Response to DeVoss and Porter

One of the most exciting and eye opening things about the "Napseter" article is the elucidation of Andrea Lunsford's assertion that students need to "own up" to their writing (and to their use of sources), as opposed to "owning" it. For me, this implies that plagerisim as an act is a function of a larger system of ownership of ideas, and that plagerisim and the punitive reactions to it are both products of a system of thought that privideges personal ownership of ideas over practical use. In this sense, I need to ask, as composition teachers, if our philosophy about the way ideas are exchanged are actualy leading to plagiarisim... if students didn't believe that they needed to exclusively own their texts and be responsible for all of their ideas as sole originator, would they be so inclined to pass off ideas and text as their own? (I'm not advocating the immediate removal of all anti-plagerisim safe-guards, but I am suggesting that, just as those safe guards (as they are) will fail to function practically in a composition classroom, the practices they were created to prevent may eventually become equally as irrellevant.)