Right to Know Week Essay Competition Winners

As part of the celebrations for Right to Know (RTK) Week 2011, the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) launched the 2nd RTK Week Essay Competition, along with sponsoring organizations, Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN), the College of the North Atlantic (CNA) and Cox & Palmer.

The purpose of RTK Week is to raise awareness about people’s right to access government information, while promoting freedom of information as essential to both democracy and good governance. The RTK Week Essay Competition helps further this purpose, particularly amongst secondary and post-secondary students.

Students were asked to write on the following topic:

“In the era of Wikileaks, where should the line be drawn for access to government records?”

The winning essay in this year’s competition was written by Amit Negandhi who will be awarded a prize valued at $500.00 and whose essay will be published on the OIPC website. Second place (prize valued at $200.00) was awarded to Gina Colbourne, and third place (prize valued at $100.00) went to Dave Jerome. All three are Memorial University students and were chosen anonymously by a panel of judges representing the organizations involved. Prizes will be presented to the winners on February 17, at 10:00 a.m. at the OIPC office at 34 Pippy Place.

The interest in this year’s competition was high as was the quality of submissions. The OIPC, MUN, CNA, and Cox & Palmer would like to extend congratulations to the winning essay writers as well as all who participated in this year’s competition, and look forward to the 3rd RTK Week Essay Competition launching in September 2012.

For full contest details and restrictions, please see the OIPC website at www.oipc.nl.ca.

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Media contact:
Ed Ring
Information and Privacy Commissioner
709-729-6309

2012 01 27                       9:30 a.m.