There are so many things ethically offensive about this story that I hardly know where to begin.
From NBC:
In a statement released Wednesday, Roosevelt High School principal Stephen Strachan said that an unedited draft of the message had been published in the yearbook, rather than the final version he intended to appear. The message borrowed heavily from one penned by a principal in Albany, California, to his school’s class of 2013. Strachan’s message even includes the sentence, “Congratulations to the Albany High School Class of 2013.”
“I sincerely apologize to the Roosevelt community and to the class of 2014 for the inadvertent clerical error causing mistakes to be printed in the 2014 yearbook,” he said. Strachan said that a new version of the yearbook with the correct message and will be given out to students on Friday. The new yearbooks will cost about $800 and will be paid for with funds from the principal’s discretionary fund, Newsday reports.
“I take full responsibility for this oversight,” Strachan said.
According to Newsday, the first and third paragraphs were nearly identical to the California principal’s, with only the second paragraph differing. Strachan told Newsday that he received permission to quote one of his colleagues.
Wait…WHAT??
Am I going mad? Has the world spun off its axis? Is this school being run by meercats? Is every parent demented? Asleep? Suffering from a serious closed head injury? Look…
- The apology means, in essence, “I apologize for posing as an educator, when in fact I can’t compose the simplest of prose, follow through on basic supervision and oversight, meet the core ethical requirements I am duty bound to model for students, and making tax payers fund my incompetence.”
- The only reasonable answer to this “apology” is “Yes, we are sorry you are an incompetent, lazy fraud too. Get out, and find another field of work. You disgrace the profession, the school and the community.”
- He got permission to copy the words of another principal and claim that he wrote it? Is that all the school requires of its students for plagiarism to be OK? Permission from the source you steal from and represent as your own work? Good to know.
- How can the school or the community allow this slug to make the city pay for his botched plagiarism? The page should be allowed to remain in the yearbook forever, to remind all the students of the sham their education was and public education generally is, run by incompetent, lazy, bumbling idiots like Stephen Strachan. At very least, Strachan should have to pay for his humiliation with his cash as well with his shattered reputation.
I am hoping against hope that the story is still developing, and that this principal will be an apprentice at a bicycle repair shop by the beginning of the next school year. He apologized, though. Everyone probably thinks that makes him a competent and trustworthy principle again.
______________________
Facts: NBC
Ethics Alarms 
He sincerely apologizes.
As opposed to times in which he insincerely apologizes?
He apologizes for a clerical error which caused mistakes to be made in the yearbook.
Everyone knows those “clerical people” can’t get anything right and this principal takes the hit for them. What a great guy!
Your amusing observation reminds me of people’s use of adverbs and adjectives in certain situations. They don’t realize when discussing on a personal matter, that adverbs can be misinterpreted or at least out to be read as redundant.
I sincerely apologize implies the possibility that I may insincerely apologize.
The Army, as a value, espouses Personal Courage, whatever that means since I’m not sure what Impersonal Courage is… additionally Selfless Service as opposed to Selfish Service (an apparent oxymoron).
Here’s my personal opinion, since I’m not sure what my impersonal opinion is. Honestly, here’s what I think, because if I didn’t mention that you might think that the first words out of my mouth are typically dishonest.
Quibble time on a curmudgeon scale:
Why is the principal’s message to the students printed in that buffoonish kindergarten font?
Because it appealed to his level of maturity?
Yup.
Well, now that you have set the precedent of “honestly” telling me what you think… anytime you don’t start out your sentence with the declaration that you are being honest, I can only assume you are being dishonest. You did this to yourself!
Jack…why yes! The story is still developing. The Vice President of the school board said “an unfortunate mistake occurred”. He went on to say that is was unfortunate that anyone found this to be newsworthy.
Could it be possible that the Vice President of the school board is confusing mistakes that occur and mistakes that do not occur? I feel that mistakes that do not occur are much less newsworthy than mistakes that do occur.
(Tex…that is my honest and personal opinion)
KABOOM.
It’s not newsworthy when a supposed educator has to surreptitiously arrange to crib a simple yearbook message from another, more literate principal, gets caught, and makes the town pay to rectify his mistake, all while schools are trying to keep kids from cheating??????? Here is a brief and hardly inclusive list of what mistakes occurred:
1. The school mistakenly allowed a phony, unqualified principal to oversee the education of children
2. Parents mistakenly trusted the school to staff itself competently.
3. This guy was mistakenly allowed to blunder his way through the job this long, doing untold damage, without being outed as the fool he is.
4. The Albany principal mistakenly aided and abetted this guy’s attempt to cover up the fact that he was either too illiterate to write an introduction, or too creatively inadequate to write one.
5. The principal mistakenly entrusted the proper proofreading of his plagiarism to students, who, having been educated by the likes of him and the doubtlessly similarly inept and unqualified teachers hired and supervised by the same fools who hire him, botched the job.
6. The principal mistakenly billed the school for the correction, when he should have voluntarily paid for it himself
7. He mistakenly failed to resign.
8. The school mistakenly failed to fire him, and
9. Every parent mistakenly failed to pull their child and boycott the school until he was jettisoned.
I’m sure there were more “mistakes.”
He probably also made the mistake of not writing his congratulatory message as a black woman.
Honestly, I forget to do that all the damn time.
–Dwayne
Now YOU owe me a keyboard. (I should just buy a barrel of the damn things…)
I hear there’s flexible plastic liners for that problem. Maybe you can get a nice Kaboom! printed on yours…
These days, when a public official of any stripe cites an “unfortunate mistake”, it’s often cause to alert Crime Scene Investigation!
(Peeking from around the corner)
I agree!
He’ll probably be transferred to a worse school somewhere at best. Still, he does not exactly set a great example for his current students.
This plagiarizing principal is this year’s principal of hempstead high school in long island. Yes he found another worst off school to preside over. Good souls on the same boat to nowhere.
Can you say “plagiarism?”. Let me write a congratulatory address. I’ll start it out with “Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers set forth on this continent…” Oh, wait, that’s in the public domain, now, isn’t it? That’ll make it OK. Sorry if I made you buy another keyboard…now you only owe me one.
If the superintendent of Annapolis did this, he would be court-martialed!