From day one, students are taught that using someone else’s idea as your own without citing them is wrong. It is copying and plagiarism. There are pages in academic handbooks across the United States about the penalties a student will face if they are caught plagiarizing, things from failing the assignment to facing expulsion. However, there seems to be plenty of political plagiarism in the United States. As a student, I’m forced to question why it is acceptable for the leaders of our nation to commit what is considered one of the worst cardinal sins in the academic world?
By now, many people are aware of the most recent example of political plagiarism by Malania Trump and her speechwriters. Now, there are people who are excusing her actions because she did not write the speech herself, but she had a speechwriter do it. However, I have two issues with this scenario. My first being is that in an interview, she told NBC News that she wrote the speech herself with very little help, which is why she only had to read it over once for practice. If this were the case, she would have been expelled immediately for knowingly plagiarizing someone else’s work. Or two, she unknowingly plagiarized another person’s work because she did not even read over it before addressing it to the nation. Regardless, had I turned in work that had any amount of plagiarism in it, I would have been accountable for my actions, because ignorance is not a defense. It is my job as the one claiming ownership of the work to properly review it. This is but one example of political figures being excused from repercussions that a student would most certainly face.
Now to be clear, this is not me siding with one political party or another, because it happens on both sides. Here is another example from the political past. Current President Barack Obama was caught plagiarizing Governor Patrick in 2008. However, when Obama was confronted on the issue, he acknowledged that he should have cited the governor but did not feel it was too big of a deal because the two share ideas from time to time. Perhaps I should consider using this idea with an academic colleague, although I do not feel my professors would consider this an acceptable practice.
The upsetting thing is that I could go on about the multitude of occurrences regarding political dishonesty, acts from Joe Biden and the U.K. Labour Party Leader Neil Kinnock to even Vladimir Putin. Ironically, back to Michelle Obama, the victim of the current scandal is also guilty of committing this act herself. Which brings me back to my point. Why are we, as students, forced to follow rules with harsher consequences than those who are supposed to be leaders of nations, the people who are meant to be role models to students like myself? Maybe if we want our politicians to give an honest, well thought out, and original speech, we should require them to use the same guidelines and punishments that we, mere students, must abide by, or have a student as their speechwriter, since we are accustomed to these policies.
