requiem

I officially graduated from grad school yesterday and have begun my ascent, in a sense, from the sheltered sublunary world of studenthood to the dark sky of Lovecraftian horrors above. I suppose I will miss Atlanta and G. T. - a realization that I stumbled upon all too late a week or so ago. Very often we fail to grasp the true value of something in the stifling heat of Atlanta summers until cooler thoughts prevail at the onset of winter. At least that's what I would have thought, if my semester had ended as smoothly as it should have.

I was at the hotel, merrily brushing my teeth preparatory for bed on my final night in Atlanta, when I noticed I had a missed call from Swa. That's odd, I thought. Why's Swa calling me? Then I saw that I'd got a series of messages from her: "Dude I'm sorry. I followed your logic. I've accepted full responsibility. Please dont be angry at me. I didn't think he'd run the detector." What now? My head reeled. What is she talking about? I went and checked my email. I hadn't received anything. I asked Swa what she was talking about. She sent over screenshots of an email TB had sent her accusing her of plagiarism on the last project. I'd got TB's email by this point and rushed to read what it said. I read that I was being accused of plagiarism on the last project. Apparently Swa had submitted code similar to mine. In fact, it was a 97% match. As my head cleared a little bit, I realized that I had never shared my code with Swa. I barely knew her.

The only persons I'd shared code with were Mak, Meg, Mah, and Cha, and that was after they'd finished or were close to finishing the project by themselves. Then I went back to Swa and pressed her for more details. She said that she had referred to Mah's code and mine and that she had accidentally submitted the wrong code (i.e., mine). That made me think it was Mah who had shared my code with Swa, and I was royally pissed, because this was the very same Mah who several weeks ago had herself been a victim of plagiarism committed by her roommate and had bathed herself in our sympathies. Swa's messages were interspersed with "I'm sorry" and "Please don't be angry at me". I didn't know what to do, so I opened a group chat with Mak, Meg, Cha, and Nicky, and I learnt that all of them (excepting Nicky, who took the course last year) were in the same boat as I was. Mak and Cha were accused of collaborating, and Meg was accused of collaborating with - Swa again. That means two violations of the academic honor code on the part of Swa - a singular and singularly unfortunate feat.

The penalty for a first violation is a zero on the assignment concerned (regardless of whether you were the original author of the code and regardless of the reason) and a report of the event to the Office of Student Integrity. Your first violation doesn't otherwise have any consequences. Your second violation, on the other hand, is far more serious, as you would expect. You wouldn't expect students to be dumbass enough to do the same thing twice. Yet here was Swa, putting other serial plagiarizers to shame with her stunning lack of originality. She had put in close to zero effort in the class throughout, and hadn't even done a good job cheating. After hearing of the incident with Meg, I was disinclined to believe Swa when she told me she'd submitted my code by accident. Rather, I thought she just hadn't realized they were going to run the detector and had never cared enough about the class to submit her own code.

Meg came over to the hotel at 2:30 in the morning to talk to me. I sat with her in the gym, because it was unoccupied at that hour. Nicky had warned me that Meg was about to let loose the waterworks for unspecified reasons, and I quickly realized why when Meg confessed that it was she who had shared my code with Swa - a plot twist worthy of Shakespeare. I analyzed my own feelings and realized that I wasn't really angry with her or with Swa at that time. I only had enough concern to spare for myself. Today, when I'd had time to recover and reflect on what had happened, I realized that I was pretty angry with Swa - rightfully so, in my opinion - , and I don't think I have it in me to forgive her. I hope she doesn't lose or job or be compelled to leave the country, but I don't think I can forgive her all the same.

As for me, I'm not out of the woods yet. I saw my grade go from an A to a B with this violation, and I just hope that they don't contrive to run the detector again on previous assignments and discover other violations of which I have no knowledge. There's twenty-four hours left till grades are finally due. If I get through them without further damage to my grades or my integrity, I will be glad - despite the B. I recognize that T. B. was only doing his job (annoyingly well), and I recognize that I did violate the honor code by sharing my project. (The note at the very top of my assignment report, above the series of test cases that I passed with flying colors, bears testimony to this.) But my conscience is still clear, for what it's worth. My position that you can't trust people was shaken somewhat after I'd met some terrific people here at G. T., but it has been reaffirmed now; and G. T. has, on its part, made sure that that I don't develop fond memories of it in my old age. I originally intended to write a post celebrating my graduation, but I suppose this will have to do.