New York state Sen. Greg Ball (R) reportedly plagiarized from a 17-year-old high school student in Chicago and from the Los Angeles Times in a bill he introduced that would keep the state from housing killer whales in aquariums, according to the Times Union.
Ball lifted a paragraph from a blog post Donald Rapier wrote for the Huffington Post about “Blackfish,” a CNN documentary about a killer whale at SeaWorld that killed an employee in 2010. Here’s Rapier’s paragraph that Ball’s bill uses, though there is a typo in the bill:
In the United States, dolphin and marine animal parks, like SeaWorld, have become a part of an $8.4 billion industry. Accustomed to living in the ocean, and having an infinite amount of space to swim in, dolphins and whales are actually faced with several health problems that shorten their life span and cause insanity when they are placed in captivity.
Rapier told the Times Union that he was “shocked” that the lawmaker plagiarized from his piece.
“I’m a little disappointed that they wouldn’t reach out to me or even cite me. I don’t think it’s hard to put things in your own words,” he wrote in an email. “I hope they haven’t plagiarized before.”
Ball also took a few lines from a story written by Janet Kinosian about the documentary:
Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s riveting documentary “Blackfish” tells the story of Tilikum, an aggressive bull orca who has lived the last 30 years in captivity. The film’s central debate circles around what exactly caused the whale’s behavior linking him to the deaths of three people over the years — natural aggression or the trauma and boredom of captivity?
Kinosian called the lawmaker’s plagiarism “bizarre.”
When Ball’s office learned of “this oversight” from the Times-Union, the senator’s director of operations, Colin Schmitt, said that the office would be looking into the matter.
“This simple yet sloppy action taken flies in the face of the high standards of our office,” he said in a statement, according to Capital New York. “We have taken immediate and appropriate steps internally to address this oversight and address the staffer responsible. All memo language is being reviewed and will be corrected if necessary. We also thank Casey for his interest in preventing the abuse of animals, and bringing much needed attention to this important matter.”
