Two reporters at James Madison University (JMU) have received judicial charges after attempting to cover a story, and I am not a happy camper. I am going to go ahead and let you all know that I realized I am being terribly biased in this column; however, that is the joy of a column. I am supposed to, and I am encouraged to be biased. So here it is: the story (and all of the facts in this story come directly from the school newspaper website), and my incredibly biased opinion.JMU is about two hours away from our campus. Their student paper,The Breeze has been in print since 1922, comes out twice a week. The paper is produced on Mondays and Thursdays and is available across campus and online. Editor-in-Chief Tim Chapman, and Katie Hibson, a contributing news writer, received judicial board charges at the end of last week. From what I have been told, there was an incident regarding a "peeping tom" inside a residence hall, and The Breeze, as any campus newspaper would, showed up to cover the incident.
The "peeping tom" was found on Oct. 17 and the campus was notified by a "timely notice" email JMU sent on Oct.18. I do not know how things work at The Breeze, but here at The Rotunda, a contributing news writer signifies a writer who is not an actual staff member. Last semester, it was The Rotunda's policy that a writer must get five articles published before they became an official staff member.
If that were the case at The Breeze, then that would be unfortunate for Hibson. That would mean she just showed up and was like "Hey I will try and write an article," and went out with that eager energy and ended up getting slammed. Either way she ended up with the short end of the stick. Regardless of whether she was on the staff or not, she still has the charges against her. If she decided to try the story just for fun, that would be even worse.
Ok. I got off track. So anyway, Hibson gets word of the incident and decides to go over to Hillside Hall, where the incident took place. Hibson said she was invited into the residence hall and clearly identified herself as a reporter (props to her on that one). Resident Ariel Spagnolo invited her into the building and stayed within 15 feet of Hibson as she interviewed people. Hibson was asked to leave by the Resident Adviser (RA) Maria Lane, and Hibson did so promptly.
Hibson did what all reporters would do. She grabbed her editors and went back to Hillside later that afternoon. With her was Chapman, and The Breeze's Assistant Sports Editor Emmie Cleveland, who was also a Hillside Hall resident. If it were me, I can guarantee you Bekah and Kyle and I would be going back.
So Hibson rounded up her backup and they all went back to interview some more students. Well, RA Lane wasn't so cool with that. Neither was the Hall Director Sarah Woody. Woody asked the reporters to leave and then called the police. That was the one interesting part to the story. It doesn't say what the Three Musketeers did when Woody asked them to leave. That's probably because a Breeze reporter wrote the story and they are not going to show their own staff in a bad light.
Hibson and Chapman were notified of their charges through an email. Judicial Affairs and JMU police charged them with disorderly conduct, trespassing and non-compliance with an official request while not reporting. Yep, you counted right. That is THREE separate judicial offenses.
According to the article, Chapman and Hibson have been requested to set up an appointment with Judicial Affairs .However, both have indicated that they will wait until the Breeze's Legal Advisor tells them what course of action to take.
So I am a college reporter. If this happened to me, it would be no bueno. All she was trying to do was her job, and she seemed like she was doing a good job. The Virginia Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) is now encouraging James Madison University to drop charges against 21-year-old Tim Chapman and 19-year-old Katie Hibson. It says officials acted "beyond reason." And I agree. This is so not legit and I sincerely hope that Hibson and Chapman are not punished over something this petty.
