QUICK, somebody call Woodward and Bernstein, because we've got a scandal on our hands. Or maybe not. Hear the word scandal and you think of that alliterative duo of presidential fiascoes -- Watergate and Whitewater. You think interns. And if you're a student at the University, you shouldn't think of the recently closed plagiarism cases initiated by Physics Prof. Louis Bloomfield.
Today's media, the spoiled kid of the time when investigative stories like Watergate were still earth-shattering and fresh, loves to feed into the frenzy of anything that might draw in an audience for even a nanosecond. Television networks and publications toss around the word "scandal" to feed consumers' rabid consumption of sensationalism. Unfortunately for the University, the national media at the close of the Bloomfield trials has revived coverage of the plagiarism investigations, leaving the American public with a skewed vision of the honor system and school as a whole.
When the story broke in the national media in May 2001, covered in everything from newspapers to television programs, where Katie Couric on the "Today Show" mentioned on the air that the University was her alma mater. Once the Honor Committee formally announced on Nov. 25 the completion of the plagiarism trials, nationwide media coverage once again picked up.
The numbers themselves aren't particularly astronomical and didn't live up to the hyped expectations of widespread cheating that surfaced once the story broke last year. The Committee examined 158 cases, the majority of which were caught by Bloomfield's computer program for being the sources that were plagiarized. In the end, 59 people received formal accusations. Of those, 28 left the University to avoid a hearing, admitting guilt, and 20 were handed guilty verdicts in trial.
On the heels of the Committee's announcement of the end of the trials, the story began circulating in the national media toward the end of last week, especially on the Internet, from The Chronicle of Higher Education to other news Web sites. A roughly identical Associated Press story appeared on both the New York Times site and CNN.com. Regrettably, CNN went too far with its headline and played in to the sensationalism surrounding the trials.
The headline of the AP story at CNN.com was "U.Va. plagiarism scandal ends with 45 dismissals." Well, that's misleading in a purely factual sense because 48 students left the University, 28 of them on their own accord. Kudos to the fact-checker there. More significant to the nation's perception of the University and its honor system, though, is the collective labeling of the investigations as a "scandal."
The Random House Dictionary defines scandal as "a disgraceful or discreditable action, circumstance, etc." Alright, that may be the official definition, but the current connotation of the word alludes to the Whitewaters, Monica Lewinskys and Gary Condits of media fodder. It also, for today's conspiracy-hungry American public, implies some sort of overriding institutional plan to deceive the common folk. And for the sake of the honor system and the University as a whole, the plagiarism trials do not deserve such a distinction.
The proliferation of original coverage last year upon the initiation of the investigation and trials proved that there was no attempt by the University to stifle Bloomfield from speaking about the situation to the media. There was no cover-up to protect the University and its honor system from criticism or exposure. And last week, the Committee proved its openness with regard to the plagiarism cases through its official announcement of the conclusion of the trials and their ensuing release of statistics. In other words, nothing was shoved under the rug to justify the classification of the investigation as a scandal plaguing the University.
In addition, nothing should be considered scandalous in upholding the honor system and prosecuting those who violate the honor code. A scandal would have been a failure to initiate the cases at all. Imagine the feeding frenzy that would have occurred had these plagiarism cases been uncovered in some other way than by trial. With that in mind, initiating honor cases should have been perceived as routine, regardless of the number of people involved -- which in the end proved rather unexceptional. The Bloomfield trials showed that the University practices what it preaches, and there's nothing scandalous about that.
Random House also defines scandal as "malicious gossip." Maybe the media should just stop calling the kettle black.
(Becky Krystal is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. She can be reached at bkrystal@cavalierdaily.com.)
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