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 University
of Idaho administrators removed an image from the main UI Web
site Thursday, 10 minutes after the Argonaut made inquiries about
its authenticity.
The graphic stemmed from a nine-student photograph, originally
taken in 1997. An Information and Technology Services graphic
artist altered the picture by replacing two students' heads with
the heads of a black male and an Asian male.
University of Idaho administrators removed
an image from the main UI Web site Thursday, 10 minutes after
the Argonaut made inquiries about its authenticity.Graphic artist
David Embleton said he made the image because he could not find
a picture in the UI photo archives that had students of different
races together.
"It is important that we show the
diversity in the University of Idaho," Embleton said.
UI President Robert Hoover said superimposing the faces of minority
students over the faces of the original students was an exercise
in poor judgement, plain and simple.
"I understand it was done in the interest of reflecting
our commitment to diversity at the University of Idaho, however,
it will never happen again," Hoover said.
Mark Wilcomb, the UI Web services manager, said he could not
identify all the students in either image. He said the black
male was taken from UI promotional commercials.
The images on the Web site are not approved or checked by anyone
outside his office before they are published, Wilcomb said.
Before seeing the image, Hal Godwin, vice president for student
affairs, said he knew of no UI pictures that had ever been doctored
to include minority students.
After seeing the images, Godwin said he was very surprised.
"To my knowledge, it is not the policy of the university
to change images in this way," Godwin said.
Godwin said it was a blunder that would be reversed quickly.
ITS replaced the image, which had been posted on the university's
external Web site for several weeks, with a picture of the Kibbie
Dome.
Raul Sanchez, the executive assistant to the president on diversity
and human rights at UI, said he questioned the picture the first
time he saw it a few weeks ago. He said he thought the resolution
on the Asian male's face looked inconsistent with the rest of
the image.
He said he asked Wilcomb, Embleton's boss, if the Asian male
was an electronically altered image, and to his knowledge it
was not.
Embleton said he did not see a reason to inform his superiors
of the changes he made in the photos three to four weeks ago.
He called it a "photo collage" and said he changed
the entire bodies of the students in the image.
The graphic artist appeared to have changed just the heads on
the bodies, said Al Wildey, a UI assistant professor of communications
who teaches photography, digital imaging and Web communication.
"The African American male definitely looks like he has
the same Caucasian neck," Wildey said. "It looks like
the neck was darkened and the head was changed."
He said the Asian male does not look right because of the size
of the altered image's head and the lighting on the face compared
to the others in the image.
Wildey said the image is not clearly a collage or a photo illustration
because it is not labeled as such and is presented to look like
a real group of UI students.
"There's not much difference between saying it's a real
photo and not saying anything at all," Wildey said. "I
am very disturbed by this."
Wildey said to a degree, cropping, lightening and darkening images
are all accepted practices within photography and photojournalism.
However, there is a threshold of acceptable straight photography
that should not be crossed beyond that, he said.
John Evey, a senior studying in production and operations management,
is the student whose head was replaced by a black male.
"It doesn't offend me, but it is inconsiderate that they
didn't ask me first," he said. "It is probably not
the most ethical thing to do; it seems like they're kind of faking
it."
Evey said it was not a big deal, but he said he didn't think
it was the smartest move.
"It doesn't show very good professionalism," he said.
UI's Web site image alteration comes just over a week after a
similar incident at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
At UW, a picture of a crowd of white students at a football game
was altered when the admissions office inserted the head of a
black student into the crowd. Officials at the school said they
decided to alter the image when they could not find a picture
that showed diversity at the university.
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