Walking out of the main building a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that posters advertising an "essay mill" were plastered all over the walls. The touting was in service of a particular web site that encouraged students to register with the group, and in return (for all manner of spam advertising, I would guess) they would be able to contribute essays to a essay bank or solicit essays online.
Why, it occurred to me, do we not block access to these sites from campus?
Now, in fairness, I have often heard two good arguments against blocking any sites on campus. First, we would all agree, universities are sites of open discussion and debate, and we really should not do what totalitarian states are censured for doing. Second, we can block campus access all we want, and students will switch on their wireless cards or slip across the street to some commercial internet hotspot.
It is not that I am unsympathetic to either argument, but both seem beside the point. After all, totalitarian states block internet access to certain websites in order the stifle debate, and there is (or should be) no shortage of debate on campus. But the very foundation of our academic mission stands squarely against submitting evaluation materials that are not our own, and so if we are unashamed to publish rules of academic conduct that prohibit this activity, setting out in detail precisely what we do when we find students in contravention, why should we not be able to identify and act against sites that facilitate this conduct? This is not a slippery slope. I am not talking about choosing sides in a contentious political debate, after all: there is nothing in our university calendar that deals with the state of Israel. I am talking about putting our electronic money where are our disciplinary mouths. If we find websites that seek to undermine what we do, we cut them off. Similarly, we all recognize that students can walk ten minutes and binge drink, but that has never, in my memory, led any administrator to conclude that, as a result, we should have an all-day happy hour at the campus pub. As a matter of fact, campus pubs often have more restrictions than establishments off campus.
In my time in the academy, the everyday wonders of the internet have been introduced and have become an integral part of our daily life in the university. Not wishing to appear precipitous, and ever in awe of its potential, we continue to tip-toe around some issues of use and abuse. The internet is all grown up: it can handle a little more regulation; it can handle getting treated like everything else students use on a day-to-day basis.
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