Candidate responds to accusation of plagiarism

Vernon — Harry Shortway has been accused of plagiarizing the responses to a questionnaire about his views on local issues sent to Vernon candidates by the Vernon Taxpayers Association. That’s more than an overstatement, said Shortway in a telephone interview this week. He said that his time was tight and while researching the topics brought up in the questionnaire, he did in fact use information from other sources but not in an effort to present it as his own words. “I feel like I was blindsided by this,” said Shortway. Running for a seat on Vernon’s Town Council has turned out to be a tricky and sometimes nasty business, as his detractors have seized on this incident, which Shortway characterizes as a bit of a misunderstanding. According to Tom McClachrie, a spokesperson for the Vernon Taxpayers group, all candidates received the questionnaire and were given a deadline for their answers. All knew responses were to be posted on the group’s blog, but, “to be honest, we didn’t have any rules againsgt plagiarizing...the only rules we had were to answer by such and such a date.” The survey results are available at http://vernontaxpayers.blogspot.com.