International organisation uses NTU students’ work without credit

By Sean Loo, Sports Editor

A group of NTU students found their work being used by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) without them being credited, drawing ire from fellow students and netizens.

For their Final Year Project campaign, themed “Project This Ability”, the group redesigned access signs in public areas including MRT stations to promote participation in disability sports.

On Friday (17 Feb), ITTF, which is based in Switzerland, uploaded these designs on its Facebook page, leaving out the necessary credits.

Based on screenshots shared by one of the group members on his Facebook account, the group asked via email for proper attribution for the design.

But ITTF responded: “The photo had a reach of 35,000, which is already a credit to you and your work.” 

The post was subsequently taken down after negative feedback, and replaced with a new post that credits the group. In response to the Nanyang Chronicle’s queries, ITTF head of communications Matt Pound said the email exchange was a “big miscommunication”.

Team member Samantha Tan told the Chronicle that she was discouraged by this incident, “especially for the designer of the signs”. The team then decided to speak up about it.

“While we hope that they eventually would apologise, we just want to put it out there so that other small groups will know how to react in similar circumstances,” she added.

The final-year student from the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information said the team does not plan to further pursue the incident, in hopes of  “(moving) forward” towards fulfilling their goals for the project.