Umm...

So this went down in my class today.

One student gave this big impassioned speech about how his infant daughter, who is half-Mexican and half-white, is the future of America, and that we will continue to see more mixing and people will be ok with it. It was nice and everyone else jumped in immediately with platitudes ("yes, our children ARE the future!"). Then one white guy raised his hand and said this:

"Yeah, I totally agree and I hate to use this example but it's like dogs, you know, you have to look way back in the line for a pure breed because of all the mixing."

And then there was a great silence...

And then I had a private conversation with the student about thinking before he speaks and how it's not a great idea to compare humans to animals no matter how innocently the comment was intended.

Who, Me?

How do I know that you plagiarized? (circle one):

1. Because another student turned in the same assignment with the exact same wording.

2. Because I found this exact sentence on a website called cheatonyourhomework.com

3. Because you copied and pasted directly from the internet and didn't even bother to change the...

a) font
b) text color
c) text size
d) margins
e) weird spaces that emerge when you take something formatted to fit in a column and paste it into a document

...in order to match the text of the rest of the assignment, you lazy cheating fool.

4. Because I've been reading your work all semester and I don't believe that you came up with this sentence by yourself:

The discourse and visual imagery of Orientalism is laced with notions of power and superiority, formulated initially to facilitate a colonizing mission on the part of the West and perpetuated through a wide variety of discourses and policies.*

Hey, I can use Google too.

Seriously, do you think I am a total moron?

*Shockingly, found here and not originating in one of my students' heads