In no more time than it takes to check e-mail, college students can have a plagiarized paper downloaded off the Internet.

Though the lure of Internet plagiarism is its ease and convenience, ISU professors reminded students that it’s still illegal.

Web sites such as www.schoolsucks.com allow visitors to search for papers by topic. The Web site’s collection boasts the wide range of topics.

Alexis Smith, sophomore in English, said she thinks Internet plagiarism is a growing trend.

“[Students think] it’s just public domain and you don’t think about having to cite it,” she said.

Neil Nakadate, university professor of English, said plagiarism is noticeable if the work submitted is drastically different in quality from the students’ other class writing.

Kenneth Windom, associate professor of geology, said he agreed.

Windom said plagiarism is occurring in his classes and is obvious because of the style of the writing.

“It’s rare, particularly in students taking 100-level courses, to find very sophisticated writing,” he said.

Nakadate said he suspects students plagiarize for a number of reasons.

“I think that it is partly because it’s interesting to try to do; it’s just an intriguing challenge,” he said.

Windom said plagiarism includes not only copying entire papers, but taking paragraphs from various sources.

“I check references and if I find that students have copied entire paragraphs, that’s plagiarism,” he said.

Nakadate said plagiarism occurs because of a student’s lack of organization.

“Sometimes they’re desperate, maybe because of a lack in time to do the work,” he said.

Renee Flack, sophomore in elementary education, said she knows Internet plagiarism is wrong but may occur because students are overly busy.

“I’ve never done it before, but maybe if I was desperate at two o’clock in the morning, I might consider it,” she said.

Nakadate said plagiarism is a serious offense to the university.

“Plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty and academic dishonesty compromises both the individual students’ work and then it compromises the integrity of the academic enterprise generally,” he said.

Windom said some students don’t realize the severity of plagiarism.

“I think that there are some students who honestly believe that what they’re doing is not wrong,” he said.

Nakadate said students may get away with plagiarism but it leads future employers to develop false assumptions about the person’s abilities because the grade they got in a course falsely reflects their talents.

“It leads to a misrepresentation of what their Iowa State degree means,” he said.

Students should not feel plagiarism is the best way to get a good grade, Windom said.

“[Students] think they’re going to impress a professor by sounding really good, when what we want is their understanding of [the material],” he said.

Susan Kohlhass, senior in genetics, said she would never consider plagiarizing a paper from the Internet.

“I don’t think I’d trust anybody else to write a paper I’m supposed to be researching,” she said.