Report on online editing service fails to recognize academic dishonesty

Congratulations to the two business majors who saw an opportunity and put together an online service that edits people’s writing. The idea came to one of them, it seems, after he broke up with a girlfriend who had edited his papers for him. The creation of this service was front page news in the Wildcat on Oct. 15.

UA students need to know, however, something the story did not tell them: that getting their papers edited through this or any other service without acknowledging to the teacher such assistance is a clear instance of academic dishonesty. Girlfriends seem often to provide this service, boyfriends not so much.

Anyone who really believes that using the service doesn’t misrepresent their own work will of course have no problem acknowledging the help they got from the service or the girlfriend.

Working with others to learn how to write better is a smart and entirely respectable thing to do. Most good writers work with other writers. Students who want to work with other UA writers to develop their own ability to write can get honest help for free at the English Department’s Writing Center in the Think Tank.

John Warnock

Department of English

Q&A missed out on asking some important questions

I was glad to see your Q&A with Tucson city council member Nina Trasoff in Wednesday’s Daily Wildcat, and I hope you have plans to interview all of the candidates in the upcoming city elections. Too often, we as university students fail to get involved in the larger Tucson community, and as a result we are often marginalized, demonized or outright ignored.

Tucson’s “”Red Tag”” ordinance is one such result of our lack of positive engagement, and I was disappointed that a question about this ordinance was not included in your interview. Just about any UA student who has ever been to a party is familiar with the shortcomings of this law, and the only way we will ever see a change in it is to make our voices heard by Tucson’s leaders — including our most powerful voice, our vote.

Daily Wildcat, please ask candidates where they stand on red tags so that we can make a fully-informed decision on election day.

Nick Seibel