#5. Forging a Middle Path: Plagiarism, Gatekeeping, and AI as a Mark of Otherness
In my last blog post, I briefly discussed my scholarly forays into the historical conversation around composition and abolitionism, which included a revisiting of Sharon Crowley's concept of "composition's ethic of service." Last quarter, when I was researching and writing my seminar paper about the New Abolitionists, I stumbled across a 1999 essay from Rebecca Moore Howard titled "The New Abolitionism Comes to Plagiarism," which was published in the edited collection Perspectives on Plagiarism and Intellectual Property in a Postmodern World. For anyone following this blog, one already knows that a pre-2010 book with the word "postmodern" in its title is always a prime candidate for a blog post. Due to a lack of time, I was not able to include Howard's essay into my seminar paper, however upon reading it yesterday I find that it offers a dynamic argument that not only portrays the New Abolitionist conversation in a new light, but also offers implications for the current pedagogical moment in 2026. I understand that the conversation about abolition has long been shelved, and I also do not intend for this blog to be an AI-focused blog, however, I do feel that Howard's ideas might apply to the ongoing ways that composition instructors are thinking about the appropriateness of AI-human collaboration in the composition classroom.
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| The cover of the collection. |
I have mostly associated Crowley's concept of composition's ethic of service (the notion that composition studies serves as a gatekeeping mechanism to acclimate college writers into the scholarly dialect of Standard Academic English) with language-level concerns such as mechanics, grammar, syntax, unity, organization style, etc. Howard's essay expands this definition to include the policing of plagiarism, and suggests that an obsessive focus on plagiarism ultimately serves Crowley's characterization of composition as being an oppressive enterprise. Distinguishing between a binary of a proper "collaboration" and an improper "plagiarism," she takes time to establish that composition studies has offered a fairly narrow idea of collaboration, which can occur "between writers or between one writer and another or between writer and reader" but never "between writer and text" (p. 88). Howard highlights how this ruling framework has persisted despite the fact that a large body of theory has deconstructed notions of deviance around plagiarism.
Howard is not saying that instructors should allow every type of plagiarism, but she emphasizes that instructors should not penalize students for the practice of patchwriting, which she characterizes as a fairly low-stakes and misunderstood writing error. Patchwriting, according to Howard, can be defined as a less sophisticated version of paraphrasing, where students take the text of a source and superficially alter its syntax and vocabulary without transforming the original ideas into their own words. Howard suggests that dealing with student patchwriting does not require sanctions from an academic integrity board, but should be considered more of a classroom matter, as Howard notes that patchwriting is often a sign that students aren't understanding what they are reading. By taking this position, Howard identifies herself more as a reformer rather than an abolitionist, as she argues that compositionists should distinguish "worthy premises within the dominant structure" from those that are harmful to students (p. 95). Howard's ideas support the thesis that there is room within the ethic of service framework for instructors to pedagogically maneuver and work within the system to benefit students.
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| A rainy day at the UC Davis Social Sciences building, also known as the "Death Star." |
In my last blog post I was speculating about the relevance of composition's ethic of service in 2026, and Howard's article leads me to a potent answer for this question. I would add that just like error and plagiarism, student use of AI is the newest mark of otherness that we as composition instructors are compelled by the institution to guard against (1). While I think many academic stakeholders are quick to consider any use of AI as a form of plagiarism, lessons from the abolitionist debate show that we must be wary of the machinations of larger institutional impulses that aim to assert control and dominance over students. Howard's observations might help us in thinking about the sometimes messy boundaries between plagiarism and collaboration, and how we might forge a middle path that allows for thoughtful and collaborative uses of AI writing tools while still respecting traditional processes of learning in higher education.
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