Originally published at: University president resigns after plagiarizing speech | Boing Boing
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Why didn’t he tell them something useful, like wear sunscreen?
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Jinx! I was just thinking, if I were going to plagiarize a speech, it would be that one or “the last lecture.”
But I would not plagiarize a speech. Amateur move.
It is shocking that he got the name wrong, of the university he was President of. I had to reread, because I thought maybe he was a paid speaker from somewhere else.
In happier news, one of my boss’s daughters gets to have Sarah Cooper as her commencement speaker!
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To be fair, he was only given an hour’s heads-up that he was supposed to give the commencement speech. /s
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What a dumb, boring speech to plagiarize. Just a bunch of useless, shallow platitudes cobbled together from graduation cards and Pinterest posts.
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But will she lip-sync to Trump? 
Huh. He could have made it into a valuable lesson simply by prefixing an attribution onto the beginning. Oh well.
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The dog ate his speech…lol.
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And prophetic, to boot!
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As a South Carolina grad school alum, I think he may have just gotten a bit Cocky. 
Also, South Carolina is usually mixed up with Univ. of Southern California (the other USC) as opposed to Univ. of California.
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What, a university Administrator that isn’t up to snuff on academic integrity? Say it isn’t so!
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I have had to listen to so fucking many commencement addresses. It’s a sorry-ass genre, chockablock with bullshit platitudes and weird-ass Scientology-esque beliefs/lies about striving and success. Graduation ceremonies are one of the times when I really regret the part I play in the whole sorry pyramid scheme of higher education in the United States.
This particular instance… So many predominately white institutions like to pull the pseudofascist paramilitary knob-polishing. Fuck. Could. they. not. just have some academic up there drone on about medieval art, or jazz, human physiology, philosophy, or any damn thing to do with (cue harps) Higher Education? The closest you seem to get is some jackass off TEDtalks trying to sell you a book about Wonder Woman poses.
At least this year a tornado had knocked out my power so I could beg off the virtual commencement.
EDIT: I’m pissed off at fucking autocorrect too.
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I skipped my commencement. As soon as my last class ended, I was out the door.
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Isn’t the main job of most university and college presidents raising money? So it’s perhaps not surprising that this gentleman doesn’t know basic principles of scholarship. But honestly this is like forgetting to wear pants.
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Is McCraven in the quoted text some kind of editorial comment? Because it doesn’t appear that way in the CNN story and his name is McRaven.
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From the CNN story:
Correction : An earlier version of this story misspelled the last name of retired Navy Admiral William McRaven and gave the wrong name for the military unit that he led. He was the former head of US Special Operations Command.
Boingboing is just so quick to scrape!
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That’s a bummer! My HS commencement was lovely, bc the school always selected a student speaker from a group who auditioned (instead of automatically having the valedictorian speak like I see in lots of schools.)
And the college one was a nice denouement after 5 years of working my ass off. I love the part where you walk through the hall and all the professors are there dressed up like they work at Hogwarts, applauding as you go by. 
And my friends and I really belted it out when it was time to sing the school song.
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The president of my alma mater certainly was. He was a bit of a buffoon who was a master level wine-and-diner. Related: Lots of students had amusing stories of running into him drunk after such dinners, wandering campus. Quite friendly after some drinks, in a gregarious way. Guess he is retired now.
I actually worked for the college while attending, and as near as I could tell he did not make any kind of policy decisions about anything.
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Mediocre white guy is mediocre.
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Well, it sounds like McRaven isn’t the kind of guy you’d want to have being angry at you 
Hey, but at least he’s white; that’s gotta count for somethin’, right? 
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