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Student Accused Of 'Robbing' Friend Of College Education After Snitching On Her Essay Plagiarism

Photo:  Ivan Samkov / Pexels
Woman on laptop

A woman is being accused of robbing her friend of a college education after reporting the plagiarism of her college entry essay. 

She described the situation in a posting to the "r/AmITheA--hole" (AITA) subReddit, a forum where people try to figure out if they were in the wrong in a conflict.

In her Reddit post, the woman explained that she'd helped her friend Tia with her college application process by sending her examples of her own college entry essays.

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Tia was subsequently admitted to her top-choice university and given full academic and athletic scholarships.

But when the woman read her friend's application essay, she found it was plagiarized from one of her own.

The Redditor wrote that she had offered extensive help to Tia, who is the first person in her family to apply to college.

Later, she heard that her friend had been admitted on the strength of her "heartfelt and beautiful" essay.

The Redditor was surprised, because the essay was the one part of Tia's application she hadn't shared with her.

Figuring her friend just forgot, she asked to read it—and found it to be an exact copy of one of the several drafts she'd given Tia "for reference only."

The Redditor writes that she was "livid" because the essay was intensely personal, and her friend "barely even tweaked it up. It was almost entirely copied and pasted."

She also felt violated by the plagiarism, writing, "I trusted her with it, and this is what she did."

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So she gathered up all of the evidence and submitted it to the school.

Her evidence ended up leading to the rescindment of not only Tia's scholarships but her entry to the university entirely.

She writes that people have called her "dramatic" and accusing her of "robbing" Tia of an education, especially since she is the first in her family to apply to college.

She went on to say that she now feels guilty, writing, "I feel terrible. I feel like she took advantage of me, but I didn’t want to be the cause of something so horrible."

And she's now wondering if what she did is "justified or not," since it came "at the cost of someone's dreams."

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Several Reddit users thought the woman's snitching was indefensible and angrily lashed out at her in the comments.

One angry user wrote, "I hope every time you do something wrong there’s someone there to report you and make sure you’re punished. Grow up."

Another wrote that while they understood the woman's position, "you really f--ked your friend over for a draft," and warned that "when you get older you might regret it. Life isn’t so black and white."

And several felt she had made the already wildly unfair college application process even more inequitable for Tia by snitching on her.

As one user put it, "you've uprooted her entire future. College admissions are a joke and college favors the rich. You f--ked your friend. Could've talked to her privately."

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But many other Redditors firmly disagreed and told the woman she absolutely did the right thing.

One pointed out that her friend took another student's spot at the university by cheating.

They told the woman not to feel bad, writing, "her scholarship and place are now open to a decent human being who didn't have to cheat in order to get them."

Others felt Tia's cheating meant she wasn't ready for college in the first place. As one put it, "If she is plagiarizing just to get in, she is definitely not going to survive her first semester."

And several felt Tia brought this on herself. One user wrote, "she screwed herself out of the college, you only set the record straight. Do NOT feel guilty."

In the end, the woman decided she agreed. In an update to her post, she wrote that all the people who angrily sided with Tia "helped me realize I wasn’t wrong."

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John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.