Student group slams photo plagiarist

Not once, but thrice.

A student organization has come out to denounce University of the Philippines student Mark Joseph Solis who had submitted an entry taken by another photographer to their contest.

The same photo was found to have been sent by Solis to a competition arranged by the Chilean Embassy and to yet  another  tilt sponsored by a world famous organization.

The now infamous shot of a boy supposedly taken in Zamboanga, but which was actually shot in Brazil, was  submitted by Solis to the Calidad Humana contest of the Embassy of Chile, a contest sponsored by the Union of Journalists of the Philippines (UJP) chapter at the UP and another by the United Nations.

In a letter to the fact-finding committee which investigated  the incident, the UJP said the photograph—originally taken by Gregory John Smith and titled “Neptune, King of the Sea—was passed off as an entry to their Mulat Maninipat contest in September last year.

Unlike  the Calidad Humana  entry which won the top award for Solis, the same photo which he renamed  “Seaweed Prince” did not win in the UJP contest, which was open only to students.

“Although he did not win, what matters is that he stole the credits for a work  he does not own,” the UJP added.

The fact-finding committee  created by the National College of Public Administration and Governance, where Solis is a student, earlier elevated his case to Diliman Chancellor Caesar Saloma  for resolution.

Solis joined six contests from 2008 to 2013, apparently passing off other photographers’ works as his own, according to the committee headed by Dr. Olivia Domingo.

A position paper written by committee member Anton Hernandez said that aside from plagiarism, intellectual property laws and UP’s guidelines on student conduct and discipline were also violated.

“The frequency of committing an offense betrays the propensity to steal another person’s works or ideas, for his own profit and gain. Repeated violations signify a lack of remorse on the part of the offender,” part of Hernandez’s paper read.

The case is clearly a “prima facie ground to subject him to disciplinary action,” he added.

Hernandez said he was recommending  that the allegations be probed on a wider scale.

“Further investigation under the UP president (Alfredo Pascual) can look into the undergraduate works of Mr. Solis,” Hernandez said.