Page THE HERALD OUTLOOK Saturday April 22 1989 the HERALD Outlook Failing grade for fake essays OUTLOOK is published each Saturday by the HALTON HILLS HERALD Home Newspaper of Hal ton Hills A- Division of Canadian Newspapers Company Limited at Street Georgetown Ontario Second Class Mall Registered Number 8778822 Your Business Diane Thornton Strvlct Somewhere in the dark heart Toronto an entpr may be about to bite the As far as university officials are concerned it would be good riddance The entrepreneur is in the business of selling essays to students At the prompting of the Council of Ontario Universities police have raided an office and seized a list of several hundred names of students who have bought essays Students submitting essays writ ten by others may be guilty of pass ing forged documents or fraud University officials are meeting this week to decide what to do In the meantime professors have been advised not to return until this mess is cleared up the end-of- term essays that students are sub mitting This is not a new problem Throughout Ontario and elsewhere too universities have been plagued by students who buy rather than write their essays Penalties range from suspension to expulsion to having ones degree taken away Professors scrutinize cheaters sweat but still it goes on Supplying essays to students is a lucrative business The gap bet ween what dealers in illicit papers pay writers and what they charge students is large In addition they can sell a paper more if theyre lucky PLEASING BUSINESS Students who buy them mean while have been relatively happy with the results The mark they buy is usually better than the C D or they would get otherwise While an argument could be made that submitting essays writ ten by others is a criminal offence it seems likely that students caught redhanded will find- themselves subject to a universi tys code of academic discipline University spokesmen say each student will be dealt with in dividually In the past guilty students have been suspended sometimes for several years This time officials are determined to get tough York University officials are cautioning that cheaters could lose their degrees University of Toron to officials are recommending ex pulsion Both are terrible prices to pay for being lazy WHO CHEATS The typical cheater is one whose English is weak and who is enroll ed in a math engineering medicine or some other science program Because all students are forced to take some humanities courses people who are poor essay writers or who have trouble with English find buying essays an easy way out Students dont mind handing over or more for a paper Cheaters no doubt cut through a crosssection of the student body For users of essaywriting ser vices morality does not seem to be an issue Not surprisingly professors and university administrators see things differently Plagiarism is the most serious offence in the Academy Exasperated professors express no sympathy whatsoever for cheaters who may face expul sion Berrys World section lOP sections PUBLISHER David A Beattie EDltOR Brian MacLeod AD MANAGER Dan Taylor STAFF WRITERS Brian MacLeod Donna Kell SPORTS WRITER Paul Svoboda ACCOUNTING JuneGlendenning CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING Joan SNAFU by Bruce ADVERTISING SALES Jcannine Valois Craig Teeter Sharon PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT Dave Hastings Annie Susanne Wilson CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT Marie Sbadbolt PRESSROOM FOREMAN Brian PRESS ASSISTANT Lee Cut back borrowing JB hired her so he can run the family business after he dies The race is on Is anybody Ottawa Stewart MacLeod News You can be forgiven for not knowing this but there is a leader ship race under way in the New Democratic Party The only miss ing element is a contestant Amazing isnt it Nearly six weeks have passed since Ed announced he will be giving up the party leadership near the end of November and so far not one person has officially entered the race to succeed him This certainly isnt the Tory and Liberal way of doing things Not only would potential leaders in those parties use every moment of such a sixweek period they would probably have unofficially started months or even years earlier Right now for instance its hardly likely that former Liberal cabinet minister Jean Chretien is travelling across Canada on the rubberchicken circuit simply because he enjoys airplanes And its fair to say that Brian had more than a passing interest in the Tory leadership before there was a vacancy But so far its remarkably dif ficult to find a New Democrat will ing to indicate any intention of campaigning for Mr job You might get an odd smile a raised eyebrow or the rare admis sion that the matter is getting minor consideration but not much more Nobody it seems has decid ed to run There are several compelling reasons not the least of is money In order to open the field to more candidates and inject greater fairness into the process the NDP has clamped a spending ceiling on each can didate This doesnt go very far in a national campaign The worst thing that could hap pen would be for a candidate to run out of money in the stretch and have the campaign stutter to a stop This ceiling compares with the million the Liberals allowed each leadership candidate to spend in A year earlier the Tories permitted their candidates to spend as much as they wanted In addition to the ceiling the NDP is restricting donations from individuals and organizations to which prevents say a trade union from bankrolling a favorite candidate The party is also insisting that the perks available to all MPs such as free postage and airline travel not be used for leadership campaigning The result says one MP is that even those who might other wise announce their candidacy are very reluctant to take an early plunge There is no point becoming a candidate if you cant afford to campaign But that doesnt mean the bushes are not being for support Yes Ive had a few calls acknowledges one MP But everyone seems to be hanging back to see who will enter All the early speculation centered on Yukon MP Audrey McLaughlin after British Colum bia MP Nelson Rlis said it was time the NDP was led by a woman and many other MPs said it was time the was led by a For a time it seemed that the ar ticulate and unpretentious Mrs McLaughlin was the only person being talked about and as often happens with a media hero Bhe took on largerthanlife dimen sions Recently more questions have been asked about her qualifications such as her grasp of national issues and her personal ideology This Is not to suggest her support is waning What it does mean is that other possible contenders are finally getting their names in print and their faces on television And the name one hears more than most is that of Stephen Lewis former Ontario leader who last year stepped down as Cana dian ambassador to the United Na tions Hey You out there Yes you Mr Consumer and you Ms Business Entrepreneur Youre spending too much And youd better cut back on your bor rowing That message emerges from John Crows latest review of the national economy set out In his Bank of Canada annual report Crow youll recall is governor of the countrys central bank and the man whos on the hook for setting our interest rates Central bankers are a dour lot There are few people alive today who can remember the last time a jolly Bank of Canada governor snowed his face in Ottawa And in keeping with the reputa tion of his chosen profession Crow let it be known that he is not amus ed when consumers and business people are too cocky about the economy Confident buyers his argument runs spend more than is good for them And producers and sellers invest more than they should To keep up this spending pace they turn to credit and borrow the funds to make purchases and in vestments So Crow maintains they give a push to inflationary pressures To stop this inflation the good Bank of Canada governor must raise in terest rates The devil doesnt make him do it but buyers and sellers do Crow explains all this in general remarks in his report before get ting into the gory details Un doubtedly this explanation aims at defusing some of the public com plaints about high interest rates Canadians are cursing the Bank of Canada for its killjoy attitude SPENDING SOARS Crow says total dollar spending in Canada last year was eightper cent higher than in 1987 which was 11percent higher than the year before This pace is far above even the most optimistic measures of the economys capacity to the supply of goods and services in volume terms he says Moreover credit to individual households that is money bor rowed to buy on time rose by per cent last year and business credit was up per cent Crow says a substantial increase in demand for goods and services early in an economic cycle is a sign of prosperity But in time adver sity strikes in the form of price in flation And the danger of a costprice spiral becomes greater the longer the demand pressures persist Crow says This is not just a Canadian phenomenon Crow says a mutually reinforcing surge of de mand has applied pressure around the world And so higher Interest rates are administered in a timely way as a kind of sulphur and molasses to cure what alls an inflationary economy That bitter medicine is intended to curb the taste of con sumers and investors for pending Crow argues that had the bank not pushed interest rates to the current levels the central banks prime rate Is at a fiveyear high of 1252 per cent the situation would be worse