Does the blogosphere need another verb? The Anger of Compassion wonders...
Remember Blair Hornstine, the girl who successfully sued her high school to be named the sole valedictorian of her graduating class? She sued because Moorestown (N.J.) High School had tried to get her to share the valedictorian honor with another student. You can read the story here and here, at NBC10.com and at ReasonOnline, respectively.
Blair Hornstine suffers from an immune system malady which produces symptoms similar to chronic fatigue syndrome, so officials at Moorestown High School allowed her to pursue much of the last two years of her academic schedule at home, with tutors. Here is where the problems began, because Blair was exempted from the attendance requirements required of other students, including physical education classes. This imposed a double handicap on the two students vying for the valedictorian title against Blair: not only was she not required to take the courses they were required to take, but, according to NBC10.com, "The two other Moorestown High School seniors with nearly perfect grades could not match her grade-point average, officials said, because classes like gym receive less weight in calculating the grade-point average, or GPA."
Bad enough? It gets worse.
From Sara Rimensnyder's ReasonOnline story:
Because she was diagnosed with a chronic-fatigue syndrome-like illness, she spends half the day doing conference courses at home. This has helped her to score the highest grade point average (GPA) in school, because she's able to take (and excel at) more advanced-placement (AP) level courses than would normally be available. Naturally, the other overachievers, who dutifully spend eight hours daily suffering at their desks in whatever classes the school offers, complained, and administrators decided to split up the valedictorian honor. Fair enough.
Bad enough yet? It gets worse.
Using the time she wasn't spending in physical education classes at Moorestown High, Blair Hornstine was "writing" for the Cherry Hill (N.J.) Courier-Post. This headline from Newsday says it all: "Valedictorian apologizes for failing to attribute in columns." Actually, the headline says too much, as we see in Geoff Mulvihill's story, datelined Cherry Hill, N.J.:
A high school student who won a lawsuit to be named sole valedictorian has admitted she did not properly attribute information in three articles and two essays she wrote for the Courier-Post of Cherry Hill.
Blair Hornstine, 18, explained her actions in a column published in the newspaper Tuesday, but she did not apologize."
Blair Hornstine wrote six separate items for the Courier-Post, and according to market development director Carl Lovern, only one of them raised no attribution problems. For this, keep in mind, she is not apologizing. So just what the hell happened? It's simple: Blair Hornstine plagiarized, taking the words of others and putting her own name on them for publication. She stole the words of Supreme Court Justices Potter Stewart and William Brennan and the words of President Bill Clinton, and those of at least five other sources. Stolen, for that is what plagiarism is: from Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1975: "plagiarize: to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own."
Hornstine's own statement on the matter was published in the Courier-Post. Quoting from the Newsday story: "'I am not a professional journalist. I was a 17-year-old with no experience in writing newspaper articles,' she wrote. "Upon reflection, I am now cognizant that proper citation allows scholars of the future to constantly re-evaluate and re-examine academic works."
Excuse me, but..."scholars of the future?" How about a writer's own contemporary readers, or editors? How about those writers whose words were stolen? The entire non-apology is simply Clintonian, and I recommend you read the entire thing. Hornstine's discussion of footnotes strikes me as quite deliberate misdirection (ask yourself: ever seen footnotes in a newspaper?) and nowhere will you encounter the word "plagiarism." Nor the words "misappropriated," "stolen," "sorry," "apologize," or "wrong."
And her defenders are worse. Her lawyer, Edwin J. Jacobs Jr., is quoted in the Newsday story: "It was a whole lot of nothing. She wrote some fluff pieces for a kid-chat column." Fluff pieces--in which she quotes a president and two Supreme Court associate justices. Fluff pieces--in which she discusses U.S. tensions with Iraq and North Korea. Another defender, Steven K. Kudatzky, is quoted in the The Harvard Crimson Online, as saying all of it is a "non-issue," and says that it is all "something that is another example of Blair being singled out and victimized."
Singled out? To be sure: Hornstine was selected to write for the Courier-Post not once but six times. But who has taken unfair advantage of whom? The victim here is the Courier-Post, not Blair Hornstine.
For some examples of the allegedly innocent errors Hornstine committed, take a look here.
