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March 17, 2011 11:39 PM UTC

"I Would Never Plagiarize Anything," Says Plagiarizer

  • 16 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

It looks like the Denver city elections are finally starting to get interesting. Michele Fry, a candidate for City Council in District 5, has been caught plagiarizing answers on a candidate questionnaire, according to a story in the Denver newspaper.

Fry apparently copied several answers to a Downtown Denver Partnership questionnaire from a National League of Cities pamphlet. The best part of the story is Fry’s initial response to The Denver Post before being confronted with evidence of her plagiarism. “I’m not dumb. I would never plagiarize anything,” she told reporter Kurtis Lee.

There’s a quick lesson for you would-be candidates out there. When a reporter calls to ask about a potential scandal, assume they have some evidence already.

Comments

16 thoughts on ““I Would Never Plagiarize Anything,” Says Plagiarizer

  1. “I would never intentionally lift from another source and should have been more careful,” Fry said. “I’ve definitely learned something about research and the scrutiny of political races and will work even harder.”

    How do you accidentally copy and paste an entire section of information? Next time she’ll work harder… to not be so obvious when she “lifts.”

    It’s super great she thinks honesty is only important if someone sees it. Super great.

    (This really irritated me for some reason. I don’t know who this woman is, nor do I care, but I am irritated.)

    1. so she honestly didn’t know what was appearing under name. Her “researcher” must have done it. Maybe “more careful” means glancing at the researcher’s work and asking the researcher to not copy anything without attribution.  Sound familiar?

      1. So, no.

        Seriously, she cites her work as a college student to bolster her research skillz cred. She better hope none of her professors see this and takes an interest.

            1. minus the typewriter. I couldn’t afford one so got permission from all my professors to write out my papers longhand. And this wasn’t in the 1920s’; this was the 1990s’. I was just really poor.  

    1. She shouldn’t have done it.  I’m not in her district so I can’t vote for her and probably wouldn’t.

      Still, considering the near absolute lack of coverage of a real race (leadership of the state’s largest city), it does seem that Kurtis Lee had some tip and and agenda, he took the lazy way out and followed up on it and here we are. (Poindexter, actually, by reaching out to the group she plagiarized, and apologizing on her website, she does take responsiblity).

      Seriously, plagiarism is ridiculously stupid (Hi, Joe Biden and Scott McInnis).  But if her website is true, are the rumors that Sussman and Saunders didn’t vote in the last election (what I hear, not what the website says), kind of damning and discoverable?  Why would I vote for someone who doesn’t care enough to hold up their civic responsibility?  It’s way above my pay grade, but the developer question is interesting, too.  Paging Kurtis Lee or anyone else at the Post who wants to dig.  20 bucks says there’s no followup from the big paper on these questions.

      She did a moronic thing no matter how she couches it, and I know politics at the local level is the most vicious of all, but where’s the Post’s focus on big races and real issues?  Pols does a better job at coverage than any of the media in this town.

      If the Post is going to single her out for obvious stupidity, I’d like to see them apply the same treatment to everyone in the race.  I doubt any of them is worthy of my vote.

      1. The paper’s absolutely not covering any City Council races, and as a resident of District 5 (which is a competitive race — I think there are 4 or 5 people running), I really would like to learn more about the candidates.  It is lame that the paper’s doing nothing substantive here

        But this isn’t a non-issue, and I don’t think she really takes responsibility for what she’s done.  Yes, she says she did it and has learned from it, but then immediately moves to the whisper campaign issue, and pretty much stays there for the rest of the response.  BlueCat’s line on the other Fry thread says it all — honesty does matter to voters.  I think her response is fundamentally disingenuous, and in the post-McInnis era, also not smart.

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