In his mini-biography on the website of SUNY Stony Brook, whose Short Fiction Prize Ung Lee '02 won, the recent University graduate writes: "There are many people who have helped me along the way, and who I feel compelled to thank." The list includes his creative thesis adviser Joyce Carol Oates, his parents, his friends and his sister. Seth Shafer's name is conspicuously absent.
Shafer and Lee have never met in person. However, Shafer wrote a short story called "Main Strengths," which bears an eerie resemblance to Lee's award winning story "Accidents." Some character names, dialogue and entire descriptive sentences in the two stories are identical.
Shafer doesn't remember exactly when he wrote "Main Strengths," but he recalls that he was notified of its acceptance to fictionline.com on his birthday, June 29, 2001.
According to its website, fictionline.com is a "nonprofit literary journal/contest celebrating literary short fiction by awarding writers $1000/story and publishing it [on the website] always free to the reader."
The publication date on fictionline for "Main Strengths" is July 8, 2001.
The due date for Lee's creative writing thesis was during March of 2002.
The similarities
Both Shafer's "Main Strengths" and Lee's "Accidents" tell the story of a man who makes money collecting deer from the side of the road and selling them, who in the end collides with a deer himself. Both contain characters named Roy, Rena, Tanya and Bernadette.
In a comparison of the two stories, the Prince found more than 60 identical lines of dialogue, more than 60 identical descriptive narrative sentences and again as many sentences that are phrased only slightly differently between the two texts.
For instance, the second line of "Main Strength" reads, "The largest are heavy, harder to lift than you can imagine." The third sentence of "Accidents" is exactly the same.
'Trying to get information'
Carolyn E. McGrath, a SUNY Stony Brook English faculty member involved in the contest said in an email that Stony Brook was "still involved in negotiations with the Princeton administration in trying to get information" and that "legal reasons" prevented her from talking about the case. SUNY Stony Brook owns the copyright to "Accidents."
Kathleen Deignan, Dean of Undergraduate Students, would not comment on whether the University is investigating Lee.
"Nobody at the University who has anything to do with any disciplinary procedure is permitted to comment on any disciplinary procedure," she said.
Creative writing department head Ed White also declined to comment.
Prize winner
In addition to winning the SUNY Stony Brook $1,000 Short Fiction Prize, for "My America" — the book of short stories in which "Accidents" appeared — Lee won the Samuel Shellabarger $5,000 Creative Thesis Prize, the Althea B. Clark Reading Prize and was nominated for the University's English Prize according to the Stony Brook web site.
Lee, who was a psychology major, wrote the creative thesis in addition to his standard one with the psychology department.
When reached at home in Manassas, Va., Lee's mother said Ung was out of the country. The Prince was unable to reach him for comment.
Honor Code violations are considered "especially serious" if a student has submitted a paper prepared by another person or agency according to Rights, Rules and Responsibilities.
The penalties for such violations by a current student would include one year's suspension or required withdrawal from the University according to Rights, Rules and Responsibilities, but it is not clear what the penalties are for a student who has already graduated and to whom a diploma has been issued.
Shafer, a laid back 28-year-old Texan with an MFA from University of Texas trying to write a novel was hearing about this for the first time.
"That's pretty interesting," he said. "Ultimately, when you think about it, it's sort of flattery times two in a weird fashion that someone would for whatever reason value your story enough to plagiarize it and then have that story do well in a contest," he said. "It's not the worst thing in the world to have happen even though the circumstances are kind of strange."
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