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Dave Danforth:
"...For his class, Tatge pulled together a 17-page file on the Stephens episode. It included her Twitter and Facebook profiles, the police report and court documents. It also included her permission to travel out of state for the team.
Four sorority members at Stephens’ Pi Beta Pi told her that her record was the subject of a journalism class.
“I felt embarrassed,” Stephens told The DePauw. “I felt really uncomfortable walking around. I don’t think it reflects on the person I am.” Stephens told her parents, who complained to DePauw’s vice president for student life, ramping up the case to a level where it drew the attention of national websites.
The school was caught in a dilemma. It wanted to make sure its students were comfortable, while also protecting the sanctity of the classroom. The case involved academic freedom, privacy issues, and freedom of academic expression, for starters. There were no right answers.
Stephens’ mother let loose in a letter to the paper. She accused Tatge of wanting to “create news,” and of making himself the center of a story. By targeting her daughter, Tatge was also guilty of a form of social bullying, she said. This in turn drew rebukes from other students, who questioned whether Stephens was taking responsibility. Stephens, they suggested, had put herself in harm’s way.
DePauw officials are still mulling what to do, if anything. The values at issue conflict.
Add to these values the question of police discretion. Police officers are hired by the public to protect them. But often, the public complains that they are disproportionately getting busted instead of protected by officers who are out “trolling for trouble,” in search of cases they can “clear by arrest.”
Community standards and public safety often don’t square up. Local police standards are often imported from other towns from which officers are recruited. Locals note how the community values taught to Pitkin County sheriff’s deputies clash with the more “them’s-the-breaks,” “knock-’dem-heads” practices on display in Aspen police reports.
Ultimately, citizens decide what kind of law enforcement they want, although many don’t know it. The chief local prosecutor is often elected, though local citizens differ over respect for police while scrutinizing their tactics and the integrity of their reports.
It matters when it hits home, as it did to Alison Stephens, her family, and to a distinguished visiting professor at DePauw. Its 2,400 students all know the news before it hits..." (Read more? Click title)
"Unapologetically pursuing and tracking patterns within the news others make since 2010."
