Problem for ex mayor

periodictable

Interesting piece by Gordon Deegan in today's Indo, where Flan Garvey, ex mayor of Clare has had the legitimacy of his masters in Arts degree-paid for by the taxpayer-thrown into question.


http://www.independent.ie/national-news/26-college-staff-accuse-councillor-of-plagiarising-thesis-3316440.html

Who was it said You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.

Clareman

By gawd I would love to vent my thoughts on this gentleman on a public forum but....................

Reminder all that any discussion of people, their integrity or anything that could be regarded of libellous cannot be discussed on boards, this goes for all posters, mods and all............

Lady Chatterton

My understanding it that the college want the matter to be referred to the Higher Education and Training Awards Council to establish an independent panel to investigate the matter fully.

Until that investigation happens and a decision has been made on whether the work was Mr. Garvey's or not, I personally think it is very difficult to have a discussion on this.

Clareman

MrsD007 wrote: »

My understanding it that the college want the matter to be referred to the Higher Education and Training Awards Council to establish an independent panel to investigate the matter fully.

Until that investigation happens and a decision has been made on whether the work was Mr. Harvey's or not, I personally think it is very difficult to have a discussion on this.

Tralee IT forum maybe?

periodictable

MrsD007 wrote: »

My understanding it that the college want the matter to be referred to the Higher Education and Training Awards Council to establish an independent panel to investigate the matter fully.

Until that investigation happens and a decision has been made on whether the work was Mr. Harvey's or not, I personally think it is very difficult to have a discussion on this.

26 university staff don't seem to think so!

Lady Chatterton

periodictable wrote: »

26 university staff don't seem to think so!

Yes, 26 college staff have asked for an investigation to happen and I personally believe that investigation should be concluded before we start making claims that could damage someone's reputation.

Call me old fashioned but I believe everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence until an investigation or a legal case finds otherwise. At the moment, claims have been made but nothing has been proven.

colm_mcm

Why are they only doing it 4 years later?

periodictable

colm_mcm wrote: »

Why are they only doing it 4 years later?

Good question...and what about the person who supervised the thesis? Plagiarism usually caught before the awarding of a degree.

Note taken that it's just MODS engaging in this thread...interesting!

Clareman

colm_mcm wrote: »

Why are they only doing it 4 years later?

Cause everytime someone started reading they fell asleep

I don't think a regional forum is the place to discuss educational standards/matters, I would recommend checking the Edu forums to get a better idea of what's happen/procedures

Lady Chatterton

periodictable wrote: »

Note taken that it's just MODS engaging in this thread...interesting!

Maybe, people are afraid of being sued

periodictable

MrsD007 wrote: »

Maybe, people are afraid of being sued

Owners of Boards.ie?:D
Interesting to see how the allegations/claims pan out.

Lady Chatterton

periodictable wrote: »

Owners of Boards.ie?:D
Interesting to see how the allegations/claims pan out.

You see that's the thing, Boards can be sued but a poster can be held personally liable for the comments they post.

You need to read this link:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=81993153&postcount=6

periodictable

Clareman wrote: »

Cause everytime someone started reading they fell asleep

I don't think a regional forum is the place to discuss educational standards/matters, I would recommend checking the Edu forums to get a better idea of what's happen/procedures

The perfect place- he's from Clare, is writing about a Clare parish, and made decisions that affected the people of the county.

Clareman

periodictable wrote: »

Note taken that it's just MODS engaging in this thread...interesting!

Mods are posters too, we just have a few more buttons we have to press, personally I follow 11 threads (the ones I mod), if there's a new post I tend to read it cause it's usually something I'm interested in, Clare is top of the list as well (alphabetically )

colm_mcm

periodictable wrote: »

Note taken that it's just MODS engaging in this thread...interesting!

I'm a mod from Clare, not a Clare mod.

CptSternn

Can we at least quote the article?

In one example, the staff claim 14 pages of the dissertation are identical to a book which was published in 1965 about Mr Garvey's native parish – Inagh.

