Shalampax Speaks

A teacher recently issued a failing grade on a paper submitted by one of her students. I know what you’re saying, “This is the first post from this new correspondent, Poopydiaper, and she starts off by telling us something that’s not news.”

I’ll grant you that a student receiving a failing grade on a paper is hardly news. That’s particularly true here in Shalampax, where failing is the rule, not the exception. What makes this story news is that the student’s mother and father, Rotteddriftwood and Slutwearingmicromini, respectively, appealed the grade to the school board. They won their appeal and had an “A” assigned to the paper instead.

Here’s what happened. When the 23-year-old student, Roastedrat, turned in his paper to his grade nine teacher, Albatrossoverhead, alarm bells immediately went off in Albatrossoverhead’s head.

“I suspected plagiarism right away,” explained Albatrossoverhead. “The paper used multisyllabic words and the words were all spelled correctly. Those achievements had eluded Roastedrat up to that point in the term.”

Rottendriftwood and Slutwearingmicromini did not dispute Albatrossoverhead’s accusation. They couldn’t. When Albatrossoverhead checked on the internet, she found that the paper, “The Virtue of Original Thought,” was readily available. It had been written about a decade prior by a PhD candidate at a major American university. In fact, the essay, which Roastedrat copied verbatim, had garnered its real author a number of prestigious academic awards.

Instead of disputing the plagiarism charge, Rottendriftwood and Slutwearingmicromini argued that, rather than being penalized, their son’s initiative should be rewarded as it was reflective of the highest of Shalampaxian morals. Thus, they argued, plagiarizing the paper was the patriotic thing for their son to do. The school board agreed.

The school board members weren’t the only ones to accept Roastedrat’s parents’ argument. Executives from Shalampax’s cult and spam industries have offered Roastedrat his choice of senior jobs should he decide to not continue on to grade ten.