I agree that Emily Toth fell down on the ignoring-dishonesty part. If the letter-writer is correct that the student's husband wrote the paper, there is no documentation of plagiarism, and any decent set of institutional rules should put the onus on the instructor to back up an allegation of misconduct. But the instructor can have an ungraded pop-quiz with one question: "What was the main point you were trying to communicate in your paper? Answer in 20 words or less." That would probably address the ghostwriting problem and also the point of Toth that maybe an adjunct should pay attention to the great number of Ds on papers.

There are serious problems with academia, but the failure to rat on ones colleagues is a minor one. The major one is the failure to rat on the departments' and universities' policies of teaching garbage and prohibiting freedom of speech. The big problem is not individual failures, but rather public and collective failures.

Sherman Dorn is quite right; the onus is on the instructor to prove wrongdoing, and the standard of evidence is generally, and with good reason, pretty high. As someone who has filed and perused at least one plagiarism case every year but one of my tenure-track life (I've done about 10 cases after eight years as a permanent/full-timer) and won all but one, in addition to guiding some sessionals through their own cases as a programme director (I sat in on the student interviews, and at one point basically took over) I can tell you that either you produce the source (book, website, whatever) that the paper was plagiarised from or you don't file the case. This is without a doubt much harder for the slipperier category of "inappropriate assistance," which is what this case sounds like. But it simply won't do to just say "the student doesn't write this well, s/he must have had inappropriate assistance," such has having the paper written by a spouse. I've never heard of Many Eyes or any of these other programmes, and to be frank they sound pretty suspect to me. My belief is that you either produce concrete evidence of wrongdoing, get the student to confess to wrongdoing in an interview, or move on. This does indeed mean that sometimes cheaters walk, but this is just a cost of living in a society that believes in the principle of presumption of innocence.

What is described in this post and in many others suggests there is no higher ethical standard in academia than in, say, a police or fire department. Maybe I'm incredibly naive (and bigoted), but this is very sad.

Responding briefly to Jerry White's comment, the presumption of innocence applies to U.S. criminal law, and not necessarily to every context where there is suspected wrongdoing. The situation described here is an example of the metaphysical question of whether to let 10 guilty people walk free in order to prevent the erroneous conviction of one innocent person (or vice versa).

Two things:

1) With no proof, I agree with those who have commented before: no case.

2) I don't know why the adjunct in this case is worried. SHE HAS NOTHING TO LOSE. She already gave the Dr's wife a "D". Her letter is already gone, and she's a fool if she thinks otherwise.

How do we know this, you may ask? Well, the good Dr. was willing to write a paper for his wife. This suggests (1) he cares about what his wife's transcript looks like, and (2) he's not a very ethical person himself.

The letter isn't just lost. There is no letter and there never will be, unless the adjunct has a career death wish.

What shocks me is that Ms. Mentor doesn't seem to recognize this.

Where does getting help writing a paper go over the edge to plagiarism? I'm not sure it ever does, I think you are identifying a different issue.

Though the core issue is the protections that are actually needed by faculty vs. the ones they have. This is a clear example of a faculty member who feels completely unprotected where protection is really needed.

BobS..."suggests there is no higher ethical standard in academia than in, say, a police or fire department"...it's not obvious to me *why* their should be higher ethical standards in academia than in these two fields...indeed, since people risk their LIVES in police and fire work, it seems possible that people pursuing these callings might be more ethically-driven than the population in general.

Agreed that there is no documentation of plagiarism -- and also that the problem might not be plagiarism per se, but the foggier kind of dishonesty involved in "overhelping." Still, as Stephen M. notes -- there is an evident problem here, and a big part of it is lack of recourse for the untenured instructor to pursue the issue in any fashion. I like Sherman's idea of a quiz. What can also work nicely is meeting with the student to discuss the paper. If the work isn't theirs, they tend not to be able to talk about it well. Even if you can't prove they didn't write it, you can let them hang themselves out to dry and let them know that you are on to them. With words carefully chosen, this can be done without making accusations and can be very effective (spoken from experience).

David Foster:

I don't disagree with you that motivation to join a police or fire department may include genuine altruism, though money and pension benefits have a great deal to do with the decision in my view. My comment above on police and fire communities stems from their extreme "tribal" nature, where problems in their service to the public are fiercely denied and covered up (circle the wagons). This is the culture. Similar "tribal" behavior is seen in academia as well, as evidenced by some of the more dramatic revelations on global warming in recent weeks. The example in this post of Erin's is more garden variety self promotion or nepotism, something found everywhere. The disappointment is that all the education credentialing found in a college prof doesn't change the person underneath.

"What can also work nicely is meeting with the student to discuss the paper. If the work isn't theirs, they tend not to be able to talk about it well. Even if you can't prove they didn't write it, you can let them hang themselves out to dry and let them know that you are on to them. With words carefully chosen, this can be done without making accusations and can be very effective (spoken from experience)."

I was wondering about this. Maybe the adjunct should ask to meet with the student, and have both papers in front of her, and say something like, "I notice a startling difference in quality and style between these two papers. What happened here?"

But that won't really help the matter of how to grade the paper, unless the student bursts into tears and admits her husband wrote it for her (unlikely) or unless the student actually has a very believable explanation as to how she could have authored both. That's a tough one.