Clareman

You can do whatever you want once it's within the rules and the guidelines of the charter

In regards to quoting an article, this is a very difficult area in Ireland at the moment for copyright law, before copying an article from another site you should get the permission off the owners of the article, this isn't going to be possible in the real world however as people will just put up a link and quote the article, the rule of thumb on here is to quote a paragraph not the whole thing, the Admins are stilling looking into this.

What you did quote is a great example of where things can go wrong quickly, you quoted a line from the article which was a claim, but highlighted the bit that says that they "are identical"

Balagan

periodictable wrote: »

Interesting piece by Gordon Deegan in today's Indo, where Flan Garvey, ex mayor of Clare has had the legitimacy of his masters in Arts degree-paid for by the taxpayer-thrown into question.


http://www.independent.ie/national-news/26-college-staff-accuse-councillor-of-plagiarising-thesis-3316440.html

Who was it said You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.

Article is by Barry Duggan. In fairness!

Figerty

If 26 academics are willing to put their necks on the line there is a major problem behind the scene. Why it took 4 years for this to finally come to a head would be speculation but it's certain to me that there is good reason why the staff had to go public.

I have no doubt the analysis of the thesis and the original document would have been done forensically and the staff will be able to stand over their letter. Of course how he was made chairman of the governing would be interesting to look at.

Mr. Garvey in his position on the appeals committee is seriously comprimised. This is going to get interesting.

pilate 1

colm_mcm wrote: »

Why are they only doing it 4 years later?

he is chairman of the governing board.looking in from the outside it does appear
a case of disgruntled employees having a pop at the boss rather than moral indegnation. perhaps he upset some some lazy lecturers!;)

Figerty

pilate 1 wrote: »

he is chairman of the governing board.looking in from the outside it does appear
a case of disgruntled employees having a pop at the boss rather than moral indegnation. perhaps he upset some some lazy lecturers!;)

The chairman of a governing body has no power. It is a political appointment and usually filled by candidiates that are being paid back rather than ability. More likely is that the issue has been raised and brushed under the carpet.

Now, when you have a guy who has been accused of cheating standing in judgement of students, people start to get annoyed. If these 26 lecturers were lazy then they would have let the whole thing die. This is going to bring a world of hassle down on them. THe easy thing would have been to keep it under the carpet.

Shapey Fiend

I'd to go to one of those plagiarism meetings a couple of years ago. Such a momumental waste of time. They'd 5 people with masters degrees deliberating my case. I was under review because I'd had a mobile phone in the exam hall, that I'd switched off and left face down on the floor as per the old exam guidelines which had changed that year without me noticing. They'd a letter from me to that effect, a note from the supervisor saying I wasn't cheating, and they still gave me 30 minutes of interview before saying it's grand. Had to drive 3 hours both ways for that ****e.

The fact Boards.ie can get sued is farcical. They're just a medium for people to post on the internet like Twitter, Facebook or whatever. The only difference is they don't have the resources to sue back.

Lady Chatterton

Shapey Fiend wrote: »

I'd to go to one of those plagiarism meetings a couple of years ago. Such a momumental waste of time. They'd 5 people with masters degrees deliberating my case. I was under review because I'd had a mobile phone in the exam hall, that I'd switched off and left face down on the floor as per the old exam guidelines which had changed that year without me noticing. They'd a letter from me to that effect, a note from the supervisor saying I wasn't cheating, and they still gave me 30 minutes of interview before saying it's grand. Had to drive 3 hours both ways for that ****e.

I suppose your case highlights the importance of giving someone a fair hearing instead of rushing to judgement.

Shapey Fiend

I'd failed the test (can't understand how i'd got good marks in continual assessment and finished most of the final exam) so the whole charade was entirely pointless. It was just an opportunity for them to justify drawing a salary sitting on a board that does nothing outside of a couple of days in the year. If the exam supervisor said i wasn't cheating that should be plenty reason to not waste my time.

