My tutee has plagiarised my work! AIBU to have sent this email?

[DissertationDrama]

I have been privately tutoring a third year university student through the dissertation process. This has included face to face sessions and proofreading. Some months ago I gave this student a copy of my (first class) undergraduate dissertation with the express instruction not to copy it, to use it purely for structuring guidance. During my degree my university provided every student with copies of ex-students' dissertations to use for the same purpose, so I assumed this was a generous, but fairly normal action on my part. How I regret it now! This evening the student has sent me the latest chapter of their dissertation, and it is identical to the same chapter of my dissertation, with perhaps one word in every twenty changed to match the topic their dissertation concerns. WIBU to have sent the following email?

Dear Student,

This is is plagiarism.

You have completely copied my X chapter, changing odd words to make it relevant to your topic. On a personal level this is unfair, but from an academic point of view this is completely unacceptable. You absolutely must not submit this - you will be caught. Your university will scan every piece of work submitted for plagiarism and this will definitely be picked up, particularly because it was originally written by a student of this university only twelve months ago. If you are caught you could loose your degree, there are also consequences for me as the original author of the work. Again, I will reiterate: you absolutely cannot submitthis as part of your dissertation.

I sent you a copy of my work as guidance, in the same way that the university gave everyone copies of previous students' work last year. It's fine to follow the rough structure of another person's work, but I did not and do not give you permission to copy it.

As you haven't actually attempted to submit my work as your own (only sent it to me) I'm going to give you a chance to change this. For reasurance I want to see a completely new version of this chapter that bares no resemblance to my work by X date. If you send this to me by then, then I'll continue to look at your subsequent work if you still want me to. We all make mistakes after all. However, if you don't send me a totally new methods chapter, I will be forced to report this to the university to protect both of us.

Let me know which it is going to be.

From,
Dissertation Drama.

[SugarMiceInTheRain]

I think your email is perfect - unequivocal and fair.

[RandomMess]

Geez what an idiot they are being. It is very advisable to have sent that email as it makes it clear that they expressly do not have your permission to copy it!!!

[Rachie1986]

Good email. Very clear. Let us know the response!!

[DissertationDrama]

Thank you both. I hate confrontation like this, which causes me to doubt whether that email was fair, but I absolutely cannot allow this to happen. I would imagine this will mark the end of our professional relationship.

[FloralMist]

As if they thought you wouldn't notice?

[TheImprobableGirl]

Sounds a fair message to me- I will point out there are a couple of spelling errors, in case you need this to come across professionally (I.e ‘loose’ where you intended to mean ‘lose’ and ‘bares’ which should be ‘bears’ I think

[DissertationDrama]

FloralMist
On a personal level it's the insult to my intelligence that I'm most annoyed about

[BuntyII]

It's a bit over dramatic and long winded. Could you not say, dear student, this chapter is remarkably similar to x chapter of the document I sent to you - as you know plagiarism has serious consequences and software exists that will flag this chapter as such. Can you rewrite and send to me by X date, and kindly do not plagiarise my work again.

[Doobigetta]

Your email is fine, but if I were you I'd retain the academic high ground by spelling "lose" and "bears" correctly. Sorry, I know spag pedantry is arsey, but in the context....

[TheImprobableGirl]

Sorry, misread as AIBU to send, rather than WIBU to have sent. Good email!

[Mouikey]

Perfect email and very reasonable.

[DissertationDrama]

Annoying about the spelling errors, but too late now!

Buntyll Yes that would have been better. Bit caught up in the moment.

[MadMags]

Yeah it's a tad dramatic but sent now so...

[DissertationDrama]

Oh dear! That'll teach me not to send emails when I'm annoyed

[oblada]

Long winded and over dramatic. What on earth do u think the university will do to you? Just tell him to re-write it and yes best spell properly :)

[jerrysbellyhangslikejelly]

Excellent email and a completely fair and reasonable course of action. If you suspect they have submitted it, you must report it, in order to protect yourself. Silly person to even consider doing this, surely they know all submitted work is scanned and compared to others students work?

[Storminateapot]

Universities run these things through software which picks up plagiarism, it would be spotted before anyone even got as far as reading it to mark it and be thrown out.

Your tutee needs to know this and reconsider their entire dissertation in the light of that knowledge in case there are other cut & paste jobs in there that you haven't noticed. Very stupid behaviour. Your email is perfectly reasonable.

[notapizzaeater]

Do they not realise Check This Stuff?

Hope they see sense

[DissertationDrama]

I work there, so I'm concerned that it could have been the wrong thing to have sent the student my work for reference, and this might be difficult to justify.

Yes ok - I've understood about the spelling mistakes now.

[myrtleWilson]

Seems reasonable email to me - I know of a university student who plagiarised one of their lecturers work in a Master's level essay. Student received 0% for that piece of work - so you've given them a chance to avoid that sort of outcome and hopefully lessons learnt.

[reddressblueshoes]

To be fair, if your undergraduate dissertation wasn't published - and you don't say it was - I imagine that it wouldn't be picked up using plagiarism software. A lot seems able to get through now. I think your letter was entirely fair, and I think to be honest it strongly suggests this is a student with a tendency to plagiarise so I would be very careful in my dealings with them in the future.

[DissertationDrama]

It wasn't published, but a synopsis of it was, if that makes any difference.

[Gruach]

May I ask, do lots of students have extra, private tuition at university?

I’ve never heard of such a thing. (And admit to being really quite shocked.)

[DissertationDrama]

Gruach

No. Exceptional circumstances, and I bent over backwards to help the student through them.

[DissertationDrama]

Gruach

Also, more money than sense!