A New York high school principal has been accused of plagiarizing his entire graduation message to the Roosevelt High School Class of 2014, even forgetting to change the other high school's name in his yearbook speech.
Roosevelt Principal Dr. Steven Strachan begins his plagiarized message in the Long Island school yearbook by claiming how proud he is of the graduates, believing them to be class of "great leaders, articulate orators, brilliant scientists, breathtaking athletes and extraordinary artists," Yahoo News reported.
However, it was discovered that the above words, along with majority of the speech, was written by California principal Dr. Ted Barone for the Albany High School graduates in 2013.
In the speech's conclusion, Strachan even forgets to change Barone's "Congratulations to the Albany High School Class of 2013."
Strachan said he received permission from Barone, to "reuse the remarks," News 12 Long Island reported. But Barone told the station that Strachan asked only for permission to quote him in an email last Thursday.
"There's part of me that thinks it's funny," Barone said to News 12 via phone. "There's obviously part of me that finds it quite sad."
Roosevelt senior Jordan David said, "That's embarrassing...To use another person's words when you could have just sat there and wrote, took five to ten minutes out of your time to write a nice letter to us."
Although Strachan refused to speak about the matter on camera, Newsday reported that he released a statement through public relations firm, Zimmerman/Edelson.
"I sincerely apologize to the Roosevelt community and to the class of 2014 for the inadvertent clerical error causing mistakes to be printed in the 2014 yearbook. An unedited draft of my remarks was accidentally published rather than the final version, and I take full responsibility for the oversight."
Alfred T. Taylor, vice president of the Roosevelt school board, told the paper that the incident was an "unfortunate mistake that occurred."
The school's reaction to the principal's plagiarism is unfair, Roosevelt junior Hannah Brown-Foxx said.
"It's wrong because if we were supposed to do something like that it would have been ten times worse, rather than a principal doing that."
The school district's code of conduct (pdf) states that academic misconduct such as plagiarism is a level 7 offense and calls for suspension. With $800 taken from the principal's "discretionary fund, the yearbook's page in question will be edited and re-printed.
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