Clareman

Sorry Shapey but I think your case shows exactly why procedures have to be put in place to protect the integrity of exams. You openingly admit to not following the rules set out for the examination, ignorance of a rule cannot be used as a defence I'm afraid in most cases, if the review committee was not in place you would have had to have stood by the policy set in place, would I would imagine would have been disbarred from other exams in the institution, if a State exam maybe even a ban from taking other exams, by having the review in place you were able to get a statement from supervisor and have a neutral panel review the situation.

Also, boards isn't a medium like Facebook or Twitter, there is far more controls in place on Facebook and Twitter to link back to the user, also, you can set your security settings there whereas boards is public.

buck65

A lot of cash too, let's not forget!

Shapey Fiend

It's just needless bureacracy. Half the place have phones on them but they don't choose to reveal them (and some doubtlessly go to the jacks to check them for notes if they so wish) so the exercise is moot. The fact it's taken them 4 years to review this mans thesis shows how they're not willing to do anything more than appearing to be soundly regulated. They've got software for checking this stuff and seeing if you've lifted large parts of a text it shouldn't be a big deal.

I'm being a bit off topic anyway. Sorry but anything college related still has the capacity to put me in full rant mode.

I'm not knocking Boards. They've done what they have to do. I just think it's a medium like anything else and the user should ultimately be held accountable. I know people don't use their real name but it's easy to trace who they really are. They don't use them on Twitter either and 99% of accounts are public.

Figerty

Shapey Fiend wrote: »

It's just needless bureacracy. Half the place have phones on them but they don't choose to reveal them (and some doubtlessly go to the jacks to check them for notes if they so wish) so the exercise is moot. The fact it's taken them 4 years to review this mans thesis shows how they're not willing to do anything more than appearing to be soundly regulated. They've got software for checking this stuff and seeing if you've lifted large parts of a text it shouldn't be a big deal.

I'm being a bit off topic anyway. Sorry but anything college related still has the capacity to put me in full rant mode.

I'm not knocking Boards. They've done what they have to do. I just think it's a medium like anything else and the user should ultimately be held accountable. I know people don't use their real name but it's easy to trace who they really are. They don't use them on Twitter either and 99% of accounts are public.

Shapey, You miss the point. The thesis was reviewed by an internal supervisor and I presume an external supervisor....who is usually a buddy of the internal supervisore... both of them either missed or ignored the plagerism that the 26 lecturers have since uncovered. The award was made and presumably someone either checked the thesis or referenced it to another work and it set of the alarms. The internal and external examiners and Mr. Garvey are all in the dock on this one.
The software you talking about can only examine electronic data. The book used was apparently published locally in the mid fifties and wouldn't have been available electronically.. I'd hazard a guess this was a factor in using it.

I presume that this has been raised and an attempt to fob them off has been tried. This staff here will have stuck to their guns.

As regards to the exam regulation and yourself..it's up to you to read the exam instructions. If you didn't then you are the one that rightfully ended up in front of a committee.

Curly Judge

Can anybody explain why tax and rate payers had to fork out 125,000 euro in traveling expenses to this gentleman over a period of 4 years?

Stephen King hardly made that much for one novel!

Lady Chatterton

Curly Judge wrote: »

Can anybody explain why tax and rate payers had to fork out 125,000 euro in traveling expenses to this gentleman over a period of 4 years?

Stephen King hardly made that much for one novel!

It was €125,000 over seven years, it's still a massive amount in expenses :eek:

Here's the story for anyone who is interested.

The Irish Independent can today reveal that Flan Garvey, chairman of the governing body of the Institute of Technology Tralee (ITT), received more than €125,000 in college expenses over the past seven years.

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/flan-garvey-got-125000-in-college-expenses-3318445.html

periodictable

Curly Judge wrote: »

Can anybody explain why tax and rate payers had to fork out 125,000 euro in traveling expenses to this gentleman over a period of 4 years?

