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What would you do?

A nearby town's newspaper printed the winning essays in its Martin Luther King Day middle school essay contest. As I read one of the winners, I could tell it was obviously plagiarized from somewhere -- the phrases were just not middle school. I Googled one of the particularly flowery phrases, and lo and behold, the essay was taken straight from the Nobel website biography.

Now, I don't know this kid or the school, and it's not even our school district. But I still feel that he should not get away with it -- somewhere out there, there is a kid whose essay should have been the winner instead, who worked hard and got shafted by the plagiarized winner.

I have cut the essay out of the paper, and stapled it to a copy of the biography from the website, and I'm thinking of mailing it to the school principal.

But then I think, what if the kid is shamed by this and (yeah, farfetched, but it happens these days) kills himself or something? I could never live with that. On the other hand, is there such a thing as shame anymore? If he had any, would he have done this in the first place? Am I thinking too much here? I think it's really none of my business, but then I believe that the education of all children is everybody's business.

Help!

I agree with MoN -- I'd send it to the judges. They may want to even change the awards for this year.

Was it truly word for word, or was it slightly changed? I'm wondering if it could be possible that the child in question doesn't understand that you can't change something only slightly and still claim credit for it. I know that's something my 9 year old is learning now, but when do most kids learn it?

Kudos for checking on it and wanting to do something. Personally, I think too many people don't want to get involved and then wonder why nothing gets better.

Oh, there were only a few words that he changed around at all. Almost all of it was verbatim.

That's how I noticed it -- "he met and married Coretta Scott, a woman of unusual intellectual and artistic attainments." Yeah, right.

Survival of the fittest.