwog was there). Her third book takes place at Columbia, but we doubt Kaavya will get a second novel to work that into.

Textbook plagiarism after the jump and more in the Crimson article.