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College journalism is community-based journalism in its purest form: we write about the people we sit next to in class and the ones we see at parties on Friday night. From 2002 to 2005 I worked as an editor at The Collegian, our campus paper at the University of Richmond in Virginia. During this time, we reported on a classmate who drove drunk and killed a mother of three; a professor who was shot dead in his driveway by his ex-wife; and a friend and co-editor who drowned in a river after a night of drinking. But the toughest decision I faced centered on the question of printing students’ names in our weekly crime blotter.

The Police Beat, one of the most widely read sections in the paper, is a straightforward listing of all the crimes and arrests on campus each week. Some years ago, editors of The Collegian took the university to court to get access to the names of arrested students. The Collegian lost the case because of the way the law was written, but the editors persevered and helped push a new law through the Virginia General Assembly that required private universities to make their crime logs public (with the interesting exception that names related to minor alcohol violations and drunk driving arrests could be withheld). As the years passed, The Collegian continued to print the names of arrested students in news articles about the most serious crimes, but eventually stopped printing names in the Police Beat for everything else. That’s how things stood when I took over as editor in chief in February 2004. I felt the policy was inconsistent, and that it made light of the crimes we weren’t covering.

I thought long and hard about what change, if any, to make, and then took my proposal to my staff to get its opinions. The majority, and all my top editors, supported printing names in the Police Beat, but a small yet vocal minority did not. After all, they argued, why would a college newspaper want to hurt the school’s own students? Wasn’t being arrested punishment enough? Shouldn’t young people be allowed to make mistakes?

Knowing I risked dissension among my coworkers, I explained my decision in that week’s editorial: “Not printing the names of everyone arrested on campus creates an impression that the adult students at the University of Richmond need not be held responsible for their actions.” I informed readers that, starting the next week, The Collegian would print the names of all students arrested on campus, with the exception of those involved in minor alcohol violations.

I expected to face resistance from the campus police department and the university, and criticism from the student body. As it turned out, the police department seemed more than happy to provide all the information we wanted, one high-ranking university official told me he supported the change, and not a single student wrote to The Collegian to protest. In fact, the only time students complained about the policy was after they themselves had been arrested and an editor contacted them to see if they wished to comment. We received both threats and impassioned pleas from charged students asking us not to identify them in the paper, but in all cases we did.

My crisis at The Collegian came after a male student was arrested on charges of “stalking” a female student who was his ex-girlfriend. The situation was complicated because the woman had first taken her problem to the campus police, who elected not to make an arrest (many alleged crimes on campus are referred to the dean rather than going through the criminal system). She then filed an official complaint in district court, writing that she feared for her safety and had asked her former boyfriend, approximately eight times, to stop contacting her. A warrant was issued by the judge and the male student was arrested soon after.

The arrested student contacted The Collegian via e-mail, told us not to print his name, and warned us that we had better talk to his lawyer. When I contacted the lawyer, he tried to convince me not to print the student’s name. I was a little intimidated by his tough talk and serious manner, I’ll admit, but I didn’t relent. I explained to him that the arrest was newsworthy, in the public record, and would be treated like all other arrests. I also assured him we would follow up on the case and let our readers know the outcome. Then the lawyer asked if we were going to print the name of the woman who said she was being stalked. I said no, and then the lawyer really turned on the pressure.

The name of an accuser is just as much a part of the public record as the name of the accused, he argued, noting that newspapers routinely print both except in cases of rape, incest, or those involving a juvenile. I knew all this, but the lawyer forcefully insisted it would be unfair if we named his client but not his client’s accuser. I told him I’d have to think about it.

The situation was complicated further by the fact that the woman had already e-mailed us to say she didn’t want her personal business to show up in the paper. I had respectfully told her there would be a short article in the Police Beat detailing the arrest, but that we had no plans to identify her by name.

I talked to The Collegian’s adviser and other journalism professors, and they all agreed that the fair thing to do was to follow accepted journalistic practice: print both names. I talked to trusted members of my staff and they were just as confused as I was. In past situations, I had almost always deferred to my grounding in hard news values, and my professors’ opinions carried a lot of weight. Yet instinct made me question those values. Doesn’t a woman who says she has been stalked face a stigma similar to someone who reports a sexual assault? I know the magnitude of the crimes is different, but couldn’t the fear be the same?

I wish I had mulled it longer, but I had a paper to edit, so I embraced the comforts of precedent: we would print both names. I called the woman, but she wasn’t home, so I sent her an e-mail saying The Collegian had reevaluated its decision. Later that night, as I was dealing with another sensitive article set to run on the front page, she called the office. I heard the stress in her voice, and I could tell she was on the verge of tears. She asked me to explain why I had changed my mind, and what purpose it would serve to publish her name. As I told her about the rules of journalism, I felt like an impostor, because I knew full well that I could break the rules when necessary. I hung up the phone, relieved that at least the difficult conversation was over, but then couldn’t help but retreat to the hallway to try to pace out a better alternative. Later, back in the office, the phone rang again; it was the woman’s mother.

She said her daughter didn’t know she was calling, but she wanted me to hear her out. She explained as calmly as she could all the facts of the case as she knew them, and all the anguish it was causing her daughter, who had gone to the police only because she wanted help. The student had never expected it to get into the paper. As a mother, she was asking me not to hurt her daughter.

I told her I would think about it some more and call her back.

The acid in my stomach was rising and my head was pounding. In the midst of all that was going on in the newsroom, I needed to get away. I retreated again to the long, empty hallway outside of the Collegian office and sat down in the farthest and darkest corner. I prayed to the Great Newspaper Editor in the Sky for guidance.

I had already aggravated the situation by changing my mind once, but this time I was going to get it right. The easiest thing would have been not to run anything at all; nobody would have cared, but I was committed to the new policy I had established for the Police Beat. A true journalist would print both names. Instead, I went with my gut.

I called both parties and told them my final decision. We printed the arrested student’s name, not the accuser’s. The following paragraph was part of the article in the next day’s paper:

[The arrested student’s lawyer] wished it to be noted that he thought The Collegian’s decision not to print the complainant’s name was unfair and irresponsible. Public records available in this case can be accessed from the Richmond District Court clerk.

Should I have handled the situation better? Yes. Was it the right decision in the end? I don’t know. Two of my female editors e-mailed me afterward to say they thought I had made the right call. As it turned out, the stalking charge was never prosecuted.

Of his experience working at a college newspaper, the author Kurt Vonnegut once remarked:

I was happy when I was all alone — and it was very late at night, and I was walking up the hill after having helped put The Sun to bed. All the other university people, teachers and students alike, were asleep. They had been playing games all day long with what was known about real life. They had been repeating famous arguments and experiments, and asking one another the sorts of hard questions real life would be asking by and by. We on The Sun were already in the midst of real life. By God if we weren’t.

When I finally left the Collegian office on my last, and very late, night as editor, all alone as I had been so many times before, walking up a hill no less, I understood his words as if I had written them myself.

To read the articles in the March/April 2006 issue, click here.

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