Writer for hire

“I’ve always wanted to be a kind of modern Renaissance man,” he said.

Speaking under condition of anonymity, “Tom” is a full-time student in his late 20s who has attended Portland State for two years, lives off campus and mostly keeps to himself. He is a musician, a graphic designer and an editor for a professional firm.

He also writes, for a fee, essays and assignments for fellow college students. But he does not consider himself a ghostwriter.

“I remember watching an episode of a little-known TV show…a drug-addicted townie wrote papers for the local college students. I guess that’s my vision of a ghostwriter, doing it as a service. I feel like I mostly just helped out friends and made a little extra cash,” he said.

Tom enjoys the intellectual challenge of constrained writing assignments.

“I tend to procrastinate on my own assignments but am usually quite motivated to get an assignment done when it’s a friend’s grade on the line,” he said. The first assignment he ghostwrote was for a friend swamped with a heavier courseload than she could handle. She enjoyed his blog posts and approached him with the offer.

“I understood that she wasn’t a slacker, and not even a bad writer, but she was overwhelmed,” he said. “I didn’t feel uneasy because she was a friend and needed some help.”

He read the story she had been assigned—a short story about a man taken to the gallows to be hanged—and penned a paper that ended up being selected by the professor as a model for the class.

“She offered me $100. I asked for something silly like $63.74 in exact change,” Tom said.

But it was a close call.

“My friend had hardly read the paper, so she apparently struggled her way through explaining ‘her’ paper,” he said.

Since then, he has written papers for friends who have solicited help directly and for people who expressed frustration online.

“If it’s something I’m interested in, or [I] feel like I can help, I have offered to help. I don’t think I’ve done this more than 10 to 15 times,” Tom said.

The process

Tom’s method involves first getting in the shoes of the person to whom the paper was assigned.

“I’m a psychology major, so I guess I try my best to write from the perspective of whomever I’m writing for,” he said.

Typically, he has a short window of time to complete the assignment—friends who ask for his services tend to be in a rush. He takes careful note of the assignment guidelines, down to cover pages and header styles. If reading or research is required, he puts in the same effort—or more—into it that he would into an assignment of his own.

He sets up certain parameters for his work.

“I never plagiarize or use questionable sources. I’ve never written a paper for anyone in a class I’m [also] currently taking,” the ghostwriter said. The most he has charged is $75.

“I learned, as a graphic designer, to give the client exactly what they want and ask for, instead of what my imagination might run with, even if I feel like it would be a more interesting piece,” he said.

To his knowledge, no one has ever been caught. Tom said he has never written for anyone at Portland State. “I’ve written for friends at bigger state schools and community colleges,” he said.

A widespread trend

Tom’s friends are not the only ones seeking essay-writing services.

From June 2011 to today, 140 incidents of academic misconduct have been charged by the PSU Office of Conduct and Community Standards, said Lisa Lam, a graduate assistant working in the office.

PSU’s Student Code of Conduct defines academic misconduct as “fraud, deceit, or unauthorized use of materials prohibited or inappropriate in the context of the academic assignment.”

Falling under this umbrella is plagiarism—ranging from word-for-word copying to unattributed paraphrasing—cheating, unauthorized collaboration, and the buying or selling of course assignments and research papers.

A simple Google search for “essay writing websites” brings up thousands of results—online essay services are almost as old as the Internet itself. And as professors arm themselves with plagiarism-detecting software, custom essay-writing services continue to proliferate in new, harder-to-detect forms.

To Tom, these often seem like scams.

“I imagine the people who use these services feel overwhelmed and a bit desperate. I don’t wish to judge people based on one situation. Using a paper-writing service or someone to do all your homework? Well, I feel like that will come back to haunt them,” he said.

“We take academic integrity seriously,” Lam said. “It directly speaks to the credibility of a degree from PSU.”

Tom rebutted ethical concerns.

“I feel like a student is really only cheating themselves out of an opportunity to learn, but that’s a personal choice,” Tom said. “It seems like a pretty victimless crime.

“There are 10,000 legitimate reasons that someone can’t write a paper,” he went on, listing reasons ranging from writer’s block to family obligations to the pressures of a full-time job.

But the reasons students accused of academic misconduct give to the CCS office are quite different, Director Domanic Thomas explained.

Some considered the effort of searching for plagiarized information “good enough,” with explanations like, “That is why the Internet was invented: to share information.” Poor preparation from high school or community college has also been cited,
Thomas said.

Others cite cultural differences or differences of opinion regarding misconduct versus “helping a friend,” explained Thomas. Tom is among them.

“I think [for me] the motivation is helping a friend,” Tom said. “I’d never write every paper for someone. I’d never let someone use me like a service.”

The consequences

“Potential consequences for students who plagiarize and students [who] assist another person to plagiarize are educational workshops, probation, suspension, expulsion, and usually a zero [score] on the work in question, on behalf of the instructor,” Lam said.

A difference of perspective has characterized many of the cases brought to the CCS office, Thomas explained. In some cases, a student changed so many sentences in a published document that they considered it their own work.

In other cases, a student struggling with a paper asked a roommate to help, but the roommate resorted to writing out the last few paragraphs herself. The prose, syntax and style of this portion were markedly different from the student’s usual style, but the student considered it a matter of tutoring.

Although anyone can report an incident of misconduct, reports are usually filed by professors. If there is enough information to move forward, students are asked to attend a hearing where they have an opportunity to explain themselves.

“Accused students benefit from the process because a hearing can identify misunderstandings and clarify expectations,” Lam said.

After an administrative review, the office makes a determination. If found guilty, sanctions are imposed. Students can appeal the decision within 10 days of the verdict.

“We’re not all amazing at every class we have to take,” Tom said. “But each grade counts, as little as grades reflect the person’s skill or knowledge. I just want my friends to succeed.”