(March 1, 2006) — Clark, like any other high school, is no stranger to cheating and foul play in the education environment. The tool to battle plagiarism is turnitin.com, a website is designed to cut plagiarists from their very foundation and bring fairness back to writing assignments in the school environment. Turnitin.com is a service in the form of a website. It allows teachers to let their students upload their essays and papers onto the site and automatically check them for plagiarism. Currently there are seven teachers with active accounts who use the service. Clark started using the website as a trial at first according to assistant principal Joan Shoff. The service was first offered to teachers in the fall semester 2004 and around Feb. 2005 the service was finalized and paid for. Now teachers are given full access to the service. The access is paid for by the school and not the district. Clark is currently the only GUSD school using the service. Turnitin.com is primarily used by English teachers. Currently the only non-English teacher using turnitin.com is math and Cisco teacher Ray Good, who uses the site for the submission of small research papers he has his students turn in. English Teacher Maral Guarino uses the site in her class. “It serves its purpose. However, nothing is perfect,” she said. Turnitin.com has been around at Clark for a couple years and Guarino said she believes that the school made a good decision investing in it. “A couple of years ago the creator of the site contacted Clark, and at that point every teacher was given access to the site,” she said. Some students, however, do not feel as strongly. “It makes me feel like the teachers just don’t trust me. It makes me feel like a cheater when I’m not doing anything at all,” junior Mathias Bartlett said. Junior Anand Sharma feels that the site intimidates and scares cheaters away, “Even if the site didn’t work it cuts off plagiarism because it scares people out of cheating,” he said. Sophomore, David West feels that the requirement of using a computer pushes those who lack technology further away from the class and sets them up for failure. “For people who don’t have access to computers it is hard to use the site. It definitely hurts, especially since it is required in some classes,” he said. Turnitin.com is reaching even further as it has been required for use on senior projects since last year. The requirement of seniors to use the site is no doubt a testament to Clark’s stance on cheating and it’s commitment to stop it.