If you want to know the facts about press coverage of the Harvard plagiarism scandal, go to Philip Weiss's excellent post trumpeting the Harvard Crimson's tireless coverage over limper entries from the New York Times. (My apologies to Mr. Weiss for the similarity in wording: Let's just say your language was an inspiration to me.)
Or go to the Harvard Independent, the campus weekly, which has easily trumped the Crimson on the larger issues at hand (save a few clarifications from Yalie Lizzie Skurnick on her "ars teenica" of young adult book packaging for the Indy at her blog The Old Hag). Or check out the student-run blog Oh Harvard, which features practically hourly updates on the scandal. Or read a former TA's comments on Viswanathan's writing style, if you haven't already, or a prescient peer's decidedly lukewarm review pre-scandal for the New York Observer. Or take a peek at her Facebook.com profile, via Gawker. Or watch these commemorative Flash cartoons.
Weiss didn't reference a lot of this coverage, also dogged, but is much of it the kind that should be rewarded?
It's easy as a campus journalist to mistake sniping for scoops when the cast of characters -- and, usually, the stakes at hand -- seem so small. (I've been no stranger to it myself, I'll say in a preemptive strike.) But for those of us lucky enough to attend schools which seem to create controversy solely by existing at a time when, for obvious reasons, the nation isn't too thrilled with its graduates' death grip on Washington, campus in-fighting is no longer something you can close the book on and chalk up to a "learning experience" after four years. Everything you put in print lives forever online, which can either be a blessing or a curse. If we're to believe I Am Charlotte Simmons, in fact, it's even the secret wish of every campus journalist to use a high-profile scandal at school to launch a professional career. A few of my friends at the H-bomb's bastard stepsister down southern Connecticut way have certainly done all right for themselves in the wake of "Yalensian Taliban," in which the price of fifteen minutes of fame was Fox News' eternal vigilance on the topic. Recall that former Crimson managing editor Zach Seward got put on academic probation when he let his Larry Summers muckraking overtake his notetaking, but got a choice byline for his efforts from the Wall Street Journal as reward. So who wants to start placing bets on David Zhou's reward this summer for his admittedly impressive work on the Crimson copying beat? Rumor already has it that he's received many congratulations from fellow students on his profile on Facebook.com for his comparative research, though I can't confirm without access.
It's a little disconcerting seeing how fast some of Viswanathan's classmates have rushed to vilify her.
And we seem to be ignoring in our frenzy to attack her for committing that gauche-est of faux-pas in Ivy League circles, conspicuous pre-professionalism, that her classmates may in some small respect be operating in response out of that same spirit. (Conspicuous pre-professionalism: It's the new "don't talk about money"!) James Madison may have said once upon a time that ambition must be made to counteract ambition -- smart guy, for a Princeton grad--but that doesn't mean the mutually ambitious should mercilessly attack one another in the spirit of oneupsmanship (to many, the girl's true sin was getting the book deal in the first place). Yes, plagiarism still is a far worse offense than ambition, in case that sounded like a defense. But that doesn't excuse our excitement at watching Harvard students tear one another down.
According to a recent Crimson update -- who's to say whether it's the latest by morning; I'm writing overnight -- Viswanathan told Katie Couric she's "taking a few days off" from school to decompress.
And so, perhaps, should we. We know what she did; we know she deserves to face the consequences. Consequences of which we do not need to be informed every hour on the hour.
I guess I better stop checking my RSS feed.