Power trips in the classroom rarely end well — neither for the student nor for the teacher.

So when a mean-spirited college professor tried to claim a student’s workbook practice counted as plagiarism, one student nearing graduation decided to challenge the accusation.

Her quick thinking was about to give him a very valuable lesson in malicious compliance.

Keep reading for the full story.

Teacher got my honors taken away for plagiarism for checking answers in a non-mandatory workbook

In college, I had the meanest French teacher of all time.

He literally made fun of one of my classmate’s private parts once. Totally inappropriate and cruel.

He was a real narcissist, picked favorites, and actively pointed out terrible things about the students he didn’t like.

He assigned us loads of work to do every single day along with these ungraded grammar workbooks.

These workbooks would later become important in this story.

He told us that the workbooks were just for practice, that we could do them with a friend, use the back of the book, whatever, as long as we brought the book in to show that we had done just something.

For the most part, I did all of these assignments. They were mostly multiple choice or fill-in answers, so it was easy to just half-ass the work and then correct it with the back of the book.

When we had to do some of our classes remotely, instead of him glancing at our books every day, he asked that we send in photos of our workbook instead.

So one day, this college professor made the biggest overstep yet.

Everything was going well until the very end of the term when he called out every single student for plagiarism and ultimately threatened to fail all of us from the class by getting rid of our homework grades (don’t know how that works when it was an ungraded workbook).

Those who had them would lose their honors, get a permanent infraction on their record, and those with multiple offenses risked suspension (the last week of school!).

This had wide ranging implications for his students.

All of the other students accepted the infraction—suspensions revoked and given half the homework credit if they redid the entire workbook (which would take weeks!).

But I was livid. I thought it wasn’t fair, and I was ready to fight.

My school seemed to be more concerned about the term plagiarism rather than the actual work. None of it made sense.

So when she tried to go to the dean’s office, they appeared to side with the professor.

I thought I could talk my way out of it and said to the Dean of the department, “How can it be plagiarism if I’m writing in the book the answers came from?”

They said because I didn’t cite my sources.

The Dean appeared to be just as corrupt as the professor.

I wanted to take it further and bring it to the chancellor, but the Dean blackmailed me and said if I brought it up higher, they would consider all of my other infractions and I could potentially get expelled (I literally had nothing, but it was enough to scare me off. I was a week or so from graduation.)

So she decided to comply, and eventually the Dean revoked the plagiarism label.

When I went to “redo” all of my questions, I decided to just put a proper citation on every single page, citing literally the back of the same book.

The Dean called me in and said even though it wasn’t respectable, technically it was passable because I cited my sources, so it was no longer considered plagiarism.

It was a lot of work, and it still was unjust, but at least she gave it her best shot.

Got my honors taken, but passed the course and still got my French major.

Bygones will be bygones.

Wish I did more, and I think I could have won, but just that little bit of “screw you” felt good and saved me hours of work.

What a corrupt and short-sighted approach from the school’s leadership.

Commenters chime in with their take.

This user suspects this professor was a bit overzealous in enforcing these rigid rules.

Some teachers’ outbursts seem to be more about them than they are about the student in question.

Professors may be esteemed, but it doesn’t mean they’re infallible.

Some plagiarism claims are just plain unfounded.

Even with all his education, this professor still didn’t understand how to read the fine print.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.