by Matthew Fouts

Created on: November 27, 2008   Last Updated: November 28, 2008

A Short Speech to my Students

Good morning, sunshines. It's good to see you all here for your college writing class. Now, before we continue our discussion of Greek tragedy, I would like to call your attention to something we discussed in our previous session. You will recall that we were talking about the Oedipus of Sophocles, and we determined that one thing Sophocles is trying to warn us about in this play is the way in which hidden truth will, in the fullness of time, come to be known by all.

I had occasion to think about this idea more deeply over the weekend, as I was grading your essays, several of which appear to have been entirely cut and pasted from the internet. I was particularly impressed by the fanciful nature of one student, who managed to plagiarize, in the space of two and a half pages, from about.com, First Corinthians, and Bishop John Shelby Spong. I particularly liked the bit from the Bible, since Corinth is the city in which Oedipus believed he had originally been born.

This eclectic mixture of other peoples' writing not only displays a high level of creativity, not to mention a certain ability to research, but also calls to mind certain post-postmodern ideas concerning the ownership of text in the age of hypertext. Nonethless, it will not prevent its "author" from recieving a grade of F.

I would like to encourage others among you to at least try and make it slightly difficult for your teachers to detect your pathetic attempts to stick it to the man. You will recall that, in the play we just read, Oedipus won his fame by solving the riddle of the sphinx. Everyone enjoys a challenge, including myself.

So imagine my dissapointment when one of you emailed me an essay, but forgot to remove the hyperlinks from the plagiarized portions. Picture how crestfallen I was when I had only to click on the first word of the essay: "Sophocles," which was colored blue and underlined, to reveal the fact that you had cut and pasted your entire essay from www.historyforkids.com. I should also like to recommend that you at least plagiarize from sources at your own grade level.

Well, at any rate, the question I posed to the class last week, whether or not Sophocles' Oedipus is still relevant to the modern college student, has now been answered to my satisfaction. Only let us hope that certain members among us do not again have cause to opine, in the words of the ancient playwrite, "Lost! Ah Lost! At last it's blazing clear."

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