Ebertgate unfolds

Roger Ebert: world-renowned film critic, Twitter personality, cancer survivor, and third victim of a Mustang Daily plagiarism scandal in as many years

A Pattern of Deception

Long before they were influencing the outcome of student government elections and participating in the deliberate character assassination of Alex Kaplan, the Mustang Daily and its staff were providing an open forum for academic dishonesty.

On February 12, 2008 the Mustang Daily printed a comic whose dialogue was stolen directly from the pages of celebrated Icelandic cartoonist Hugleikur Dagsson under the assumption that few Cal Poly students would be familiar with his oeuvre. They assumed wrong. Then-editor-in-chief Kristen Marschall issued an "apology" in which she completely sidestepped the entire issue, trying to sweep it under the rug as if it were an isolated incident and not just one piece of a much larger pattern.

"We would never expect [a cartoonist] to plagiarize," she said, later adding that the work was that of an "obscure Icelandic cartoonist." If Dagsson is an obscure Icelandic artist, I wonder who would qualify as a well-known Icelandic cartoonist. These are just excuses, pathetic attempts to distract readers from the fact that she and every editor-in-chief since her have systematically facilitated plagiarism in the Mustang Daily.

"Journalism is just a gun. It only has one bullet. But if you aim it right, that's all you need. Aim it right and you can blow a kneecap off the world."

-Kristen Marschall, on Journalism

Fewer than three months later, the Mustang Daily found itself in the middle of another plagiarism scandal, this time under newly appointed editor-in-chief Marlize van Romburgh. A columnist working for the newspaper had been systematically plagiarizing a variety of online sources. Ms. van Romburgh's solution? To "take proactive steps to avoid [plagiarism] in the future," which amounts to making freelance columnists "sign a contract stating they know what plagiarism is." Rather than address the cause of the problem and resign as editor-in-chief, the ambitious van Romburgh did as her predecessor and deferred culpability to future columnists.

"War, violence and murder are atrocities, but guns are merely props for the people who commit them. It’s when those of us who believe in peace and civilized society quietly give up our right to defend ourselves that the criminals and terrorists gain the upper hand."

-Marlize van Romburgh, on guns

If journalism is "just a gun", and guns are "merely props" for bloodthirsty autocrats, as van Romburgh observes, then it follows that the Mustang Daily uses its pages as a weapon for the systematic distortion of fact in the Cal Poly community, as we Coalitionists know all too well.

Despite her alleged commitment to the basic ethics of journalism, van Romburgh hired freelance columnist Alex Petrosian during her tenure at the Mustang Daily. "Luckily for us," she observed just a few months prior, "the same Internet that makes copying so easy for some writers, makes searching for those copied words just as easy for us." No, Marlize, it makes it easier for citizens concerned with social justice to do your job for you, and shed light on the fraudulent practices you helped facilitate.

Alex Petrosian has written literally dozens of columns for the Mustang Daily for over a year. His residence as a columnist for the newspaper has overlapped with two separate administrations, helmed by two editors-in-chief: first Ms. van Romburgh, and now Emilie Egger. In spite of the reform promised during the Marschall and van Romburgh administrations, Petrosian has continued to write for the Mustang Daily unchecked by anti-plagiarism policy.

And here's the kicker: every single review Petrosian has had published in the Mustang Daily has contained content that was directly plagiarized from the corresponding Roger Ebert review. Let us take the opening sentences of Petrosian's most recent review, and compare it against those of Ebert's review of the same film:

“Death Wish,” “Gran Torino,” “Taken.” Three vigilante crime thrillers that all depend on their effectiveness of proving that some aging actors can still convincingly cause entertaining carnage on the big screen.

-Alex Petrosian's review of "Harry Brown"

"Harry Brown" is a revenge thriller poised somewhere between "Death Wish" and "Gran Torino." All three depend on the ability of an older actor to convince us that he's still capable of violence, and all three spend a great deal of time alone with their characters, whose faces must reflect their inner feelings.

-Roger Ebert

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to confirm the pattern in all of Petrosian's reviews, if they so desire. His reviews of "Adventureland" and "Book of Eli" are a good place to start, for the skeptics among us.

Some might say that this is an anomaly, an oversight of the Mustang Daily staff, and not part of a larger conspiracy. Of course, this belief is predicated on several bad premises. First, it requires that we overlook the clear pattern of deception that has defined the Mustang Daily since its inception, almost a century ago. We need not look further back than a few years to see the recent controversies surrounding the pattern. Second, it assumes that Alex Petrosian and I are the only two students on campus who regularly read Roger Ebert's movie column, which is absurd. Roger Ebert is far and away the most prominent and successful film critic, and to think that not a single Journalism major working for the Mustang Daily reads his reviews is insanity. Finally, it requires that we ignore past editor-in-chiefs' promises to do their due diligence on freelance columnists. As Marlize van Romburgh noted, the Internet makes it very easy to catch plagiarism, so why didn't she use it? She had several opportunities.

Once again, the Coalition has demonstrated that the Mustang Daily serves no purpose but to deceive the Cal Poly student body and make our proud University look like a cesspool of academic dishonesty.

We must reclaim our University, and let the powers-that-be in the Mustang Daily know that we will not stand for this. Everyone at the newspaper is culpable for these crimes, under the Standards of Student Conduct, which clearly state that "encouraging, permitting, or assisting another to do any act that could subject him or her to discipline" are "grounds upon which student discipline can be based."