When I was ten years old, I drew a picture of The Beatles performing the song "Let It Be," complete with dialogue balloons. A girl in my fifth-grade class liked it, so I gave it to her and she took it home. Some time later, at a school art fair, I saw my picture, with Paul McCartney's lyrics erased and "Oh, A-B-C..." written in (The Jackson 5's "A-B-C" was popular at the time). The drawing had received an Honorable Mention notice at the art fair--and it bore someone else's name: that of the younger brother of my female classmate.
Of course I protested, the Honorable Mention notice was withdrawn, and the young boy who paraded my work as his own was admonished. This fourth-grade child, nine years old, was expected to understand that taking credit for someone else's work is wrong. Blair Hornstine is an adult and but months away from entering Harvard, ultimately to become a lawyer (come on, you did see that one coming, didn't you?), and refuses to admit that she did anything wrong, and in fact publicly asserts that she thought her little cut and paste exercise with the words of others was all right because newspapers don't use footnotes.
A final quote from the Inquirer story:
Moorestown Superintendent Paul Kadri cited the pending civil suit and student confidentiality yesterday in declining to say whether the district would take a closer look at Hornstine's academic work.
But Kadri did say students should know to give proper attribution in their work."
---------------------------------
hornstine -- verb, intransitive: 1. to accept no responsibility for one's own faults, mistakes, omissions or misdeeds; 2. to attribute all of one's misfortunes to the malice of others
"Bravi" (plural for "bravo", which is Italian for a "job well-done") to the parents of Blair Hornstine. Not only have you possibly scarred your daughter emotionally, you have potentially made her into a laughing stock of America - certainly of her Harvard classmates - and perhaps even globally (I live in Switzerland).
Your naked, "win at all costs" attitude is truly deplorable and disgusting. What kind of values have you instilled in young Blair? I wonder if you've given thought to how she will thrive in the real-world, after a relatively sheltered life of academia. Perhaps she can get a job at Enron, Worldcom or Tyco? I only hope Blair recovers from the crap upbringing that the "Judge" and his wife have inflicted.
Posted by: John Bottomley at June 28, 2003 07:30 AMNever has a story disgusted me so thoroughly as that of Blair Hornstine. Certainly no story has ever compelled me to voice my disgust on the public bathroom wall that is the internet. Her utter selfishness, disgusting attitude and litigous nature will ensure her a life of wealth, comfort, soullesness and Saturday evenings alone. It will also probably cause her to fit right in at Harvard. Or not, as it was reported today that Harvard has revoked her admission. Well done, Harvard University.
Having read all that I can on this case, it bothers me at so many levels. Firstly, what is this phantom disability we hear so much of? It seems no one actually knows what she has. It has been insinuated that she actually has no disability whatsoever - she's simply using a law meant to defend and protect the truly disabled to allow her to be tutored at home (at a ripe cost to the Moorestown taxpayer, I'm sure). Are these allegations true? I certainly don't know, but it would not surprise me or anyone else familiar with this story. I've known plenty of other overly-ambitious high schoolers to do something similar.
Secondly, she obviously showed no regard for the would-be co-valedictorian. A boy who acheived grades a mere five-one-hundredths of a point less than her, all while apparently spending some six times the amount of time sitting in school. A boy who was mathematically unable to acheive the same GPA as her, due to the mentioned requirement to attend classes that were not weighted as heavily. In fact, I would be very interested to know the percentage of total grade points available were acheived by both Hornstine and the other boy.
Finally, there is the most burning issue of all. She sued for money. No small sum, either, some $2.7 million dollars. $2.7 million. From a school board which garners its funds from taxpayers. I do not think I need to explain the audacity, the lunacy, the sheer awfulness of this action.
It happens all the time in less public cases. Parents have sued when their child was not made captain of a team. The lawsuit, in this regard, is nothing more than the adult temper-tantrum. The Honorable Judge Hornstine has made a sheer mockery of the legal system he has sworn to uphold.
I can only hope that the rejected acceptance at Harvard University is only the first in a series of events that will lead to her comeuppance. I pray that other institutions of their ilk will do the same when Ms. Hornstine condescends to attend them in lieu of Harvard.
Posted by: Matt at July 11, 2003 12:58 PM