On Nov. 2, the university organized a promotional photo to celebrate AASU’s 75th Anniversary, arranging students, faculty and staff in a big “75” in a field. This was a good idea, and if you read The Inkwell with some regularity (if not, please start) then you saw that we did a large story and photo spread on it in the middle of the front page.
AASU plans to use the photo in advertisements and literature about the university. This whole set up was planned out months in advance and it was apparently important enough to falsify its appearance.
They used Photoshop on the picture. They didn’t even do any major changes; all they “corrected” was a flag held up in the background of the photo. This flag is relatively small in the context of the image, and was the symbol of the Kappa Sigma fraternity.
I have two e-mails sent out by the university to promote attendance at the photo shoot, and there were probably more. These were sent to all student e-mail accounts. The e-mails do not state that a student could not hold up a flag for their fraternity (or do anything else for that matter) and they only encouraged students to wear “their favorite AASU T-shirt or gear.”
The school says it forewarned student groups not to display signs or other materials of their group, but The Inkwell never received such a rule, in e-mail or otherwise. This seems like a rather large oversight since we’re a significant student-run organization. Furthermore, would it have been so difficult to, when taking the photos of the big “75” made of people, to spot the only flag and ask the men holding it to put it away?
Photoshopping out a part of the picture they don’t like is disingenuous at best; the claim for “fairness” to other student groups only more so. Kappa Sigma wanted to show its support for AASU, so it turned out for a school event and made its presence known, which any student organization could have done. They wanted to show how dedicated they were to the school by being in the picture, part of that dedication is obviously to the fraternity itself.
The Inkwell nearly ran the falsified picture before learning it had been altered.
It’s a good thing we caught it.
This photo will be widely circulated, and it is fake. Not all of it is fake, but “mostly true” isn’t really true. If the administration is willing to fake a photo because it wants the university’s image to be pure, what else is it willing to do?
This sort of behavior may explain why former VP of Business and Finance James Brignati was able to allegedly embezzle thousands of dollars and then was allowed to resign in what was speculated to be an attempt to keep reaction muted. A successful attempt, at that.
Or why after a pair of stories did not show our cafeteria operating company, Sodexo, in the best light, a media relations wall seems to be building.
Little instances of mistruth can be clues to a greater pattern of action, and making things up to protect your “image” is a start…or maybe they just liked the pirate flag better.
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