A Copied Photograph in the AP Drawing Portfolio
You teach Advanced Drawing at a comprehensive high school. A junior, Maya, submits a graphite drawing for her AP Drawing portfolio whose composition, cropping, and lighting closely match a well-known contemporary photograph she found on Pinterest. She says she 'changed the shirt color' and 'made it hers.' Your student handbook's academic integrity policy addresses text but says nothing about images. The AP portfolio requires students to cite borrowed imagery and prohibits copied work; Maya has 14 other pieces and considers this her strongest. The digital submission deadline is in three weeks, and her art-school applications are due the same week. She is tearful and says she did not know this counted as cheating. You have not yet seen her process sketches.
1. Is this plagiarism, appropriation, or a study copy? What evidence do you need before deciding, and why does the distinction matter?
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The labels are not interchangeable. A study copy is made to learn from a source and is not claimed as an original composition. Plagiarism is presenting someone else's composition as your own without acknowledgment. Appropriation can be a deliberate critical or transformative use of a source, but it requires transformation and usually context, not just a color change.
Changing the shirt color does not transform the composition, cropping, or lighting. The key questions are whether Maya claims original composition, whether she disclosed the source, and what her process shows. Look at her sketchbook, reference file, whether she gridded or traced, and what she thought citation meant. Do not decide from the final image alone. The distinction matters because consequences should be proportionate and educational, and because AP's citation requirement is a claim about sustained inquiry, not a formatting formality.
2. What are the defensible options for the piece and the three-week deadline, and what would you rule out?
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It cannot go into the portfolio as an original work. Defensible options: withdraw it and submit the other 14 pieces after checking the portfolio minimum; rework it into a clearly labeled study plus a new piece that genuinely transforms the source; or require a new work started now with a written timeline. A written process statement and source citation should accompany whatever is submitted.
Rule out simply failing her, destroying the piece, or pretending the color change resolves authorship. If she traced, that is a separate conversation about skill development, not a reason to humiliate her. Give a decision date and a production schedule, for example: decision by Friday, new work 10 days before the deadline. The learning goal is that she can use a source to study looking and still make an authored work.
3. What department-level change would prevent this from recurring, and how would you apply it without punishing only Maya?
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The handbook gap is a department problem. Add an image-use protocol: a citation format for borrowed images, sketchbook provenance photos, a signed statement that the submitted composition is the student's own or is cited, and a short lesson distinguishing study, plagiarism, and appropriation. Use historical and contemporary examples, but keep the focus on ethics, law, and authorship rather than on naming artists as villains.
Apply the protocol to the whole class and the next assignment, not retroactively as a trap. Make the rule visible in the syllabus and on the portfolio checklist. Consistency matters: if two other students also borrowed images, they need the same conversation. The judgment is to protect academic integrity while teaching the difference between copying to learn and copying to claim.