Brown and White Vol. 111 No. 12

              the brown and white lehigh university's student newspaper founded in 1894 vol 11l no 12 tuesday october 21 2003 all the lehigh news first web site prompts plagiarism policy by maggie triggs news writer the university is in the process of adopting a new policy to combat the problem of plagia rism on campus beginning this semester pro fessors have the option of employing a powerful anti-pla giarism software service to help them identify plagiarizers www.turnitin.com allows subscribers to upload written work to the web site's database where the text is checked against millions of published documents and internet sources as well as thousands of student papers from other participating schools and universities the idea of using the software was introduced last year by the educational policy committee as part of the university's academic integrity initiative the likelihood of the service becoming a permanent policy will depend on its popularity said jacob kazakia an engineering pro fessor and last year's educational policy committee chairman we purchased a site license for a two-year trial period he said it's a yearly thing if we notice it is being used we will keep it the service costs 3,600 per year while the software is lauded by some professors as easy effi cient and effective others raise ethical questions it sounds like a great idea if you're a professor but in my mind it positions every student as a cheater said adjunct english professor stephen tompkins tompkins said one faculty member had brought up the idea of uploading every student paper from the required fresh man composition courses into the turnitin database because everybody's paper is uploaded it assumes potential guilt and lofts everybody into this bin of suspicion he said tompkins offered a differ ent method of dealing with plagiarism b&wphoto by alex schwendeman an asa packer impersonator poses for a picture at the 125th founder's day ceremony held on friday palestinian-israeli conflict examined by sara russell b&wphoto by andrew figuozzi news writer current issues regarding israelis and palestinians in the middle east were discussed thursday during a program held in wtiitaker lab leading the presentation were mohammed matar 07 a palestinian from gaza gill cnaan an israeli from jerusalem nathaniel golub 04 co-president of the hillel society faisal khan graduate student president of the muslim students association and eamon aloyo a graduate student in political science several university organiza tions sponsored the event aloyo explained the goal of the discussion our purpose was to educate students about the conflict not only to inform them of history but also what is rarely seen on the news here to communicate personal afflictions that almost everyone in both israel and palestine suffer he said in his opening statement golub expressed the importance of peaceful dialogue our campus stands where we see other campuses having a lot of violence discussing israel-palestine issues we stand at a point where we can go either way after each panelist made an opening statement the group then took questions from the audience to ensure people under stood the conflicts taking place and to give a peaceful non biased response there were five main questions asked the first dealing with the media and whether it was giving a fair repre sentation of the issues the panelists said they felt that the media in the united states does not fully report on the palestinian issue leaving many people in the united states unaware of the statistics given by amnesty international for example in 2002 at least 1,000 palestinians were killed 2,000 palestinian homes were destroyed 3,000 palestinians were in military jail and 3,800 were tried before military courts in trials that do not meet interna tional standards khan spoke about an incident which took place several years ago i read something by a lead ing journalist that they report on suicide bombings but not on palestinians because palestinians dying isn't news that happens everyday khan said the second question con cerned the security fence that is presenter and palestinian mohammed matar speaks at the middle east discussion held thursday in whitaker see plagiarism page 3 see middle east page 3 4-atßh bbbj_lbsp^m6lv_<isßhi 5 ■ ffi hnns_nd l j b^.w _^......... < _ w-krtww rt < i«(«i lehigh volleyball beats lafayette on friday see story on page 20 sports 17-20 men's soccer 17 sports potlight 19 wresling 20 law school fair helps to guide future careers in law see story page 5 news 1-6 college news briefs 2 ipd grant 4 police reports 6 mutual funds under investigation brokers may have breached confidentiality see story page 9 business 9-11 european economics 9 rite aid fudges earnings 9 look whos investing 11 quick americans collective ly eat 100 pounds of chocolate every sec ond source www.amusingfacts.com