Mahan Cleared Of Plagiarizing Platform Text

As the Undergraduate Council election heads into its final stretch, the council’s election commission formally investigated—and dismissed—an anonymous tip that the election’s presumed frontrunners plagiarized the platform of current Council President Rohit Chopra ’04.

Presidential candidate Matt W. Mahan ’05 said the commission notified him and running mate Michael R. Blickstead ’05 of the allegation on Tuesday, but that the commission concluded there were no grounds on which to assess a penalty.

Election Commission Chair David I. Monteiro ’04 refused to comment on the investigation, except to say that “the election commission has seen no evidence of plagiarism.”

While some have accused Mahan and Blickstead of recycling many of the ideas of Chopra and Council Vice President Jessica R. Stannard-Friel ’04, the anonymous complaint alleged that the ticket copied portions of the 2002 winning platform word-for-word.

According to an e-mail obtained by The Crimson, the investigation of the plagiarism allegations centered around three headings that appear on the Mahan-Blickstead website: “Make Harvard’s financial aid second-to-none,” “Organize class-wide events” and “Fight for student representation on the Ad Board.”

The comparison by the election commission singled out these phrases because of wording similarities to three headings from the Chopra-Stannard-Friel platform, which read “Make Harvard’s financial aid second to none,” “Create class-wide events” and “Representation on the Ad Board.”

Mahan and Blickstead said that any similarities between their platform and the Chopra-Stannard-Friel platform is due to the fact that council candidates often talk about the same issues.

“I mean, how else do you say student representation on the Ad-Board?” Blickstead said.

Chopra said he does not believe Mahan and Blickstead committed plagiarism.

“I don’t believe at all that there was any plagiarism,” Chopra said. “Similarities in UC platforms from year to year will always exist.”

Mahan said that any similarity between the way the two tickets phrased their support of an improved financial aid system was “unfortunate”—but not deliberate.

“We had 71 headers and a 10 page platform,” Mahan said. “We all talk about the same issues in the same way. There’s nothing similar in the text.”

Mahan said that he and Blickstead did not consult the Chopra-Stannard-Friel platform when they were drafting theirs.

Chopra said that he gave a copy of his platform to every candidate who asked for one, but that neither Mahan nor Blickstead asked for a copy. Chopra added, however, that his platform from last year has been widely disseminated.

“We spent 10 hours writing [our platform] and revising it, “ Mahan said. “We never knew [a copy of Chopra’s platform] was available. I never saved it from last year.”

But Blickstead said that he does not feel the election commission was unreasonable in investigating the complaint.

“They are just doing their job. I think members of the election commission knew that there wasn’t any merit and they just wanted to double check,” he said.

Upon receipt of a complaint, the election commission begins a preliminary investigation and gathers evidence to investigate the claims. It requires a one third vote of the election commission in order to begin a formal investigation.

“In almost any complaint that’s filed for a matter above a Category C there is a formal investigation,” Monteiro said. “It’s a procedure used to gather more information.”

Mahan and Blickstead said they did not know who filed the complaint against them, but surmised that it was not another candidate, but a supporter of another candidate.

“It seems like a kind of underhanded political move,” Mahan said. “It really is pathetic, whoever did this. It’s just some political back-stabbing.”

Several of the Mahan-Blickstead posters in Eliot House have also been crossed out with black marker.

“There’s definitely someone out there that doesn’t like us,” Mahan said. “We haven’t gotten any penalties yet. We’ve run the cleanest campaign as we can.” The Blickstead-Mahan ticket is the only one out of four that has not yet received any penalties by the election commission.

Last night, the election commission also penalized presidential candidate Aaron S. Byrd ’05 for sending an unsolicited mass e-mail to 433 residents of Dunster House.

Byrd is being forced to return $18.65 of his campaign material to the election commission, bringing hit total penalties to $88. Last Friday, Byrd was asked to remove $17 worth of his posters and fliers for campaigning in classrooms.

Montiero said that he does not know whether or not Byrd will be able to find nearly $20 more of campaign materials to remove. But if Byrd does not comply with the penalty, all of his campaigning would have to stop, Monteiro said.

Voting for the election will close at noon today.

—Staff writer Ebonie D. Hazle can be reached at hazle@fas.harvard.edu.