Controversy
In May 2004 the Premier of Alberta, Ralph Klein, brought public attention to the university due to allegations that he had plagiarized a paper that he submitted for a communication studies course he took from the school. While speaking before the provincial legislature, he held up a copy of the paper to provide evidence on his views about former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet. Afterwards, there was public criticism that portions of five pages of the 13-page paper had been copied from the Internet without proper citations to the sources. The university investigated the matter and told the news media that Klein's instructor had noted the mistake when grading the paper and offered guidance for correcting it. A university spokesman described the failure to properly cite sources as a "relatively minor error, undisputed by student, easily corrected, and not an ongoing or repeated problem."
In 2012, it was revealed that Athabasca University was one of the institutions of higher education involved in illegal donations to the provincial Progressive Conservative party. The university spent $10,675 on Conservative fundraising events, including golf tournaments and dinners.
Read more about this topic: Athabasca University Research Centre
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)