Due to a conflict concerning a poster hung up around campus, the St. Edward’s Marketing Department has been forced to reconsider how it will use and publish photographs given by freelance and other student photographers.

The conflict arose when a student complained to the Marketing Department that she never agreed to be photographed or wished for the photo to become public, according to Mischelle Diaz, the director of communications at SEU Marketing.

“It’s unfortunate that this student was so upset over [their] being published. Usually students are happy and excited to see themselves in posters around campus. I was very surprised she was so upset,” said Diaz.

The posters were used by the Office of International Education as advertising for study abroad and were supposed to be a simple advertising campaign put on by SEU Marketing in favor of the University’s recent push for more students to be involved in study abroad according to Diaz and Paige Booth, the supervisor of SEU Marketing.

Booth would not provide information concerning the amount of funding that SEU uses on advertising campaigns each year, but did confirm that Marketing and the Office of International Education often work together to create concepts for advertising study abroad programs.

Although the posters were taken down and SEU Marketing met all of the student’s demands concerning the posters, SEU Marketing is still reconsidering how to deal with the problem of consent, not only that of students in the photographs, but the creative rights as held by student photographers.

According to SEU Marketing’s Authorization and Release Form it is the student’s discretion to allow SEU to publish any and all likenesses of them. The form does not state whether or not this includes photos taken by the student or if students in photos taken by other free-lance photographers have given consent.

“We only recently started using photos taken by students in the past 6-9 months,” said Diaz.

Diaz also said that a new form is currently be written to include consent on behalf of the photographer for SEU Marketing to be able to publish the photos.

“We’ve had to rapidly change are practices in recent weeks because of this issue,” she said.

This new form allows SEU Marketing to publish, copy, exhibit, or distribute any photographs provided by a student for the purposes of advertising the university and its programs, according to the form itself and although it does establish rights on behalf of the photographer it still neglects to acknowledge those being photographed by the free-lancers working for SEU Marketing.

“We are hoping to protect both our photographers and ourselves from incidents like the one that recently occurred,” said Diaz.

Diaz said she and SEU Marketing are still revising the new Authorization and Release Form and are hoping to better establish rights for students and student photographers and may possibly require free-lance photographers to distribute consent forms to those whom they photograph. This would include photographers getting each student that is featured in a photo to sign a consent form said Diaz.

The students directly involved with the conflict were unavailable for comment, but Diaz assured that all students demands have been met and acknowledgement of the posters being taken down has resolved the conflict.