High school principal caught plagiarizing graduation speech from YouTube video that has been viewed

A high school principal in Florida was caught plagiarizing a speech to his school's recent graduates from a video that has millions of hits on YouTube.

Principal Mark Stenner of West Boca High School is now under investigation by the Palm Beach County School District after lifting almost his entire speech from an English teacher in Massachusetts.

The speech, originally given by David McCullough Jr to Wellesley High School's class of 2012, was titled 'You Are Not Special', received 2.2million views online and garnered national media attention.

McCullough's message to high school seniors was that they are not unique in a world of 7billion people, and Stenner seems to have taken the idea to heart and taken verbatim large swaths of the speech.

However, the principal said that he didn't believe he plagiarized the address from the son of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough.

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'That was my mistake,' the principal told the Sun-Sentinel. 'I liked his idea. I should have said this was in part taken from him.

He says that he shortened the original 12-minute speech down to seven minutes and added that he changed things up in the address.

Proper names and locations specific to Massachusetts and the Northeast were changed to south Florida references, but otherwise the speech was largely taken verbatim.

Stenner took some of the speech's most memorable sections, including his turns of phrase referencing graduates 'batty Aunt Sylvia' and the 'maternal caped crusader' that has coddled them through their young lives.

While the principal cited the same authors as McCullough such as Sophocles and Thoreau, he gave no attribution to the speech's first orator during his school's May 22nd ceremony.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrdGnx6h03k

He even ended the address with the same uplifting message, 'And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself.

'The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you're not special. Because everyone is.'

McCullough told the Sun-Sentinel in an email, 'Well, attribution would have been nice, but I'm glad to hear someone finds me quotable.'

His original speech sparked a book deal that led to the 300-page tome You Are Not Special: And Other Encouragements, released last year.

The Palm Beach County School District says it holds its employees to 'the highest standards of ethics and integrity,' according to the Palm Beach Post.