ON DRUG BUST COVERAGE AND CORRECTIONS

Emily Kane Cavalier Daily Ombudsman 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.