Opinion At least be creative By Tony Laszlo	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
せめて創意工夫を凝らせないものか イラク駐留の米兵士からの手紙が問題になっている。｢市民が米軍の努力を歓迎している」という 全く同文の手紙が、あちこちの新聞社宛てに それぞれ別の兵士の名前で送付されたのだ…。

A student in one of my university classes submitted a final report by e-mail. As I read the paper, something about the way it was written set off a mental alarm. I ran some checks and confirmed my fears: The report was a line-for-line reproduction of someone else's work that had been published on the Internet. The blatant copy-and-paste job probably took all of five minutes to complete.

That one of my students would try such a stunt was a most unpleasant discovery. As I try to have a rapport with each one, I couldn't help but feel that a trust had been abused. And if one is going to cheat, at least be a bit creative, I found myself thinking. Not that creative cheating would be condonable, mind you. But if the student had been a bit more clever about it, I suppose I wouldn't have felt that my intelligence had been insulted. The fact that the topic of the report was "The Responsible Use of the Internet" added to my dismay.

It is small consolation but a recent event illustrated that students are not the only ones to get caught making lame attempts at cheating. A small-town newspaper in America notified its readership that two hometown soldiers stationed in Iraq had each sent a letter to the editor. In the letters the soldiers wrote about the important role the U.S. military was playing in that country, and about how well their efforts were being received. The newspaper decided not to run either letter, due to its strict policy on form letters. You see, except for the signatures, the letters were identical.

But that's not all. Similar stories began cropping up in small towns across the country. More than a dozen newspapers had run the document, unaware of the duplicates in other regions. One father contacted his son straight away to congratulate him on the fine letter he'd written for the hometown gazette. The boy's response? "What letter, Pop?" How can someone send a letter back home without knowing about it? And how can identical letters be popping up all over the place? The answer should be obvious, especially to anyone who has done any teaching: Someone was trying to pull a fast one.

In fact, it turns out that the commander of the American 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, stationed in Kirkuk, Iraq, had ordered the mass mailing. A total of five hundred copies of the same letter, each "signed" by a different member of the unit, had been sent out to the editors of each soldier's hometown newspaper. Via the Army's PR department, the officer explained that he had hoped to showcase the work the battalion had done and "share that pride with people back home."

Apparently, the officer will not face disciplinary action. According to news reports, military spokespersons consider his intentions to have been honorable. Intentions aside, I find this outlandish attempt to manipulate the media and public opinion entirely despicable. To make matters worse, it insults our collective intelligence. Did they really think we wouldn't notice the deception? And do they really think we'd give them a passing grade?

Shukan ST: Nov. 7, 2003

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