THE SANGGUNIAN has made plans for the creation of a Design Ethics General Assembly (GA) to address the pressing issue of visual arts plagiarism.
In a privilege speech given during the Sanggunian Central Board meeting held last June 28, School of Humanities Chairperson RJ Dimla raised intellectual property rights (IPR) concerns forwarded to him by students and faculty.
“If the Sanggunian’s going to fight for the students’ intellectual property rights, then we should be consistent about it. If we’re going to be consistent about it, we should also respect the intellectual property rights of other people outside the Ateneo,” Dimla said in his speech.
According to him, there have been reports that a number of organizations have been using promotional materials that were “in a way, plagiarized.”
“What’s worse is that it damages Ateneo’s reputation because these are accredited organizations carrying the Ateneo name,” Dimla said.
Design ethics
To further drive his point, Dimla showed examples of promotional materials that had been plagiarized.
“There’s a huge difference between pegging and copying it directly,” he said.
Students from the Fine Arts Program and representatives proposed the creation of a design ethics assembly to address the issue of plagiarism, especially with regard to visual arts.
The said GA will require attendance from all Sanggunian units and all creatives departments of the organizations part of the Council of Organizations of the Ateneo.
The GA will also be open to interested students and groups.
Creating policy
During the meeting, the question of other courses of action was raised.
“Right now, we can’t really do anything about it because it’s not yet set as a policy,” Dimla said.
Nevertheless, he said that the Sanggunian’s long term goal is to create a policy about IPR protection.
“If we can’t plagiarize written documents and we’re not even allowed to photocopy entire books, forms of visual arts should [also be included in the policy],” Dimla said in a mix of English and Filipino.
Representatives from the Ateneo League of Physicists (Leaps) raised the concern that all organizations’ promotional materials go through Office of Student Activities (OSA) for approval.
However, Dimla said even OSA is not knowledgeable of the situation.
He said what the organizations can do for now is to ensure that their promotional materials are completely original.
In case a promotional material is based on another artist’s creation, Dimla suggested that OSA be given access to the original artwork so the two materials may be differentiated and checked for plagiarism concerns.
Sanggunian President Dan Remo closed the issue saying that it will be a top priority of the Sanggunian. An emergency meeting will be called on Monday to discuss the course of action.
UPDATED: 11:10 PM, June 29, 2013