Stephen King hardly made that much for one novel!

Good question.

In my opinion, Mr Garvey is typical of the type of politician who feasted at the trough at the taxpayers expense, thereby helping to break the country.
What are needed are people for whom public service means a willingness to offer one's expertise and experience for the betterment of the nation, without self-enrichment.

Curly Judge

periodictable wrote: »

Good question.

In my opinion, Mr Garvey is typical of the type of politician who feasted at the trough at the taxpayers expense, thereby helping to break the country.
What are needed are people for whom public service means a willingness to offer one's expertise and experience for the betterment of the nation, without self-enrichment.

While Mr Garvey's actions may have been very questionable indeed, the system which entitled him to such largess at the expense of the people cries out for our condemnation also.
The architects of this system should be tarred, and feathered with the contents of their own cushy nests.
Why should my or my neighbors taxes go toward this mans educational aggrandizement?

periodictable

Garvey steps down pending investigation.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/1215/1224327873742.html

Talk about brass neck-took him long enough.

periodictable

Now the college wants to investigate who leaked what to the media.....time for whistleblowers protection legislation.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/college-in-plagiarism-row-to-probe-staff-over-media-leaks-29214100.html

pilate 1

periodictable wrote: »

Now the college wants to investigate who leaked what to the media.....time for whistleblowers protection legislation.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/college-in-plagiarism-row-to-probe-staff-over-media-leaks-29214100.html

of course they are entitled to hold an investigation.for whatever reason(right/or wrong) you cant just go running to the media on every percieved wrong.if whoever blew the whistle felt that strongly on the issue i would imagine they wouldnt need the cloak of anoniminity.

Figerty

I'd say they know who it was but won't be able to prove it. Obviously the president in ITT has lost the dressing room with the Academic staff and is now seriously undermind by those with standards.

Appointing a Councillor from Clare to ITT Chairman, who was the allowed to register as a student in the same college he was chairman of the governing body was nuts anyway.

At graduation, the Chair of the Governing body makes keynote address, and then in this case, accepted a degree from the Institute he was chair of.

Flan Garvey should have known better than try to be a student and a master in Tralee at the same time. To see nothing wrong with this was also a poor refelction on standard in ITT.

Lady Chatterton

Mr. Garvey has been cleared of plagiarism but lecturers in ITT still want him to give up his role as college chairman.

LECTURERS at a third-level institute have called on their chairman to step down from his position after he was cleared on appeal of plagiarising his thesis.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/college-chairman-asked-to-quit-over-thesis-row-29258311.html

Figerty

MrsD007 wrote: »

Mr. Garvey has been cleared of plagiarism but lecturers in ITT still want him to give up his role as college chairman.




http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/college-chairman-asked-to-quit-over-thesis-row-29258311.html

He hasn't been cleared of plagerism. He has been cleared of deliberate plagerism. To quote the Clare Champion on may 10th the panel found that unintentional plagerism had occurred. That is plagerism. That means taking credit for someone else's work without giving due credit.

The original finding was that the degree was awarded in an unjustified manner. He appealed and it would appear that he got the outcome changed on a tecnicallity that the rules hadn't not been circulated to the student body. Read the Clare champion article. In other words, he hadn't read the rules becaUse no one put them in front of him. As chairman of the governing body this is a disastrous stance and no wonder the staff want him out.

He is now in the ambarassing position of having to resubmit his thesis with a list of corrections four years later. From an acedimic point of view this is akin to an embarrassing climb down, anyone who ever reads this thesis will see this Corrigenda and know the work is tainted.

How can this man preside over graduations in the institute from now on?

http://www.clarechampion.ie/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14176:six-months-of-torture-over-for-former-mayor&catid=74:general&Itemid=60

periodictable

Garvey is the ultimate Fianna Fail with a neck of brass. His type doesn't do resignation.

