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Thursday, June 03, 2004
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The Unpleasantness at the Smith Center
Stung by the revelation that the chairman of the Orange County school board, Keith Cook, plagiarized the high school graduation speech he recently gave at the University of North Carolina's Smith Center, the university has decided to scrutinize more closely the events for which it makes its gym available. An alert parent, for whom Cook's speech stirred vague memories, hit the internet after the ceremony and found that the same speech had been given a few years earlier by Donna Shalala, former secretary of health and human services. Responses from Mr. Cook and his allies on the school board only deepened the dismay on the part of UNC officials: confronted with the plagiarism, Mr. Cook first said he had written the speech; he then said that he had downloaded the speech from a site he'd found by typing "graduation speeches" into Google. In any case, said Cook, he thought it was okay to take the speech as his own, because it looked like "a generic speech." A fellow school board member said: "I'm sure he didn't mean any harm. He had his reasons, and he's the only one who knows why he chose that particular speech." Belyna McMurtry, head of UNC Special Events, says that the university has, as a first step, begun to check the content of other graduation speeches - high school and college - given recently at the Smith Center. "We've so far found only one other questionable speech," McMurtry commented. She agreed to show UD an excerpt from that speech, presented by Dr. Wayne "Butch" Lapont Villeroy, Patchett Valley school board chief, to a graduating high school class three weeks ago at the Smith Center: Dear Comrades, With your permission I will allow myself to turn your attention for a while to some particular moments. First of all, I would like once again to thank all of you, to all brotherly parties, to their central committees, personally to you, my dear comrades and friends, for your active participation in the work of this meeting. I say this because at this meeting each of you made a thorough analysis of the international activities, shared the experience of his work and characterized the significance of our common successes. We are unanimous, we synchronize our moves and what is particularly important - we manifest unity on the issues, which constitute the essence of our policy. Now, allow me to focus on those moments, with which I would like to complete my first statement. I would like as well to make a few comrade remarks of principle character on what the comrades, participants in the meeting said. All of you expressed a wish, and we agree with it, for an announcement in the press about the results of our work. All comrades got acquainted with the project of this announcement, it seems to me, twice. I myself as you see, because of pressure of work, could not thoroughly develop each paragraph. In the end, a last version came out, which, it seems to me, can be approved. But Comrade Ceausescu expressed certain doubts in the possibility it to be approved in this form. Now we had an openhearted comrade talk with Comrade Ceausescu and we reached an agreement. I congratulate you, comrades, with the big success in our work. I wish you health and happiness. I think that this meeting will help all of us to get better our bearings. I will report in detail to our Politburo about all statements of the comrades, so that afterwards we can proceed to practical implementation of what we spoke here. In tracking down this graduation speech on the internet, McMurtry discovered the following source: Concluding Speech at the Crimean meeting, 31 July 1973 [Central State Archive, Sofia, Fond 1-B, Record 35, File 4300] Personal, top secret! CONCLUDING SPEECH OF COMRADE L. IL. BREZHNEV AT THE CRIMEA MEETING (A shorthand transcript) Dr. Villeroy has had no comment. |