Chancellor
at SIUE concedes plagiarism
Apologizes for not attributing portions of January speech
Associated Press
EDWARDSVILLE - The head of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
has apologized for not properly attributing portions of a speech he
delivered during a commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
In an e-mail to faculty and staff, SIU-Edwardsville Chancellor Vaughn
Vandegrift said Friday the failure to attribute portion of the speech
was "completely unintentional and not deliberate."
"Nonetheless, I take full responsibility for them and offer my apology
to the university community for this incident," he wrote.
Vandegrift, SIU-Edwardsville chancellor for the past two years,
attributed one quotation in his 600-word Martin Luther King Jr. Day
welcoming address in February, while other portions of the text
appeared to come from other writings, a Web site and a White House
proclamation.
In February, Vandegrift's counterpart at SIU's main campus in
Carbondale, Walter Wendler, acknowledged he unintentionally left out
the source of an anecdote during his "State of the University" speech
last year.
Wendler said he didn't realize the quotes were someone else's until a
Chronicle of Higher Education reporter asked him about it for an
article for the newsmagazine -- a story largely about Chris Dussold, a
professor fired from SIU-Edwardsville in 2004, ostensibly for
plagiarizing a teaching statement.
Dussold is suing the school for wrongful termination, and a group of
his backers has created Alumni and Faculty Against Corruption at SIU,
dedicated to scouring speeches and writings of faculty members and
administrators for examples of improper attribution or outright copying.
A committee on Carbondale's campus issued a report this spring with
suggestions to combat student plagiarism, and the university has bought
$21,000 in software that can help professors and students detect
plagiarism -- efforts Dussold's supporters consider misplaced.
In Vandegrift's remarks about King at a February luncheon, Vandegrift
said, "For generations, African-Americans have strengthened our nation
by urging reforms, overcoming obstacles, breaking down barriers." Those
words match a passage in a 2003 proclamation from President Bush.
Vandegrift's speech also included excerpts from pages on the King
Center Web site, and his description of the holiday's history was
similar to the description in a union newsletter.