The “Most Amazing [Borrowed] College Welcome Speech Ever”

Geor­gia Tech sopho­more and Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing major Nick Sel­by gave a rous­ing wel­come speech at the 2013 Fresh­man Con­vo­ca­tion. It did­n’t take long for the speech to go viral. Or for Gawk­er to real­ize that the speech had been bor­rowed from a 2008 speech giv­en by Andy Stone, once the debate team cham­pi­on at Ari­zona State. (Click here and then skip to the 8:40 mark to see the sim­i­lar part of Stone’s speech.) But here’s per­haps the most straight­for­ward expla­na­tion. It turns out that Sel­by was once coached by Stone, and on his Face­book page, Sel­by writes: “I had an awe­some speech coach in high school by the name of Andy Stone, and was absolute­ly thrilled when he agreed to let me use the end of his award-win­ning speech as the foun­da­tion for my own.”