Few things are as disheartening as confronting unrepentant plagiarism. There are the ignorant who, inexplicably failed by the secondary education system, unwittingly commit higher education’s unforgivable sin unwittingly, because they do not know how to correctly cite anything. I do not speak here of these innocent hearts, but rather of those who know the right thing to do and choose the wrong anyway.

I received a paper last week. The first paragraph sounded too good to be true; and it was. It copied verbatim, with some minor punctuation and syntax changes, the Wikipedia page on the same topic. When confronted with their baffling similarities, the student replied that she must have studied the Wikipedia page so much that she copied it by accident.

Moral bankruptcy and a potential lifetime devoid of integrity can begin with the omission of a single citation or pair of quotation marks; but I do not know how to make the case to those who have already crossed the line that they are selling their souls for the sake of an easy paragraph or two. I barely know how to keep myself from lapsing into despair after one such incident. I only know that if I am able to do so and face this waste of human potential again and again, it is because of the other 99.9% of my students. The future belongs to them.

Everyone I know who has pursued graduate study in the humanities has done so, at least in part, because they were enamored with learning, with pursuing the subject matter simply out of love for it. We are idealists, for what could be more idealistic than that?

We step out of that dream into the cold shower of life. I see so many of us, now jaded, few spirits intact. I ponder what might help us preserve idealistic hearts. I know that teaching is a part of the answer, connecting with those, like our younger selves, who have not yet faced the oft harsh realities of life. Beyond that, I have no easy answers, only questions.

We must hone a pragmatic edge, a shield for our tender souls, but do so without a hint of duplicity. We must be sharp as vipers and innocent as doves. We are dolphins in a shark world.

Service learning provides the tools for drawing students out of themselves and out of their potential self-centeredness. This is critical, especially in an age when education is increasingly treated as a commodity and students as consumers. Service learning also holds added benefits for me, the instructor. My teaching should always be other-centered. But in the context of service learning, my teaching can be centered on both my official students and on those whom we serve together. By reflecting on our shared experience, we can grow as members of the same academic community and fragile society. By shifting our orientation from “what can we gain?” to “what can we give?” we have hope of elevating the discussion to matters of lasting importance, doing so with maturity and integrity.