All of us at Young@Heart were so proud to hear that Evelyn Harris, one of our newest and youngest singers, was to receive an honorary degree at Smith College this spring. She has been such a great addition to our group, and such an inspiration to all of us — as she has been to many others. We were saddened by the way Smith College has chosen to humiliate Evelyn in public by accusing her of plagiarizing parts of her acceptance speech. Evelyn has informed us that her speech was submitted to Smith College in early May, and was edited by them for length. Surely the question of plagiarism could have been brought to her attention at that point, avoiding the drama and spectacle that has unfolded now?

Evelyn is a phenomenal interpretive musician and great performer. Young@Heart is essentially a cover band. Plagiarism works a little differently for us. We sing lyrics and play music written by others without explicitly crediting them from the stage, without asking their permission, but often getting the original artist’s enthusiastic response when they eventually hear our version. We imagine Evelyn may have been doing something similar in her speech and was honoring the words of others. It’s hard to know, because Smith chose to bring this to the public and humiliate Evelyn with very little explanation. We applaud the president of Smith College for recognizing the greatness in our community, but we think the way this was handled could hardly be considered neighborly.

Bob Cilman and Julia van IJken, co-directors of Young@Heart

Northampton