Yet another grade dispute has landed in my e-mail. This one was from a student who turned in a really insufficient paper, then "discovered" a much better copy on his flash drive after the semester was over and his low grade was posted. This isn't much different from the objection I get when I accuse someone of plagiarism: "I didn't really write that. It just showed up with my name on it and was turned in when the rest of the papers were. It's not my fault."
Sorry.
Unless you can somehow prove that someone is forging your papers, the responsibility is yours. (And if only one paper with your name showed up when they were all due, I have a hard time believing the forgery charge.) If your name is on it, you are responsible for what it says. If your name is on a plagiarized paper, you are a plagiarist.
I can hear the objections already: "I just gave it to a friend to type, and she changed the whole thing and included all this extra material." Even if that weird event did happen (believe me, I've typed papers for other people and the last thing in my mind is doing a complete rewrite of someone else's paper), you are still the author of that paper. You should look it over before submitting it. Or do you want to claim that you paid someone else to write it for you and that person got it from the Internet?
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