So it's not exactly "Naked News," but it's still the prototypical lazy frat boy's dream come true. "Download your workload" is the motto for www.schoolsucks.com, a web site that allows users to download essays and term papers on a wide variety of topics for free.
Founded by Kenny Sahr, a former journalism student at Miami International University, SchoolSucks is just one website, among many, that increasingly promise to rid high school and college students of their "term paper blues."
With greater reliance on computers and information technology, academia is starting to doubt the Internet, which it once praised as an innovative aid in research. Not only have the tools for plagiarism become accessible to anyone with a modem, but plagiarism itself is now a lucrative enterprise for those involved.
The controversy over Internet paper mills -- the sites that provide interested parties with pre-written essays -- has made Sahr even more pleased with his site and business.
In an interview with The Dartmouth, the 29-year-old entrepreneur said he was grateful that so many people have expressed displeasure about his site so vocally and openly.
"The fact that all these professors are writing in and getting angry is not an accident," Sahr said. "I counted on it for publicity reasons."
In addition to this pre-planned "publicity," Sahr's business has taken off because of an initial massive demand for this type of service.
Over 75 percent of students admit to some form of cheating, according to a study conducted by Rutgers University Professor Donald McCabe, who founded of the Center for Academic Integrity.
McCabe also found that cheating is more prevalent among fraternity and sorority members. Seventy-five percent of Greeks surveyed admitted to one or more incidents of test or exam cheating versus 61 percent of independents.
Sahr, though, sees businesses like his as doing a service not to cheaters only, but to the academic community as well. "Those kids that use [SchoolSucks] for plagiarism are just stupid," said Sahr. "Schools should thank SchoolSucks for weeding out the bad seeds that destroy the integrity of a campus."
He was quick to point out that there are no current studies showing that incidences of cheating have risen in the past years. He also noted that there is currently no research on the role Internet paper mills play in cheating.
Despite this lack of evidence, the academic community fears that the Internet could destroy integrity and the intellectual atmosphere on college campuses.
While most term paper web sites specifically advertise themselves as starting points for research work, teachers worry that their intended use does not match up with reality. Sites claim that they aim to provide a database of sources and notes on a wide variety of topics -- and many explicitly reject that their purpose is granting students finished work.
In supplying sources, term paper providers stress the fact that they are replacing initial library searches. However, with statements like "CLICK HERE -- and your homework worries will disappear," it is no surprise that students are confused and apt to misuse these websites.
Julie Ryan, a professor at George Washington University discovered in one of her classes recently that seven out of forty-two students plagiarized most or all of their papers from online sources, according to the university's website.
In an account, she wrote that several of her students offered disturbing reactions when caught. Instead of expressing remorse or shame, many brushed off accusations and some even denied them.
One student responded, "I talked to my advisor in the writing center who reviewed my paper. He told me that he didn't notice that, even though I gave him all the articles I used in my paper."
Detractors are quick to point out that as more students are turning to sites like this one for assistance, more are realizing that the quality of papers is not very high.
The quality of most of the papers on Sahr's site, as he freely admits, is generally below standard.
"The papers are not rated by me," Sahr said. "It's up to students to know what is good and what is not. Caveat emptor -- may the downloader beware."
Some web sites, though, are trying to remedy this quality problem. Recently, the "Evil House of Cheat" changed the format for its index of papers. For only $9.95 a year, a user can get every paper in the Evil House's database, a complete list of essays with the grade the paper received, the author's comments and the professor's comments about the paper.
Such improvements to Internet paper mills are inevitable as they cater more and more to the demands of their users, according to Sahr, who also said he sees the very existence of paper mills as completely inevitable.
When speaking with The Dartmouth about his decision to go into business with SchoolSucks, he said, "In 1995-96, I was in university and I had seen the Web, and realized its potential for students. I decided I wanted to create something for students and I knew that if I didn't do something like this, somebody else would."
When asked if he experiences any ethical dilemmas when he is told repeatedly that students are using his website to plagiarize, Sahr is very quick to point out that "cheating is lying, and therefore it is wrong." Sahr said that he is not making the students cheat.
"Don't these kids realize that eventually they'll have to deal with reality?" he asked.
Increasingly, students are having to deal with the reality of their actions.
And, perhaps ironically, the Internet is at the forefront of a new anti-plagiarism movement. One of the leading websites that fights cheating is plagiarism.org.
The site offers professors advanced tools for detecting plagiarism in their students' work. It provides "Document Source Analysis."
This technology uses a set of powerful algorithms to create a "digital fingerprint" of any text document. Then the document's "fingerprint" is cross-referenced against a local database containing hundreds of thousands of papers.
At the same time, DSA releases automated web crawlers to scour the rest of the Internet for possible matches. Finally, the program produces a list of possible web addresses where a student might have stolen a text.
But the web is not the only place where professors are developing methods of fighting the threat of plagiarism. Professor Julie Ryan of George Washington University, in a recent web article, compiled a list of traits common to plagiarized papers and has been circulating it in order to give professors without other technologies the tools for spotting cheating.
Ryan's article addresses the issue of context change first" students try to camouflage copying by changing the context of the original paper. She also says that missing footnotes are common to papers taken off the Internet. When questioned about it, a student often points to a bibliography and feigns ignorance when it comes to proper footnoting procedures. The last giveaway Ryan writes of if false references. She says students often cite nonexistent books or journal articles, or refer to sources unrelated to subject matter.
Sahr, the college dropout who founded SchoolSucks, is glad that professors like Ryan are having to rethink their teaching techniques. In a letter to educators, he takes credit for "having forced teachers to reevaluate their role as educators." He said he believes sites like SchoolSucks are "forcing the mediocre professor to be on his toes."
But Sahr stressed the point that he, like many others with similar businesses, is in it simply for the money.
"I think it's hilarious that the post-O.J. press is asking me about ethics," said Sahr, "I didn't write the rules of the game. I just know how to play them, and play them I will. I'm in this, first of all, for the money -- it's a profit venture, not a holiday camp."
Sahr's site, the biggest of the term paper mills with 40,000 hits a day, offers papers with no fee. His $5,000 monthly revenues are generated by the advertisers who buy space on his site. He in no way feels threatened by the recent technologies which cross-reference students' papers to those on the Web.
Nor is he worried about universities themselves coming after him. In October of 1997, Boston University brought a well-published lawsuit against eight providers of term papers and other "educational aids."
Boston University officials conducted a sting operation by posing as students who were seeking term papers to turn in as their own work for university assignments. After buying papers for such a purpose from eight of the term paper providers tested, the university sought an injunction in federal court to prevent the companies from selling term papers in Massachusetts. They also asked the court to dissolve the companies.
Both the companies and First Amendment advocates questioned the legitimacy of the lawsuit and the implications it could have for free speech. They suggested that the claim could pose a threat to any publisher who distributes information that is used by someone else for an inappropriate or illegal purpose.
"I shouldn't be compelled to know what someone is going to do with information I provide," Barton Lowe, the owner of Research Assistance, one of the companies named in the lawsuit, told the Chronicle of Higher Education after the lawsuit was filed.
Boston University's lawsuit against companies that sell term papers over the Internet was thrown out by a federal judge only two months after it was filed.
Sahr has not been affected by the lawsuits, such as the one by Boston University, and he has no plans to scale back his operation. Right now, he is currently expanding his collection to include papers in 15 languages in addition to the three languages -- English, Russian, Hebrew -- that are already available.