PyeContinental

Curly Judge wrote: »

While Mr Garvey's actions may have been very questionable indeed, the system which entitled him to such largess at the expense of the people cries out for our condemnation also.
The architects of this system should be tarred, and feathered with the contents of their own cushy nests.
Why should my or my neighbors taxes go toward this mans educational aggrandizement?

Thanks for the update to this thread, and kudos to Curly Judge for the use of many beautifully descriptive words in the one post, but particularly largesse and aggrandizement :cool:

Curly Judge

PyeContinental wrote: »

Thanks for the update to this thread, and kudos to Curly Judge for the use of many beautifully descriptive words in the one post, but particularly largesse and aggrandizement :cool:

It's my policy never to use a small word where a big one can be fitted!:D

Balagan

periodictable wrote: »

Garvey is the ultimate Fianna Fail with a neck of brass. His type doesn't do resignation.

They don't even do typing!

periodictable

Just listening to him on Clare FM.....sounds like the quintessential gombeen man, from speaking of his entitlements to his "important friends in high places". Talk about wind and piss.

PyeContinental

periodictable wrote: »

Just listening to him on Clare FM.....sounds like the quintessential gombeen man, from speaking of his entitlements to his "important friends in high places". Talk about wind and piss.

Anyone know of a link to a recording of the interview?

breedie

I particularly enjoyed the piece in the Clare Champion where the individual in question is reported as describing this disgrace as a load of "hullabaloo" over "two wrong references and a number of inverted commas missing and that is all that was wrong"

To have completed an education and still not accept that these pesky inverted commas are so your words can be distinguished from those of another individual is enough of a reason to hang your head in shame.

To lose one inverted comma may be regarded as carelessness; to lose "a number" of them looks like something else entirely!

Figerty

breedie wrote: »

I particularly enjoyed the piece in the Clare Champion where the individual in question is reported as describing this disgrace as a load of "hullabaloo" over "two wrong references and a number of inverted commas missing and that is all that was wrong"

To have completed an education and still not accept that these pesky inverted commas are so your words can be distinguished from those of another individual is enough of a reason to hang your head in shame.

To lose one inverted comma may be regarded as carelessness; to lose "a number" of them looks like something else entirely!

What was better was to read one version of events from his head on the left hand side and to read the facts on the right hand side... needless to say the weren't exactly matching..

I suppose you could say in this case taking credit for someone else's work would be normal for most politicians.

breedie

I wonder if I wrote a letter to the paper attributing him with phrases like "I am a complete idiot", "I have the moral fibre of a paper bag", and "please spit at me if you see me on the street" would he finally recognise the importance of inverted commas?

After all, if it's not a problem when they're missing it shouldn't be that much of a problem when they're inserted.

Figerty

I wonder if he was paying the typist per charachter typed? Saved a few bob on quotation marks etc.

I also wonder did he get travelling expenses to attend the inquiry?

RabbleRouser2k

I am pretty critical of that institute, and education, myself, to be quite honest. Similar to others on this board.

The sad thing is that there is very little regulation going on in the Institutes across the country. Universities have someone to report to, and who folks can report them to also, in situtations where people feel they are getting the short end of the stick. In a Uni, if they feel the lecturer is/has issues, they can complain and have it redressed, if they complain in an IT...tough toffee, you are screwed.

There is meant to be software checking to make sure there is no plagiarism, but like all software, it is fallible. Garvey is, allegedly, going to seek legal action over this (A relative told me this, as his wife worked with Garvey before he joined the ITT) but considering how the institute is so 'hush-hush' about certain things, I think they will try and dissuade him over this. I imagine the staff in question, who reported Flann, were angry that this was being swept under the carpet and ignored, while others were being docked marks or called up on the slightest typo or missing reference, they had to leak it to the media.
But considering some of the stuff I personally saw going on there, Garvey is just a drop in the ocean compared to the rubbish that never leaks to the media. (I also imagine that Garvey's political affiliations may have ticked off a few people, as there are quite a number of FG/ Labour supporters in that place. And I say this as someone who detests FF, yet hates political bias.) One lecturer was only suspended from work for two weeks for drug use, another was suspended for absenteeism, drinking on the job, and docking students marks when she disliked them. Both still have their jobs there. We also know that a student and lecturer are not supposed to have an intimage relationship, but sod it, the ITT don't follow those rules. As one lecturer demonstrated. Yet none of the incidents I mentioned ever leaked to the media.
And btw, who the heck is going to mark his new thesis? Not the previous shower I hope.

