A letter of apology
(Note: On Aug. 15, 2017, The Philippine
STAR Campus published an article entitled “The state of Filipino millennials’ mental health.” It was a submission from Junielle Alexis Alatiit, a senior student from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. It turned out, however, that the article submitted was a plagiarized version of an article written by Hazel Delgado Planco entitled “Why we need a mental health law in PH,” published on Mar. 13, 2015. Campus has reached out to both parties concerned and regrets the unfortunate incident. Junielle’s apology to Hazel Planco and The STAR follows.) My name is Junielle Alexis Alatiit. It was recently discovered that on Aug. 8,2017 I had plagiarized your work.
This was an act of plagiarism. Though I wish I could claim this were an error on my part, I knew at the time that what I was doing was wrong. I then continued to cover up the plagiarism and take no action to correct the record in the time after I did it. The only failing was in my ethical judgment and, for that, all I can do is apologize.
It was wrong of me to use your work without permission and attribution. Your efforts deserve the recognition that I denied it. I recognize that this is likely hurtful for you, seeing your work misused in such a way and I am deeply sorry for that pain.
I also wish to apologize to the individuals that I lied to and misled, telling them that the work I had created was my own when I knew it wasn’t. You trusted me and expected honesty from me and I have let you down. I understand that my behavior has disappointed you and caused you grief, once again, I am sorry for that.
I deeply regret my actions. What I did was wrong and there is no excuse for it.
I should have better cited my sources and put more effort into creating original work. In the future, I will be much more cautious about my work, especially when it comes to using the work of others in it.
While I understand that there will be repercussions for my action and accept them, I sincerely hope that, with time and effort, I can move past these offenses to regain the trust of both those I harmed and others in my field. In the meantime, I wish to make myself available to those that I have harmed to contact me, ask questions and let me know how I can help them. Sincerely, Junielle Alexis T. Alatiit