Gray Area? Student Involved in Plagiarism Scandal Claims They Single-Handedly Authored "Battle of Agincourt" Wikipedia Article

Ezra Bachar (C’24) has been caught up in the biggest plagiarism scandal of the week. They have been in a dispute with their European History professor since early Monday morning, who granted them an automatic fail when noticing that their essay could be found word-for-word on Wikipedia. Bachar claims that, although there are significant similarities between their essay and the Wikipedia page, it does not count as plagiarism because they authored the entire Battle of Agincourt article themselves. This twelve-page article contains almost 200 citations and is so high-brow that it doesn’t even mention that the Battle of Agincourt was the inspiration for the Battle of the Bastards in Game of Thrones. The only cultural references included are to Shakespeare adaptations, a sign that most classmates agree suggests that this was not the work of Bachar.

An email from Bachar to their professor late Tuesday evening has been leaked in which they claim, “Look, this is deadass my writing! I don’t know what else you want me to say. It just sounds like it was written in my voice. Like, I read it, and hear my voice. Do you want me to send you a snapchat of me reading it? I don’t know what more proof you need, but whatever it is, I don’t have it.”

Bachar’s professor has gone on record to say that, in addition to needing to cite your own words in an academic paper if they were already published elsewhere, a big part of the issue came from the fact that the essay was actually just the pdf of the Wikipedia page with a clipart picture of a horse pasted over every occurrence of the word ‘Wikipedia’. Furthermore, Bachar was unable to recall even the biggest details from the article, such as who actually won the Battle of Agincourt or even who was fighting in it. They also did not manage to spell Agincourt properly even once in any of their emails and have a poor grasp of how Roman numerals work. At this point, Bachar’s professor finds it very unlikely that they will be able to dispute the failing grade on their assignment.