Have you ever heard something that stops you in your tracks, halts your entire thought process, and makes you say, “Wait, what?”

That’s how I felt when I heard about “self plagiarism.”

Larry Bolles, the director of the Office of Community Standards and Student Conduct (formerly, Judicial Affairs), was quoted in Friday’s Northern Star as stating that self plagiarism is “not your original work because you have done research for another class and are trying to pass it off that you did it for another teacher.”

My response: So what?

So I happened to have been assigned an essay that is so remarkably similar to an essay that I wrote for a previous class. Why should I have to write an entirely new essay when I am confident that my previous work satisfies my current assignment’s requirement? I think part of the problem here is the name itself: self plagiarism. As every single class at NIU has ever told me, plagiarism is taking somebody’s work, whether it is an essay, or a quote, or even a paragraph, and passing it off as my own.

It’s at this point where my professor/instructor/TA would tell us to use our own ideas, cite your sources, and we will not get penalized for it.

But then this term comes around. “Self plagiarism.” If plagiarism is the stealing of ideas and passing it off as my work, then am I stealing from myself?

Obviously, that is not what self plagiarism according to NIU is, but you can see where people could get confused and angry. The word “self plagiarism” has an Orwellian quality to it, like doublethink.

There’s also an issue of scale as well. As any teacher will tell you, you do not have to be guilty of plagiarism by copying (or buying, for those of you who are truly stupid and desperate to do so) a paper in its entirety. All you have to do is pass off John Dewey’s belief in the paradox of contemporary logic theory, or a list from Cracked.com, and you’re guilty.

So would I be guilty if I happened to write about the same ideas for different classes? This could pose a potential problem. My beliefs on terrorism, for example, might be expressed the same way across a number of essays for a number of classes.

I admit, I’ve drifted down the caffeine-induced paranoid line of thinking. But policies are vague to keep in mind all possibilities, including this.

I can understand why this would be a problem for professors and instructors, and if they wanted to state in their syllabus that they will only accept original work, that is fine with me. But don’t make this an issue of academic misconduct. If I re-use an essay or a column or anything for another class, go ahead and deduct points from the assignment, or fail me altogether. But do not drag me before a Student Code Hearing Board because I thought that an essay that I wrote would work great for another class.

Sidenote: I have thought about submitting this column to the op-ed writing class here at NIU. There are a couple of things stopping me. One, I’ve already passed the class. Two, I would hate to be made an example of.