Amid a small flurry of FaceBook exchanges it appears some parents believe that Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk Central School District interim Superintendent, Alan R. McCartney, may have plagiarized all or part of his RCS Class of 2014 commencement speech. Some even suggest that the 2014 graduation speech is substantially a repeat of McCarney’s 2013 graduation speech; that would mean that this is the second incident of plagiarism by the superintendent with an already stormy and shady past. What will the school district parents do? What will his special-interest-loaded board of education do? What will the Commissioner of Education do?

RCS CSD Superintendent McCartney Steals Yoda’s Laurels!

RCS CSD Superintendent Alan R. McCartney Receives an Very Generous Salary from the Taxpayers of this District. Wouldn’t you think he’d take the time to at least write an original graduation speech to send off the new graduates? Do RCS graduates now have to deal with the stigma of having their superintendent steal his material for their rites of passage into the adult world? There’s an old saying that the “Fish rots from the head down.” We re-live that saying every day in the Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk Central School Districts, don’t we?

What is plagiarism? Plagiarism is defined as “To take and use as one’s own the thoughts, writings or inventions of another” (Oxford English Dictionary). Plagiarism therefore has two elements: (1) taking another’s work and (2)using the work as your own.

Several local residents have asked McCartney’s office for any recordings of the suspect speech and we have made a direct request to McCartney himself, putting a deadline for his response at close-of-business on July 3, 2014. The McCartney speech, it is alleged, used material from a speech published by one Jonathan E. Martin entitled “Yoda’s Teachings.” A parent attending the Class of 2014 graduation event felt there was something odd about McCartney’s speech and investigated further (see the extract from the parent’s FaceBook post on RCS Friends and More). In response to Mr Perrotte’s observations and conclusions other parents chimed in with their comments.

We have demanded a response from Mr McCartney and have notified all members of the RCS CSD board of education. We want this clarified NOW! Here’s what we wrote (Susan Starr is the clerk of the RCS CSD; McCartney’s e-mail address is not published):

Dear Ms Starr:
Please advise Mr McCartney urgently of this matter.
We urge you to respond immediately with any recordings of Mr McCartney’s 2014 graduation speech. It seems that a number of parents have expressed the concern that Mr McCartney may have purloined all or a substantial part of his graduation speech from an Internet source on the same subject, Yoda.
Unless we receive Mr McCartney’s explicit and express denial of such plagiarism together with a copy of any recording of the actual speech delivered at the 2014 RCS graduation event by no later than close of business (5 p.m. EST), we intend to publish the allegations and to prosecute Mr McCartney’s resignation.
Our interim publication of the allegations will note that we have made this demand; our final publication will reflect your response to this demand.
Please confirm receipt of this communication.
Assuring you of our best intentions,
 
The Editor
Smalbany Blog

We’d like to clear this up once and for all but to do that we need Mr McCarntney to either deny the allegations and to provide a recording of the speech he delivered at the RCS Class of 2014 graduation event OR to show convincing evidence that he gave credits for the allegedly purloined material used in his speech. We’d also like to remind our readers that such conduct by a person in McCartney’s position has resulted in resignation by the school official.

This is a preliminary report of the facts as of 10 a.m. on July 3, 2014. This report will be updated as we receive more information. If you have any information or a recording of the McCarney speech delivered on June 28, 2014, on the occasion of the RCS Class of 2014 graduation, please provide a copy to rcs.confidential@gmail.com as soon as possible.

The Clock’s Ticking
Time for Action
The Editor