Blair Hornstine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Blair Hornstine is a woman from Moorestown Township, New Jersey, who achieved notoriety in 2003 by suing Moorestown High School in an effort to name her as its sole valedictorian. She won the lawsuit, but amid the publicity, it was revealed that she had plagiarized repeatedly in a newspaper column, prompting Harvard University to revoke its offer of admission.

Contents

[edit] Background

In 1995, Blair Hornstine and her brother Adam founded an organization called the Moorestown Alliance for Goodwill and Interest in the Community, or MAGIC. As she later summarized it, "MAGIC's goals include community service to provide social support and hope to the elderly, disabled, and underprivileged". A few years after creating MAGIC, she was quoted in the press saying, "Knowing that I've helped someone less fortunate is rewarding".

Other of Hornstine's resume highlights include the following:

  • In 2001, she was selected as one of New Jersey's Olympic torch relay carriers.
  • In 2002, she was one of the nine winners of the $25,000 national Discover Card Tribute Award scholarships, as well as one of twenty winners of the 2002 President's Community Volunteer Awards for community service including drives for cleft lip correction surgery for orphans, prom dresses, 9/11 victims and food for the hungry.
  • In 2003, she was named to the Third Team of USA Today's All-USA High School Academic Teams.
  • She was also named a Toyota Community Scholar, National Winner, a $20,000 award.
  • She received a score of 1570 on the SAT-I.
  • She had a weighted GPA of 4.689.
  • She was moot court captain.
  • She had a regular column in The Courier-Post newspaper of Cherry Hill Township, New Jersey.

[edit] The GPA controversy

Hornstine was classified with a disability on entering Moorestown High School, the exact nature of which was never disclosed publicly. Her Individualized Education Plan (IEP) excused her from physical education (gym) classes and allowed her to be home-schooled. In place of gym, Hornstine took extra Advanced Placement courses. Moorestown High School, in its calculation of GPA, weighed gym lower than normal academic courses. This put her in a position to earn a GPA higher than what was mathematically possible for students who did take gym. After seven semesters, Blair had a slightly higher GPA (4.689) than the second-place student in her class, Kenneth Mirkin (4.634), a difference of 0.055. Considering the special circumstances, however, Superintendent of Schools Paul Kadri sent a letter to Mirkin advising him he was under consideration for valedictorian honors. Kadri sent no similar letter to Hornstine.

During this time, Hornstine was accepted to Harvard and four other prominent universities (Stanford, Duke, Princeton, and Cornell). However, she decided that she would attend Harvard, where her brother Adam had previously attended. Mirkin also accepted an offer to attend Harvard in the fall.

Upon hearing that she would have to share the valedictorian award, Hornstine's family brought suit in federal court to force the school to name her as sole valedictorian. The suit asked for $2.7 million for her embarrassment, pain and suffering. Most of the town's residents were disgusted at Hornstine's perceived overreaction. When polled, 88% of the residents "Strongly Agreed" to the statement "Blair Hornstine should not be named valedictorian."

Hornstine was immediately isolated from her classmates. Some of them viewed her disability as a transparent sham and her lawsuit as a sign of selfishness and bad parenting. Superintendent Kadri said that Hornstine's father, a New Jersey Superior Court judge in Camden County, had told him that "he was going to manipulate rules designed to protect disabled students for the purpose of allowing (Blair Hornstine) to win the valedictorian award".

Local and later national media focused intense attention to the case, leading to talk-radio scorn, an online petition calling for Harvard to revoke her admission [1] and unflattering front-page photos in the Philadelphia tabloid newspapers.

On May 8, 2003, U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson ordered the Moorestown school district to name Blair the sole valedictorian for the class of 2003 [2]. Wolfson wrote, "Ms. Hornstine earned her distinction as the top student in her class in spite of, not because of, her disability". Hornstine's claim for compensatory and punitive damages was settled on August 19 for $60,000; all but $15,000 of which went to lawyers' fees. On June 11, Hornstine had her lawyer, Edwin Jacobs, inform the school that she did not intend to attend graduation (which was held on June 19) and request her valedictorian award be made in absentia, citing the school environment had "traumatized Blair both physically and emotionally". Her fellow classmates had been throwing eggs and toilet paper at the Hornstine house, and it seemed likely that she would be harassed at graduation, had she attended.

[edit] The plagiarism controversy

Shortly after Judge Wolfson handed down her decision, The Courier-Post accused Hornstine of plagiarism. Hornstine had in the past contributed several columns to the "Static" section of The Courier-Post, a weekly insert aimed at teenagers. A Courier-Post reporter doing research for a future article found that Hornstine, on several occasions, copied from sources such as President Bill Clinton and U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan. She had entered some of these essays into contests and in one instance won, using text copied from Steve LaMontagne, senior analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, D.C.. Two examples follow (Bold in Hornstine's excerpts is added to illustrate usage of the exact wording of a previous source in Hornstine's March 29 essay on North Korea's nuclear arms):

From Hornstine's November 12 column on art censorship:

If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that public entities may not prohibit expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.

From U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan's 1989 decision in Texas v. Johnson:

If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.

The following essay won the newspaper's monthly contest:

North Korea's recent admission that it has continued to pursue a nuclear weapons program in violation of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, the 1992 Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and the 1994 Agreed Framework caught the United States off guard and startled the world. Rather than rush to judgment, it is extremely important that the Bush administration endeavors to mount a coordinated peaceful international response.

While the hope is that North Korea will respond favorably, if the delicate political balance is untenable, then the United States must warn them of clear consequences should North Korea choose not to comply with international demands. Despite the preference for a diplomatic solution, we must be mindful that the use of military force may be a reluctant alternative.

From a piece by Steve LaMontagne, senior analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, D.C., posted on The Nautilus Institute's Web site:

North Korea's recent admission that it has continued to pursue a nuclear weapons program in violation of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, the 1992 Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and the 1994 Agreed Framework caught the United States off guard and startled the world. As the Bush administration endeavors to mount a coordinated international response, it is important to consider the status of North Korea's nuclear program, possible reasons for its disclosure and the implications of various response options....

While the hope is that North Korea will respond to a delicate balance of carrots and sticks, if incentives prove unattractive to North Korea or politically untenable at home, then the U.S. will have to warn of clear consequences should North Korea choose not to comply with international demands. Despite the preference for a diplomatic solution, such an ultimatum could lead to a policy of isolation, and ultimately the use of military force.

[edit] Loss of Harvard acceptance

Blair Hornstine accepted her spot at Harvard and planned to attend in the fall, but Harvard asked her to explain her dishonest behavior. In an apology published in The Courier-Post [3], Hornstine said that her plagiarism resulted from a "lack of training in journalism".

In early July, The Harvard Crimson broke the news that Harvard had rescinded its offer of admission. The Director of Undergraduate Admissions, Marilyn McGrath Lewis, declined to comment on Hornstine's case specifically, but she discussed the five conditions under which admissions might generally be revoked, including the engagement "in behavior that brings into question [one's] honesty, maturity, or moral character".

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ http://www.petitiononline.com/blairadm/petition.html
  2. ^ http://lawlibrary.rutgers.edu/fed/html/ca03-1953-1.html
  3. ^ Hornstine, Blair. "Stories, essays lacked attribution". The Courier Post. June 3, 2003

[edit] References

[edit] See also

  • Kaavya Viswanathan, a Harvard student accused of plagiarizing passages in her novel.
  • Gina Grant, a young woman whose Harvard admission was similarly revoked for having lied about murdering her mother.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../b/l/a/Blair_Hornstine_04ad.html"