Plagiarism

We often receive questions about why a derivative work received an award, and occasionally receive comments about plagiarism after the exhibit. Please remember that the HCC faculty do not evaluate the student's images. We don’t counsel judges on their criteria for awards, or how they should approach artwork that is not significantly developed beyond mere duplication. If you put yourself in the shoes of a juror, I think you’ll recognize why we don’t tell them how to judge art. Although we try to select judges who we respect and whom we think will approach the event with professionalism, in the past there have been some awards given to artworks that were not significantly changed in content or form or don’t seem to fit the majority consensus on technical or aesthetic excellence. That’s bound to happen when hundreds of awards are allocated.

Another concern raised is that student works have been given awards even though they are copies of an existing work. As you know there are untold millions of images on the internet- more uploaded every nanosecond- and it is simply not possible for a judge to always know when something is a copy. We don't currently have a plagiarism policy. I have been told some leagues require source images to be attached- we have not required that at this point, but may do so in the future.