The second annual Art of Awareness Competition is currently taking place at the Union Building ballroom and winner will be announced Wednesday.
The event, co-sponsored by the Prindle Institute of Ethics and the Civic, was started last year by a group of Prindle interns, the event is a photo competition that invites students-both art and non-art majors-to submit photographs they captured during their time abroad.
According to interns in charge of the event, the purpose of the competition is to raise community awareness of ethical issues through the lens of art.
Junior Tyler Davies, a Prindle intern and student organizer for the event, said that these photographs act as symbols of what students have taken away from other cultures, places and people during the time they spent off campus.
"We've seen some really cool images highlighting various global situations not only from around the country, but from all over the world as well," Davies said. "The range we've gathered is awesome."
The photographs submitted for the competition were posted to the Art of Awareness event's electronic page on Friday, March 1. Students are encouraged to look through the array of photos and vote for their favorite image online using their student ID.
"We really encourage students to stop by on their daily walks through the Hub and check out their fellow students' work," Davies said. "Whichever one had the greatest impact on them is the one we encourage them to vote for."
Voting closes at midnight tonight, March 5. Photographs will also be displayed in the UB ballroom until the winner is announced tomorrow, Wednesday, March 6.
In order to eliminate any confounding basis for voting, the identity photographer remains anonymous until voting is finished.
As a gift for the winner, the university will enlarge and frame the image for the student. The student will also have the option to donate a copy to the university to be hung in the Global Opportunities office.
Students were allowed to submit up to four images and were required to write a caption elaborating upon the meaning of their piece. Aside from those requirements though, students are allowed to experiment creatively.
"The competition isn't just to submit a pretty picture," Davies said. "All of these images have a message."
That being said, Prindle interns working on the event were careful to alert submitting students about proper etiquette of snapping photos in different cultures. The Prindle interns composed a pamphlet listing a set of guidelines students should be aware of.
"Taking pictures around campus is one thing, but taking pictures in other places should be handled much more sensitively," Davies said. "You can't just snap a picture in public in some countries. That could get the camera knocked right out of your hand."
To promote the competition, the interns tabled at the Hub the month before DePauw's Winter Term. They also used multiple social media pages and posters hung around campus to advertise.
"The point is to bring something back to campus that you have learned from another setting," Davies said. "You learned something through the lens, and now you can bring it back and share that experience with everyone else."
Senior Chrissy Wildt, a Prindle intern, said she thinks Art of Awareness is an exciting competition and hopes that DePauw can continue it in the future.
"The heart of it is combining arts and ethics. They are linked in ways that we students don't think about everyday," said Wildt. "I hope that this competition gets students to think about the dimension of ethics in art and nature."