First, I want to thank everyone's overwhelming support!
I will be drawing a thank you gift once I've sorted out all the notes and mails
Now, a lot has happened in the past few days and I think most (though not all) of the issues have been resolves.
The most important thing, and the reason for my original journal, is that Scholastic has finally acknowledged the problem after almost a month. I've received an e-mail from the Executive Director saying the same thing that everyone else has received: they acknowledge the issue, have taken down her work from their site, and revoked all of her awards.
Right now, I have not received a reply from Scholastics as to why it took so long and so many angered people for them to finally take action. They also haven't told me why the copyright infringement procedures were incomplete which rendered it impossible for me to report the issue. However, I've finally spoken with Kasey and worked a few things out.
The following is a rather complicated situation so please read carefully before making a decision about Kasey:
She contacted me to "apologize", but since I'm sure she never had to apologize for this kind of things before, it was a poor first attempt. She told me she has taken full responsibility of what she did, and then proceeded to deny responsibility by saying she never meant to do it as if it was not her decision. She also tried to take some blame off of herself by saying:
"Both my teacher, Mrs. Johnson, and my father really liked the intensity
of it and begged me time and time again to enter it in an art show. After
a couple of months of this constant nagging, I finally gave in and
submitted it."
I've spoken with Mrs. Johnson and she told me that she never begged Kasey to enter. Now, I've already scolded Kasey for trying to shift the blame onto others and for trying to lie to me so you guys should not flame her about this.
I've instructed Kasey to give a proper apology to the public without excuses, and to promise to never plagiarize again under the penalty of law. She complied and wrote a nice apology to you all
[link] , please read it and be assured that she has learned her lesson.
While I can not tell you guys what to do, I do hope you guys can stop sending in hate mails and threats to her. I've already scolded her myself for plagiarizing and for trying to lie to me in an apology so there is no more need for you guys to do so. Please remember that Kasey's probably inexperienced at giving proper apologies but in the end she was able to write a good apology without lies or excuses.
Thank you all again for helping me with everything!!!
I wish I could buy you all ice cream hahaha!!
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