ONE OF the trickiest parts of reporting is assembling a bevy of information into an article that just plain makes sense.
The Cavalier Daily was confronted with this task in the past two weeks when University Police and local law enforcement officials laid out details to a drug bust that began to take place Thursday, Oct. 2. Gathering all of the facts in a bust that included the indictment of 33 people for alleged involvement in selling illegal narcotics can be a challenging undertaking, even when the police give their side of the story through a press conference. Reporters must follow up with many parties to substantiate facts and give a fair picture of what really happened.
The Cavalier Daily, with its initial coverage on "Operation Spring Break Down," did a good, thorough job in collecting information and presenting it in a clear, careful manner. The first article concerning the bust appeared Monday, Oct. 6, in the first paper printed after the police held a press conference the Friday prior describing the bust. There were many bits of information to present: Police issued indictments for 33 people, of which 25 had ties to the University (three employees, seven former students and fifteen current students); throughout the investigation, the task force seized marijuana, cocaine, opium, ecstasy and psilocybin mushrooms; officials busted some suspects on the Corner and, for some other suspects, used the ruse of a secret society invitation to attract suspects to the Rotunda for arrest. (This disturbing fact was later criticized in a thoughtful Oct. 7 column on the bust by Alec Solotorovsky, who argued that the secret society ploy was "an elaborate prank that served little purpose except to humiliate the suspects at the time of their arrest.") Reporters compiled and presented the mass of information meticulously and followed up on that early outpouring of facts with articles concerning further information on the consequences faced by the suspects if convicted, as well as additional arrests and community reaction.
This is a good opportunity for the CD to illustrate what happens to students who are charged (these suspects have yet to be) with violating either standards two or ten of the Standards of Conduct set forth by the Board of Visitors and governed by the University Judiciary Committee. Often students are unaware of the power and processes of the UJC (and, though unrelated to these cases, the Honor Committee), and it would benefit the University community (especially those that are new here) for The Cavalier Daily to provide some more substantial illumination in this regard.
Correcting, concluding and doubling up
On the other side of the performance spectrum, readers discovered via a lengthy set of corrections on Thursday, Oct. 9, that some sloppy reporting had been done that week. The corrections have already been printed and it would serve little purpose to detail them again (hopefully, they'll be online soon), but I point them out as a simple reminder that fact collecting and presenting first and foremost must be accurate. Not all readers of the paper are daily readers, and many of them likely did not see the corrections as presented, so it is imperative that reporters get the facts right every time.
On Friday, Oct. 17, Opinion columnist Whitney Blake took on the Medical School's adoption of a pass-fail system and seemed to conclude that such a method of evaluation could lead to a surgeon panicking mid-procedure. Opposing a pass/fail grading system is not a position that is altogether controversial, but leaping to generalizations like Blake's surgeon example is a bit rash, especially when one considers the fact that the new pass/fail system is only for the first and second years of medical school. (Third years retain traditional grading, and fourth years take electives that have been evaluated traditionally as pass/fail.)
Also, an Oct. 6 piece in the Life section on personalized license plates seemed oddly familiar since Megan Peloquin had already written a column on the subject, which ran Sept. 17. Columns on occasion can lead to longer feature pieces, but this subject hardly merited double treatment, as there's not much more to say besides such-and-such person has this license plate because [insert reason here].
A final note
Due to the Reading Holidays, two weeks have passed since last this column appeared. The Cav Daily staff produced six issues since then. There were no papers published Friday, Oct. 10, through Wednesday, Oct. 15, though the University broke for only two days of classes. Putting out a paper for Wednesday would have required the staff's work on Tuesday, which was a day off, so it is understandable that, along with the rest of the University, the CD staff also took off Tuesday. Certainly, these hard working students deserved a respite as well, but not producing an issue for Friday stretched that break a bit much.
(Emily Kane can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.)
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