The Mary Lyon Buildings

Email #9

Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 22:07:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: David Bing 
To: dconner2@swarthmore.edu, phoenix@swarthmore.edu
Subject: Phoenix article on "The Diabolical origins of ML"

Hello again,

I asked both in email and tonight in person for a list of the sources used
in the writing and still have not been informed of what specific resources
were used in for the article beyond my webpage and page 55 in Walton's
Informal History of Swarthmore.  Using my webpage in this way without
citing it is a deliberate act of plagiarism, as defined in Swarthmore's
course catalog.  To quote from
http://www.swarthmore.edu/Home/Academic/catalog/collegelife.html :  


"a. Some of the student's work coincides with or closely paraphrases a
source that is not properly acknowledged. Sources that must be
acknowledged include, but are not limited to, books, articles in books,
journal articles, Web pages, graphs, charts, tables, data sets, etc. in
any of the sources just mentioned. Proper acknowledgment must indicate
both the source and how it served as a source for any specific portions of
the student's work that have been based on it.

b. Glaring coincidences in the work of students on exams, papers, problem
sets, etc., where cooperation in producing the work was not permitted."

It is extremely obvious that Seth Sias' article both 'closely paraphrased'
the writing on my page and has numerous 'glaring coincidences' with
it.  In a past email I asked for the Phoenix to specifically deny that
this was an instance of plagiarism; they did not, and instead sent me an
ambiguous response that evaded the question.  This is not a simple matter
of failing to cite a source of the article; as I have stated before, the
remarkable similarities in phrasing and sentence structure lead me to
believe that this is more than just an instance of the author
'unconsciously using' some of the phrases he read on my webpage when
writing the article.  I believe that I have a very strong case to present
to the Deans' Office, and will go to them for adjudication in this matter
unless the Phoenix specifically acknowledges in this week's editorial that
one of its writers did in fact plagiarize the material from my webpage in
the writing of his article.

I hope to hear from you soon.


Sincerely,
David Bing

absolut swarthmore
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