[Insert obligatory George Bush joke here]
The bit where she claimed that she wasn’t aware that citations were necessary when there was “no provision for footnotes or endnotes,” boggled my mind as well.
CLUE-IN Properly credited citations are ALWAYS necessary in any kind of academic or journalist writing. If there is no provision for foot or end notes, you make 'em parenthetical. She cannot be stupid enough to not know this; my conclusion is that she’s lying through her teeth.
And actually, as long as we’re on the subject of footnotes, let me point out that they should actually be avoided unless the piece being written is a thesis paper or other such long, in depth academic work that requires them for clarity. One certainly wouldn’t use them on a piece of newspaper article length. Hell, I keep all of my citations parenthetical in 8-page papers. Having to deal with footnotes or endnotes in a short paper is a PITA.
In other words, what’s her damage?
Yeesh.
Seriously. I’ll even grant that maybe she didn’t realize that she should be citing where she took her info from. But, even “Bill Clinton said ‘Blah blah blah’” would be a step up. To me, it’s not big deal plagiarism if you at least make some attempt to cite. At the very least, I won’t think you were dishonest about it, just stupid. But to not even make ANY attempt? She’s lying through her teeth.
They’re required in most academic papers. Some publishers use the parenthetical style, but most archived academic journals use a final page of references.
Am I misunderstanding, or did she not even put “<Whoever> once said …” before the parts she was quoting? I can’t imagine any literate high school senior, let alone a valedictorian, not understanding that you have to attribute things to the person who came up with them, no matter what kind of writing you’re doing, or people will assume the words are yours. For her to say she didn’t realize she should be giving people credit for their words just because there were no places for footnotes is bizarre and, I think, amazingly disingenuous.
Oh, on preview, it appears that Flymaster already said basically the same thing. But I’ll post this anyway.
And, I agree that her statement explaining her actions is very poorly written. It’s pretentious (“I really am smart! Look at my huge vocabulary!”) and rambling.
I’m boggled by the “I kept notes and then cut and pasted my ideas together.” She kept notes that were nearly word for word citations? Then, because she took them as notes, they became “her ideas.”
How about “I took extensive notes, then freely plagerized them into my article, but I have a good excuse, I didn’t know better and I didn’t get paid to write them.”
Blair, sweetie, some advice. Next time you fill your harddrive with word for word “notes” - put the attributions right there. That way you won’t get confused about which ideas are yours and which are someone elses.
I don’t think anyone has linked to this yet. I found an article that gives excerpts from her works, and the pre-existing works. At least people can stop guessing about what exactly she said:
I wanted to believe that the story was overblown, but I have to admit, it doesn’t look good.
I don’t think she’s even disabled, I think her parents set out to rig the system from the get go.
It just seems fishy to me.
[size=1]footnote
It gets better, Dangerosa. “When finalizing my thoughts, I, like most every teenager who has use of a computer, cut and pasted my ideas together.”
Now, it doesn’t say so directly, but the implication I get from this is “Hey, I’m young, I’m allowed to make mistakes like this.”
Dear one … if you are so smart as to have aced English classes and gotten into Harvard (for the time being), you are not allowed to use youth as an excuse.
And this “I hope that others learn from my unfortunate, unintentional omissions.” is priceless. Now those who read work she claimed as her own can learn exactly where it actually came from.
Don’t the parents/family have to prove she has a disability or can they just tell the school district in order to get the disable label on her?
I understand there are privacy issues, but frankly, if my tax paying money is paying for this, and a clusterfuck like this explodes in my district, I would demand proof of a disability.
You, sir, are a dumbass. I normally don’t respond when people post vitriolic bile about attorneys because I already have a full-time job, but this merits comment. I can’t believe you conclude that her family taught her to “sue first and think second” and that she grew up in an environment of “litigious arrogance” just because her dad is a lawyer.
Ummmm, TaxGuy, check the forum.
Shiznit, Achenar!
Those examples are pretty damned blatant. And hard to excuse by her flimsy “There was no provision for footnotes/I just cut and pasted” excuse.
She obviously copied a Thanksgiving address by Clinton nearly verbatim, tho the address contained no real insight or analysis. It simply was some prose she liked and wanted to present as her own.
With the other examples as well, she did not even try to minimally rephrase the material, or interpose her own sentences, to at least make it look like she added something of her own.
I bet an analysis of her school work would reveal similar lifting.
Will be interesting to see how Harvard reacts.
You sure as hell have to prove disability in our district! IIRC, they had special forms that had to be filled out and signed by the primary care physician and any specialists working the case (i.e., neurologist.) Universities have their own systems of paperwork to go through as well, which in my experience always include some sort of form or letter signed by the doctor in charge.
Of course, dear old Daddy the judge just may have a doctor in his pocket. :rolleyes:
And you, sir, will NOT call people names in MPSIMS henceforth.
Maybe they did prove it, at least to the satisfaction of the board of education or whomever they needed to convince. Although you would think that going to a private gym would negate that argument.
Not necessarily. Some disabled people go to a private gym for physical therapy-type exercises or strengthening or whatever. My mother used to go to the Jewish Community Center for their low-impact classes; she found these a lot easier than physical therapy. None of this negates the fact that I think Blair is full of shit, though.
**
You bet your ass they do. I have in front of me the disability declaration form for Shippensburg University. If I do declare a disability, I have to explain exactly what the disability is, describe any accommodations I might need from the university, and I have to attach sufficient documentation that is not more than three years old, and that must be signed by a doctor.
I wonder if there is a copy of the lawsuit on Findlaw.com.
Robin
But I thought the quote said she had “worked out” at the private gym. Maybe again it’s just semantics, but I don’t infer physical therapy from that.
Ooops, sorry about that, this thread is kinda ranty so I thought we were in the Pit.
Cartooniverse, I take back my insult against you, and substitute it with the following: your beliefs about lawyers are really, really stupid.
I don’t think Cartooniverse stated beliefs about all lawyers, just about Hornstine’s father in particular. It’s a reasonable conjecture.
I find it hard to believe that the average 18-year-old valedictorian would follow through on a mega-lawsuit. It seems likely that there was a lot of parental influence, even dominance, over her actions. Again, this does not imply a belief about “lawyers” as a group.