Aura V. @auravulpes@computerfairi.es

we don't actually know if high school academic integrity records are usually available to or inspected by employers and colleges, but that was the story they told us in high school. this was basically the only place in high school where fucking up an assignment came with threats of being eternally damned by all society, instead of just failed.

and like okay, if you included even one sentence that was written by some unrelated author in a published academic paper without quoting and citing, you'd be in pretty hot water, we get that. but uhhhhh last time we checked, most people's high school assignments don't have the kind of stakes riding on them that makes that true of academic journals

most of our teachers in high school told us something like "incorrectly-formatted citations are plagiarism" and gave us this whole fire-and-brimstone sermon about how we would be branded for life as liars and foul imps if we fucked it up even a little

and that's really just not an okay thing to do

it's an actual factual abuse of authority

we're angry about this because of how many high school english teachers, including our own father, we have heard using "don't plagiarize!" as a conveniently potent threat to make bored students listen to drivel about MLA formatting

it's really disingenuous to do and we're sick of it

plagiarism is when you knowingly lie and explicitly claim that someone else's work is yours. failing to properly identify a quote _in an assignment that specifically required quotes_ is really just fucking not that

big one: speech classes

no. giving a speech containing quotes and failing to identify their sources, especially if the sources are listed in the written materials provided to the teacher, is not plagiarism. it's careless, and it's fair for it to result in a poor grade, but it's not something you put on a student's permanent fucking record. jesus christ

trying and failing to cite sources correctly, or not individually citing quotes that are still presented as quotes, is extremely not the same thing as plagiarism

quit threatening kids with extremely serious accusations just because they didn't understand MLA format on the first try