Earlier this semester, I caught a student who had plagiarized an essay. Yesterday, I caught two additional students plagiarizing in their essays. This would be upsetting in any event but there’s an added layer to this story: they are the three African American students in a class. The only three.

I am torn between my usual righteous anger towards cheaters — particularly those who cheat in the most obvious and insulting ways: cutting and pasting from free paper sites online — and a sense of complicity in a system that fails to adequately prepare students of color for the rigors of college life. Okay, maybe it’s my liberal white guilt speaking, but it just seems wrong that these three students would be the ones to cheat and the ones I have to punish.

I like to think I’m sensitive to the ways that race impacts the classroom — just as I am attentive to gender, class, and sexuality issues in the classroom. I know that the statistics show that students of color are less likely participate in class discussion, to seek assistance from their professors or other support services, or even to graduate. I do what I can to address these realities and to provide support to all of my students. It is agonizing to think that somehow the way I structured and ran this class might have contributed to these students feeling either so disenfranchised or so disconnected that they thought plagiarism was their best or only option.

I’m also worried about how it might appear to an outside observer. In a relatively small class, I will have accused three African American students of cheating and it’s likely that they will all fail the class as a result. At least so far, no other students have plagiarized — although there’s still time, since I’m not finished with my grading. But, how does that look? I’ll tell you: it looks like I’m a racist grader, who expects non-white students to be incapable of producing sophisticated writing.

I’ve actually toyed with the possibility of altering my usual policy — which is to accept no excuses and automatically fail any plagiarized essay — and give these students a chance to rewrite their essays. But I cannot decide whether that would make me more guilty of treating the students differently — like they’re a special case.

It’s a messy, messy business. Any suggestions?

UPDATE: I recovered from my temporary pang of disquiet over this situation after I was informed by one of the plagiarists that he had hired someone to write his paper for him. Apparently, he responded to a flyer posted on campus for a “typing” service. He handed over his notes from the class and the individual was paid to “type” up the paper from these notes — the radical divide between typing and composition apparently not troubling his conscience at all. Now, my feelings are redirected as outrage towards professional plagiarists.