SGA VP Candidate Lifts Verbatim Singh’s 2016 Platform

News – The Emory Wheel







SGA executive vice presidential candidate Natasha Armstrong (18B) lifted verbatim approximately 42 percent — 459 words — of her 2017 campaign platform from SGA presidential candidate Gurbani Singh’s (18B) SGA executive vice presidential candidate platform last year.
Armstrong’s platform reads word-for-word the ideas and language of three major sections of Singh’s 2016 platform: safety and transportation, academics and dining. Despite the similarities between the platforms, both Singh and Armstrong denied that plagiarism occurred, stating they developed their platforms together.
According to Emory College’s Honor Code website, “Plagiarism is the use of someone else’s words, ideas or work without providing proper credit. Whether the act is intentional or not, the Honor Council considers any form of plagiarism to be a violation of the Honor Code.”
Armstrong did not attribute the copied portions from Singh’s 2016 platform to Singh.
The Wheel downloaded copies of Singh’s 2016 platform and Armstrong’s 2017 platform as of March 23 at 4:30 p.m. The highlighted portions appear verbatim in both documents.

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Gurbani Singh's 2016 executive vice presidential candidate platformIt appears that your browser does not support our web PDF viewer. You can download the PDF to view the document.
Natasha Armstrong's 2017 executive vice presidential candidate platform


In years past, the SGA presidential and executive vice presidential candidates ran independently, but SGA amended its Elections Code in 2015 to allow presidential and vice presidential candidates to campaign with running mates starting in 2016. Elections Board Chair Betty Zhang (20C) said the Board is evaluating the technological feasibility of implementing a two-candidate ticket voting system. Singh and Armstrong are campaigning together and have said they’re running on a party ticket.  
“I drafted the platform,” Armstrong said of her 2017 platform, adding that “a lot of it does come verbatim from Gurbani [Singh]’s ...

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