Well, a goal of Class Action’s just took a step forward, though not exactly in the way we envisioned. The professional cheaters have recognized our cause!

About five years ago, the Class Action board discussed setting concrete objectives to measure our progress towards getting classism into American public consciousness, which is one of our goals on the way to our vision of a world without classism. How would we know when awareness of classism had grown?

We started to focus in on the word “classism” itself. When it’s a household word, that will be a sign of greater awareness. For example, we said, when the spellcheck function in popular software doesn’t mark “classism” and “classist” as misspellings, that will be progress. For another measure, I have a Google alert for those two words, so I can monitor the increase in their use on the web.

Well, guess where the word “classism” has shown up? An ad (http://my-termpapers.blogspot.com/2011/07/classism-reflection-that-society-sees.html) for an outfit that will write your term paper for you!

Here’s what they promise for $8.95 a page: “If you order your research paper from our custom writing service you will receive a perfectly written assignment on Classism: The Reflection That Society Sees.”

And here’s the sample paper they offer:

“The mirror image of two different classes, the reflection of the under class opposed to the upper class is highly seen through the eyes of society. In typical American society, classism is usually pointed in the direction of the upper class having the advantage, which is the way that the media exposes it. The society set the standards for the different classes, which is already biased because our political parties are made up of the upper class.”

Not exactly A+ class analysis!

Still, it amazes me that they would think a college assignment on classism would be common enough to advertise.

I guess the moral of the story is that success doesn’t always look like you expect it to look.