Next one to post a comment here is the biggest all-round asshole. Go on, make my day.

And I piss on the head of the inferior Indian_American race and their uptight chicks who can't properly suck cock.

To some of the other posters: please don't tell me that Kaavya Viswanathan was some poor innocent girl who didn't know better.

I grew up in the Fairfax County public school system in northern Virginia, and I remember how often they drove home the message that plagarism and copying are wrong, from an early age:

- In fourth grade, the teacher sat me and another girl down and told us that our assignments were identical. However, since mine was longer, she said she was assuming that the other girl had been copying. (I knew it b/c the girl had been leaning over to read what I was writing and I had kept telling her to stop.) I am pretty sure the teacher called the girl's parents. Why? Because she already held us to the standard that copying was wrong.

- In sixth grade, our teacher explained how we couldn't copy sources when we did our homework. She told us a story of how one student had copied straight out of an encyclopedia and had receive a zero on her assignment because that was copying. She also told us that the parent had objected but that she had not changed the grade. Why? Because that student was already expected to know better.

- In 7th and 8th grade, they taught us to cite our sources properly and to put any exact phrases into quotes. Why? Because we were old enough to know how to properly attribute the work of others.

- By the time my classmates and I entered high school, we all had a clear idea that copying and plagarism (borrowing too heavily even if you don't copy word for word) were not condoned.

Surely Kaavay Viswanathan knew better by age 15. If Harvard does the right thing, they would ask her to leave. The fact that Viswanathan could say on her Harvard application that she had a $500,000 book deal undoubtedly helped her get in. Plagarists should not profit from their misdeeds, and a major research university like Harvard should have no place for those with such disregard for a basic, basic academic tenent: do not take credit for the work of others. Even 9-year-olds understand that copying is wrong.

Sadly it seems this post, like most posts, has deteriorated from meaningful conversation. Evidence? The arrival of really strange, unfunny, racist, unwitty, posts by Ben Dover.

Thankfully, I have the power to close this window after this post and refuse to read whatever stupid retaliation Ben will inevitably make. Well, he deserves an A, for asshole. So Mr. Ben-be-bitter-against-smarter-folk-and-remains-Weird, have fun talking to yourself and your voices.=)

apparently someone did make you bend over for them and it sounds to me like they were injun. can you say BITTER...?

Those who frequent elephant assholes should not be suprised at the inevitable result. Plop. I'm getting hungry; anybody up for a Sandip, medium-rare, with a side of hot mango pickles? Again, grasshoppers, there is no such thing as Indian-American plagiarism; it's bald-assed thievery, followed by a threadful of buggery.

Is this an onion.com style satire, or an article written in earnest ? I really dont know. On my first partial reading I thought it was an earnest but smug article. My cousin laughed, and said that "he was mocking the hell out of all of us :)". That made me feel rather sheepish and got me to look at the article again. 1-800-HOWGAL-ASK ? That does seem like it is straight out of onion.com. But then I haven't read the Opal Mehta book and who's to say she doesn't use acronyms like that. Smug or satirical ? Dont know and dont really care.

Snivelling plagiarist who rides elephant of ethnic superiority in tight circles bound to step in deep shit when she disembarks.

Wow. As a young professional Indian-American, I've been reading these posts and am quite disturbed by the latent racism and bitterness, often disguised as witty remarks on Hinduism or Indian culture. Disappointing.

if the author hadn't so blatantly beaten the tabla about Indian superiority, dare I say a master-race tone about it all, I would never have taken up the bludgeon. As it is, all eight middle fingers of Vishnu are still in place. And we've having fried chicken for dinner, so there.

"Can people please stop saying things like "young adult literature for girls with curry and saris", "the Indian mafia" and "crock of rancid curry"? If this article was about issues facing black Americans, would you being talking about fried chicken? Sometimes when young people have that much pressure placed on them they fuck up in spectacular fashion. It happens all the time. She didn't hurt anyone other than herself. Why all the hostility?"

Sandip,

Some history:

"The first significant presence of Indians in the United States can be traced to exactly one hundred years ago, when peasants from the province of Punjab began appearing on the west coast, seeking work in Washington’s lumber mills and California’s vast agricultural fields. Though predominantly Sikhs, they were described in the popular press as "Hindus"; and almost from the outset they were seen as inassimilable, possessed of 'immodest and filthy habits', the 'most undesirable, of all the eastern Asiatic races...'"

Some info:

"[T]he 1980 census showed, U.S.-born Asian Indians, whose numbers were growing, had an unemployment rate "five times that of other Asian American groups."...[T]hough among Indians there were proportionately more professionals than among any other ethnic group, with every passing year the number of Indians employed as taxi drivers, gas station owners and attendants, subway newsagent vendors, and in other working-class jobs would continue to grow..."

Cited from: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Diaspora/roots.html.

There's a lot more out there, if you look for it.

Your article was a specifically irrelevant, rather glib but at least openly-biased take on a current issue. However, I feel it is important that a richer understanding of the Indian-American experience (one that includes not only those with alternative social attitudes, but also socio-economic "outsiders") be part of your arsenal before you function to inadvertently perpetuate a stereotype that may not even include most Indian immigrants (even among those in the United States alone). Like that which happens when it can - on the defensive - with any minority community, the "shiny brown stereotype" is a press release that has been furthered by those Indian-Americans with the loudest voices.