I have to wonder how damaging this will be to others who have come before, and after him, whilst trying to earn their degrees in that place? Will employers look at them and wonder if they plagiarised their work? I know it happens around the world, and people get away with it, but few of these institutes have a known plagiariser on their staff. (Whether it was deliberate or accidental, it still makes him a plagiariser. It's unfortunate, but that's life.) What other questions will this raise? I know folks who broke their backs when it came to getting their degrees from that place, yet will theirs now be worth naught? What I mean is, will employers look at their CV and immediately dismiss their job application when it gets to that part? I know others who cannot edit a video to save their lives (part of the course training), since they got everyone else to do it for them in the place, but the less said about them the better.

Figerty

It's a funny thing about the law..if Garvey goes the legal route he is just going to expose more facts about the goings on. The whole Inquiry will be played on in public and all the facts will come out about his goings on.

I just found this on a google search. The report is more damning of Garvey that I had thought.

While the external panel was well formed in its make up... who was on the internal panel appeal board????

http://www.irishexaminer.com/text/ireland/cwmhaumhcwcw/


Plagiarism finding

After word-for-word comparisons with texts cited by the complainants, the investigation panel found numerous tracts of Mr Garvey’s thesis were near-verbatim copies of insufficiently acknowledged or misleadingly cited primary or secondary sources.

"There are some very slight variations, mainly of punctuation and paragraphing, between thesis and original, but there is not a single sentence in this sub-section which can be said to be Mr Garvey’s own work," they wrote of more than seven pages in chapter 1."

RabbleRouser2k

Figerty wrote: »

It's a funny thing about the law..if Garvey goes the legal route he is just going to expose more facts about the goings on. The whole Inquiry will be played on in public and all the facts will come out about his goings on.

I just found this on a google search. The report is more damning of Garvey that I had thought.

While the external panel was well formed in its make up... who was on the internal panel appeal board????

http://www.irishexaminer.com/text/ireland/cwmhaumhcwcw/


Plagiarism finding

After word-for-word comparisons with texts cited by the complainants, the investigation panel found numerous tracts of Mr Garvey’s thesis were near-verbatim copies of insufficiently acknowledged or misleadingly cited primary or secondary sources.

"There are some very slight variations, mainly of punctuation and paragraphing, between thesis and original, but there is not a single sentence in this sub-section which can be said to be Mr Garvey’s own work," they wrote of more than seven pages in chapter 1. "

This controversy is not going away, I feel. There will be past and former students wondering if their degree is valid, and there will be employers wondering what else the ITT covered up, and if students can even do what they claim they can do. It could very well lead to retroactive investigations.

I remember having to wait 9 weeks for a resit exam that was meant to turn up in a few days, and which is one of the reasons why I left the place.
They launched a Masters in Creative Media, whilst only having 4 camcorders, which only occassionally work.
There are very few folks out of that place who have fond memories of it, since many I know signed up to FAS courses due to their skills already being out of date, even when they only graduated in June, they were in a FAS course by September because they lacked knowledge in every technical field.
Many who signed up for careers in web development could not do any web programming, because they had not been taught php coding script, which is used pretty much everywhere for web programming.
The crazy thing is that the institute is trying to get University status, but they cannot teach the courses in the prospectus, or the courses are not as advertised.
I have warned folks into going there, a few I knew who did not listen to me eventually dropped out when they saw I was telling the truth.
Much better to enrol in a degree in a respectable place, rather than get screwed over with a degree that's not worth it's weight in salt.